A live recording at the famous Meteo Festival from the trio of Sophie Agnel (piano), John Edwards (double bass) and Steve Noble (drums), three of Europe's most active improvisers in an intense extended performance.
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Sample The Album:
Sophie Agnel-piano
John Edwards-doublebass
Steve Noble-drums
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UPC: 5609063002720
Label: Clean Feed
Catalog ID: CF272
Squidco Product Code: 17676
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2013
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardstock gatefold foldover
Recorded at Mulhouse, Festival Meteo on August 24th, 2012 by France Musique.
"Normally, a jazz piano trio is like a pyramid, with the pianist at the pointing top and both bassist and drummer on the left and right sides of the bottom. Not in the case of Meteo, the project involving French Grand player Sophie Agnel and British rhythm destroyers John Edwards and Steve Noble: what they create is a circle. To be exact: a circle of fullness, not emptiness. The same fat circle with which composer Giacinto Scelsi represented sound. Outside of the logics patterned by Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau and Jason Moran, this piano- double bass-drums combination has no hierarchies (everybody leads, everybody follows) and deals with the inner properties of sound itself, feeding from Scelsi's example. Much of the time, Agnel plays standing, manipulating the interior of the piano with hands and objects. In the middle of the abstract noises coming from it we hear a particular succession of pure notes, the fragment of a melody. Inside all the rumble and thunder maintained by Edwards and Noble we recognize a steady pulsation. There's no limits for what these three do: they're atonal, microtonal and tonal in only few minutes. As the liner notes of the CD say, "they flirt with all genres, intensities and intensions"..."-Clean Feed Records
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Sophie Agnel "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 ^ Hide Bio for Sophie Agnel • Show Bio for John Edwards "After taking up the bass, around 1987, John Edwards co-formed The Pointy Birds who went on to win awards for their music for The Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs dance troupes. The group appeared at festivals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moers, Leverkusen, Copenhagen. Around 1990, Edwards played his first gigs with London improvisers such as Roger Turner, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton. Between 1990 and 1995 Edwards was a member of three touring groups simultaneously: B-Shops For The Poor, The Honkies and GOD. During this period he also became an increasingly regular player on the London improvised music scene and performed his first solo gigs; he composed and performed music theatre with the bass and cello duo The Great Explorers, street-busked a lot and appeared at many more festivals in Germany, Estonia, France, Italy, Czech, etc. Since 1995 John Edwards has become a "mainstay" of the London scene, playing with just about everybody, an activity that has seen him clocking up between 150 and 200 gigs a year. He has become regular player with Evan Parker, in many groupings, and with Tony Bevan, Veryan Weston, and Elton Dean, often in collaboration with Mark Sanders on percussion. He has become a more frequent player on the European (and festival) scene, appearing at Taktlos, Ulrichsburg, Nickelsdorf, Budapest, New Zealand and in the USA. He continues to work on solo performances." ^ Hide Bio for John Edwards • Show Bio for Steve Noble "Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more. In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book 'Improvisation; its nature and practise'. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins)." ^ Hide Bio for Steve Noble
10/2/2024
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10/2/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
10/2/2024
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. Meteo 38:26
Improvised Music
Jazz
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Clean Feed
Trio Recordings
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