The Squid's Ear Magazine


Agnel, Sophie / John Butcher: La Pierre Tachee [VINYL] (NI-VU-NI-CONNU)

The 2nd of NI-VU-NI-CONNU's 5-LP John Butcher series, the duo of pianist Sophie Agnel and soprano & tenor saxophonist John Butcher is informed by previous collaborations as a duo and in a trio with cellist Márkos Albert, here in a superb 2019 concert of balanced tension and intense interaction captured at Ausland in Berlin, a meeting of two perfectly matched improvisers.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Sophie Agnel-piano

John Butcher-tenor saxophone, soprano saxophones


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Edition of 300 copies.

Label: NI-VU-NI-CONNU
Catalog ID: nvnc-lp025
Squidco Product Code: 31457

Format: LP
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: Luxembourg
Packaging: LP
Recorded at Ausland, in Berlin, Germany, on November 29th, 2019, by Andrew Levine.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Agnel and Butcher have played together in different formations over the past decade, including in a trio with Hungarian cellist Márkos Albert and as a duo, but this is the first time their collaboration is captured on vinyl. A kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other..."-Stuart Broomer, from the liner notes.

Sophie Agnel (b. 1964 in Paris) is a composer and a pianist. A classically trained artist, she shifted to jazz in the early 1990s and then to free-improvisation. She is a regular member of the Orchestre National de Jazz and has collaborated with numerous musicians including Phil Minton, Daunik Lazro, Lionel Marchetti and Andrea Neumann. Among her releases to date are a trio with Steve Noble and John Edwards as well as her much-remarked album Capsizing Moments (2009).

John Butcher (b. 1954 in Brighton) describes himself as "a saxophonist who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of time and place." His music ranges from improvisation and compositions to multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and unusual acoustics.

After publishing a PhD in quantum chromodynamics (1982), Butcher left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, for many decades in the case of some, including Eddie PrŽvost, Derek Bailey, Steve Beresford, Paul Lovens, Rhodri Davies, Matthew Shipp, Akio Suzuki, Thomas Lehn, Christian Marclay, Gino Robair, Okkyung Lee, Mark Sanders, StŒle Liavik Solberg, Phil Minton and Angharad Davies and the groups Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Thermal and Polwechsel.

Compositions have been varied, the most recent being Tarab Cuts (based on early Arabic recordings) and Fluid Fixations for 14 players at HCMF (2021).

Butcher also values playing in occasional encounters ranging from large groups, such as Butch Morris's London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Ute Kanngiesser, Joe McPhee, Keiji Haino, John Tilbury, Fred Frith, and Otomo Yoshihide.



The John Butcher Vinyl Series / Part 1:

A set of 5 LPs with live recordings featuring the prominent British saxophonist in five different musical formations. They capture a series of concerts held in 2019, four of which saw Butcher joined by a roster of international musicians for a two-day celebratory event at ausland in Berlin, and the fifth marking the debut of a new trio recorded in Leipzig and Berlin.

The series bears witness to the extraordinary breadth of Butcher's musical palette, which allows him to play across different musical scenes and with performers from the most diverse backgrounds. In these recordings, he variously reunites with colleagues with whom he has worked extensively in the past (Burkhard Beins, Werner Dafeldecker, Thomas Lehn, Gino Robair, Sophie Agnel, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas) and engages with a group of performers from the eclectic Berlin Echtzeitmusik scene (Liz Allbee, Ignaz Schick, Marta Zapparoli).

The recordings cover a wide range of musical approaches and experiments, from "expression, speculation, ceremony, initiation and transcendence" (Stuart Broomer) to sound refractions and mimicry. Documenting Butcher's versatility and empathic sense of communion, they underline his unique status in the improvised music world, which has earned him a reputation as one of the scene's most influential musicians.

Five LPs in an edition of 300 copies, edited and mixed by John Butcher, liner notes by Stuart Broomer, Inner sleeve photography by Cristina Marx.


Edition of 300 copies.

Artist Biographies

"If it's in Paris that Sophie Agnel was born in 1964, it is towards other sounding islands in the heart of a reinvented temporality that she dwells today, at the stern of a grand piano, an instrument that she turns into a real living & vibrating organism.

Classically trained, escaped from jazz (drawn away by the too strict treatment of harmony), Sophie Agnel boards the piano from every sonic angle this musical vessel can offer : keys, strings & board are simultaneously apprehended, in a mixed procedure (as we say of painting techniques) that would be understated if it was reduced to the cagian definition of the prepared piano. Considering the instrument - that she extends with several accessories, paper cups, balls or strings - as a poetic supplier of anamorphic textures, the musician takes it to be an equal match to the wider diversity of musical systems, whatever the craft they where conceived in (from physiological to electro-acoustic) ...

We would then no longer be surprised to notice her understandings with Michel Doneda and to find her to the side of the wet saxophone of Alessandro Bosetti, of the acoustified electric guitar of Olivier Benoit, of the voices of Catherine Jauniaux and Phil Minton, or the keyboard of Christine Wodraska...

The same seal of esthetic evidence marks all of her musical companionships, with this same taste, beyond the narrative, for the delicate sonic quests and blossoming of dimensions to which the auditor takes part through an active listening : in the heart of Jean Pallandre's phonographic worlds, of Jerôme Noetinger & Lionel Marchetti's small scale cinema, John Butcher or Axel Dörner's crimpy tissues, by the lovely machines of Erik M or Ikue Mori, the harmonico-stratospheric rustling of Stéphane Rives...

The originality of the research conducted by Sophie Agnel today leads her to develop, in solo or with significantly chosen companions, a most refined and highly poetic approach to sound that makes each of her concerts a moving construction filled with chiseled musical gestures, a soft and sumptuous irradiation."-Guillaume Tarche

-Sophie Agnel Website (http://sophieagnel.free.fr/biographie.html)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics.Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor - to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision (Australia), the Rova (USA) & Quasar (Canada) Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori (USA), "Tarab Cuts" (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer's Award) and "Good Liquor .." for the London Sinfonietta. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics with Robair and Edwards, Anemone with Peter Evans, Plume with Tony Buck & Magda Mayas and a trio with Okkyung Lee & Mark Sanders.Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi."

-John Butcher Website (http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Biog.html)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



SIDE A



1. Chemin Creux 15:33

2. Double Cure 5:48

SIDE B



1. Shrieks In Cups Of Gold 13:39

2. Sillonner 4:56

Related Categories of Interest:


Vinyl Recordings
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Piano & Keyboards
Recordings by or featuring Reed & Wind Players
Duo Recordings
John Butcher
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NI-VU-NI-CONNU.


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