The Squid's Ear Magazine


Watts, Trevor & Veryan Weston: 5 More Dialogues (Emanem)

London saxophonist Trevor Watts teams up with pianist Veryan Weston for "5 More Dialogs" of labyrinthine and exultant improvisation, as only two masters of the form can create!
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Trevor Watts-soprano saxophone, alto saxophone

Veryan Weston-piano


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UPC: 5030243501724

Label: Emanem
Catalog ID: 5017
Squidco Product Code: 14944

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2011
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Cardstock 3 page foldover
Digital recording by Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston on March 3rd, 2011 at Peregrine's Pianos, London.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Here are two men whose musical natures are obviously rich and their backgrounds complex - back to Stinky Winkles in the pianist's case, back to Amalgam and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the saxophonist's - but who reduce, in the critic/analyst's shorthand, to tiling or fabric. Tessellations. Moiré. Does that convey all you need to know about Veryan Weston and Trevor Watts, secure in the understanding that these are self-chosen metaphors, not imposed from outside? Needless to say, no, but it's worth thinking what the respective imagery conveys: a sense of interlocking pattern, repetition, system, logic, an Apollonian veering toward order on the one side; a shifting, shimmering, never-the-same-twice movement on the other. Hard surfaces and single notes. Liquid movement, everything blurred together. Piano. Saxophone.

That would do, but as the music contained here immediately and repeatedly confirms, the verbal equivalences never quite work and never have. Watts's sense of order, of structured improvisation and almost fractal form has always been very highly developed, and Weston frequently intersperses passages of almost algebraic directness with vast clouds - clusters is too bitty a word - of sonic material.

These are men who have strongly established life-scripts, or personal 'styles'. It is impossible to mistake Trevor Watts for any other saxophonist, and even more remarkably, given the nature of his instrument, Veryan Weston for any other piano player. They are deeply imprinted, but they are also decisive and free, and they are capable of command, fruitful antagonism and playful 'pastimes', moments where the interplay between them is cheerfully emptied of any graspable signification. If that sounds as if small talk has been elevated into art, that may well be it, because here are two musicians who almost uniquely manage to resist verbal corralling. They are what they are because they are what they play, and they play like that because of what they are, which is defined by how they play. It is strangely but rightly difficult after a time to determine who is proposing what, who is leading and who responding, who is advancing a position and who is subverting it."-Brian Morton, from the liner notes


Artist Biographies

"Trevor Charles Watts (born 26 February 1939 in York) is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to saxophone at 18. While stationed in Germany with the RAF (1958-63), he encountered the drummer John Stevens and trombonist Paul Rutherford. After being demobbed he returned to London. In 1965 he and Stevens formed the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, which became one of the crucibles of British free improvisation. Watts left the band to form his own group Amalgam in 1967, then returned to SME for another stretch that lasted until the mid-1970s. Another key association was with the bassist Barry Guy and his London Jazz Composers' Orchestra, an association that lasted from the band's inception in the 1970s up to its (permanent?) disbandment in the mid-1990s.

Though he was initially strongly identified with the avant-garde, Watts is a versatile musician who has worked in everything from straight jazz contexts to rock and blues. His own projects have come increasingly to focus on blending jazz and African music, notably the Moiré Music ensemble which he has led since 1982 in configurations ranging from large ensembles featuring multiple drummers to more intimate trios. He has only occasionally recorded in freer modes in recent years, notably the CD 6 Dialogues, a duet album with Veryan Weston (the pianist in earlier editions of Moiré Music). A solo album, World Sonic, appeared on Hi4Head Records in 2005.

Watts has toured the world over numerous times, run workshops, received grants and commissions, and he has collaborated with some of the great jazz musicians including Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Jayne Cortez. As of 2011, he continues to travel and toured North American with Veryan Weston."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Watts)
3/13/2024

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

"Born in 1950, and moved from Cornwall to London in 1972 and began playing as a freelance jazz pianist as well as developing as an improviser at Little Theatre Club.


1975-85: Residency & fellowship for Digswell Arts Trust (Hertfordshire). Activities included:

Collaborations with visual artists (potter-Elizabeth Fritsch and fine artist Steve Cochrane).
Work on written theoretical material, commissioned by The Digswell Arts Trust.
Co-ordinating music workshops, supported by Eastern Arts Association.
Co-founded and composed for young local group - Stinky Winkles, voted 'Young Musician of 1979' by Greater London Arts Association and won first prizes in France, Spain and Poland.
Collaborations with Lol Coxhill, music for Derek Jarman Film. First released recordings.

Throughout 1980s and early 90s worked with Eddie PrŽvost Quartet, Trevor Watts' MoirŽ Music and Lol Coxhill and Phil Minton. Major festivals have included Zurich, Berlin, Nickelsdorf, Karlsruhr, Warsaw, Wroclaw, San Sebastian, Bombay, Vancouver, Nancy, Aukland, Nevers, Washington, Lille, Houston, Le Mans, Strasbourg, Bologna and Victoriaville.

Ensemble projects with Minton:

Duo - Ways, Ways Past, and....Past - diverse songs, originals & improvisation structures.
Songs from a Prison Diary - French commission for 25 singers with poems by Ho Chi Minh.
Naming the Animals -a quartet with Lianne Carol and Ian Shaw, words by Adrian Mitchell.
Mouthfull of ecstasy - with John Butcher, Roger Turner, texts from Joyce's Finnegans wake.
Makhno - for chamber choir commissioned by Taktlos Festival 1997.
4Walls - a quartet with songs and improvisations with Luc Ex and Michael Vatcher.


Other recent duo collaborations with:

Trevor Watts - improvisations with a feeling of form, where rhythm and melody sit comfortably with more abstract moments. A major current project.
Caroline Kraabel - duets that explore acoustic phenomena related to two instruments and how these sounds interact in specific acoustic spaces.
Jon Rose - improvisations using different acoustic keyboards and violins with selected tunings derived from science, history and the imagination.
Hugh Metcalfe - Films by Hugh, images of objects, animals, humans, holidays, journeys, unfold, transform, collide and provide the basis for accompanying duet improvisations.


Local activities:

(1995-6) playing in rhythm section for 'Changes' jazz club in North London with British jazz artists.
Awarded A4E National Lottery support to give series of workshops/concerts with John Edwards & Mark Sanders titled 'Playing Together' in East Anglia (1998).

Helped coordinate and arrange the Lindsay Cooper Song Project (1999). European festivals - Taktlos (Zurich), Angelica (Bologna, commissioned arrangement of "Oh Moscow" for orchestra), Moers (Germany) and Roccella Jonica (Italy)"

-Veryan Weston Website (http://veryanweston.weebly.com/biog--discog.html)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. cuTWOrm 13:24

2. Exchanged Frequencies 12:29

3. rooTWOrm 14:05

4. Frequent Exchanges 12:58

5. flaTWOrm 5:51

Related Categories of Interest:


EMANEM & psi
Improvised Music
Jazz
European Improv, Free Jazz & Related
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
Duo Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Emanem.


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