Virtually unprecedented for the time, Evan Parker's 1976 solo soprano saxophone album captures Parker's prowess and unusual harmonic approach to the saxophone in a 1975 concert at the Unity Theatre in London and in the FMP studio the same year, using the instrument in startling ways as he captivates his listeners through a unique revelation of logic, drama and staggering skill.
Format: LP Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: UK Packaging: LP Aerobatics 1-4 are a set of improvisations on soprano saxophone. Aerobatics 1-3 were recorded by Martin Davidson at the Unity Theatre, London 17 June 1975 at a Musicians' Co-operative concert. Aerobatics 4 was recorded by Jost Gebers at the FMP studio 9 September 1975. Originally issued in 1976 as a vinyl LP on the Incus label as catalog code INCUS 19.
"OTOROKU reissue Evan Parker's first solo LP Saxophone Solos. Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicians' Co-operative, Parker's densely woven and often cyclical style has yet to form; instead throaty murmurs appear under rough-hewn whistles and calls -- the wildly energetic beginnings of an extraordinary career."-Otoroku
"The four pieces across the two sides of Saxophone Solos -- "Aerobatics 1" to "4" -- are testing, pressured, bronchial spectaculars of innovation and invention and determination. Evan tells four stories of exploration and imagination without much obvious precedent. Abstract Beckettian cliff-hanging detection/logic/magic/mystery. The conic vessel of the soprano saxophone here recorded contains the ur-protagonists: seeds, characters, settings, forces, conflicts, motions, for new ideas, to delve, to tap and to draw from it story after story as he has on solo record after record for 45 years.
"Aerobatics 1-3" were recorded on June 17th 1975, by Martin Davidson at Parker's first solo performance. This took place at London's Unity Theatre in Camden. "Aerobatics 4" was recorded on September 9th the same year, by Jost Gebers in the then FMP studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Music of balance and gravity, fulcra, effort, poise, and enquiry. Sounds thrown and shaken into and out of air, metal and wood. It is -- as the titles suggest -- spectacular." --Seymour Wright, 2020
Reissued with liner notes from Seymour Wright in an edition of 500.