Michel Portal - Alors !​!​! (September 10, 2021 souffle continu records)

Could the missing link between Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler be the Michel Portal of 1970? After having worked alongside François Tusques defending a free jazz “made in France”, we find him here, heading up an international quintet of which each member is on fire: John Surman, Barre Phillips, Stu Martin and Jean-Pierre Drouet. The quintet had full leeway to break out the free-form in long ambient tracks to compose this Alors!!! which leaves listeners with just one word to say: More!

Do we still need to present Michel Portal?... Clarinetist destined for the classical and contemporary world after his passage in the Paris Conservatory, he decided to try his hand at jazz, with an incendiary flamboyance! After his first experience with André Hodeir and Pierre Michelot, he would break all the codes with François Tusques (Free Jazz, in 1965) before starting the emblematic Michel Portal Unit. It is the Portal of those years that Alors!!! offers us the chance to listen to again.

“There are periods of insolence”, the musician declared and the year 1970 was one all on its own. Heading up an impetuous international troupe, a quintet consisting of John Surman (saxophones, bass clarinet), Barre Phillips (double-bass), Stu Martin (drums) and Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussion), Portal moves from alto sax to clarinet in the compositions shared with his partners.

From the off, the group sparks an explosion with the sound of “OO Bam Ba Deep” battered by the horns and percussion. Next up is the fabulous free jazz of “Yes, Oh Yes, You Wonderous Sun Kissed Maiden!” and the fantastic disjointed march of “Ça Boom?” which shakes up the musicians every which way. The quintet imagined that listeners would need to catch their breath, and thoughtfully added: “Billie the Kid” and “Undercurrent”, marvelous moments of ambient mystery.

Audacious from beginning to end, including the sleeve – the bird-man and his quintet brain designed by Avoine, –, the album is a fabulous object, to which the label Futura gave wings at the time. And as it is being reissued today there is just one word to use: the French translation of the title, So!!! 

1. Oo Bam Ba Deep 05:18

2. Billie The Kid 01:57

3. Yes, Oh Yes, You Wonderous Sun-Kissed Maiden 14:04

4. Ça Boom? 00:56

5. Y En A Marre 05:40

6. Undercurrent 05:36

7. New Peace 02:02

8. Ça Boom ! 07:52

PREORDER

John Surman / John Warren - The Brass Project (ECM 2019)

The original conceptual idea for the Brass Project was to set John Surman’s improvising trio with bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall at the centre of a radiant brass choir of trumpets and trombones. With John Warren invited to contribute compositions and to conduct the group, the Brass Project quickly evolved into a more organic large ensemble, and by the time of this 1992 recording had become one of the most creative configurations in Britain. The elegant arrangements of Warren’s and Surman’s profoundly melodic music inspire many eloquent and touching solos.

John Surman   Soprano Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Alto Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Piano

Henry Lowther   Trumpet

Steve Waterman   Trumpet

Stuart Brooks   Trumpet

Malcolm Griffiths   Trombone

Chris Pyne   Trombone

David Stewart   Bass Trombone

Richard Edwards   Bass Trombone

Chris Laurence   Bass

John Marshall   Drums, Percussion

John Warren   Conductor

1 THE RETURNING EXILE (John Surman) 07:41

2 COASTLINE (John Surman) 03:33

3 THE NEW ONE TWO PART 1 (John Warren) 06:39

4 THE NEW ONE TWO PART 2 (John Warren) 07:30

5 SPACIAL MOTIVE (John Warren) 04:51

6 WIDER VISION (John Surman) 08:26

7 SILENT LAKE (John Warren) 05:56

8 MELLSTOCK QUIRE / TANTRUM CLANGLEY (John Warren, John Surman) 11:13

9 ALL FOR A SHADOW (John Warren, John Surman) 05:49

Mike Westbrook Concert Band - The Last Night At The Old Place (CADILLAC RECORDS May 25, 2018)

So many good things were contained within the Mike Westbrook Concert Band of 1968 that it’s hard to know where to start. Its personnel included the components of a whole scene of young London-based jazz musicians, bursting with energy and the desire to express the sounds they were discovering collectively and as individuals. 

For a time, this band gave them the ideal structure. And when they needed a setting, Ronnie Scott and Pete King were there to provide it. The gift of the remaining 18 months of the lease on the basement of 39 Gerrard Street handed young musicians the precious opportunity to perform regularly in the heart of the West End in a sympathetic environment, free from the usual commercial pressures. 

What went on in that basement is crystallised in this historic and previously unheard recording of its very last night, during which the band performed Westbrook’s Release, a suite that drew together many of the composer’s own areas of interest while providing space for a selection of magnificent improvisers to display their distinctive and fast-evolving personalities. What Westbrook had learnt from Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus was the importance of treating an ensemble as a group of individual voices

The humanity of the music was never to be compromised by prioritising a display of technical precision. Which is not to say that these guys couldn’t play. John Surman and Paul Rutherford were just two of the band’s members then engaged in extending the available vocabulary of their instruments. But this was never at the expense of the warmth and exuberance that delighted the band’s listeners, and never more clearly than on this night in May 1968 at the Old Place. 

Three months later, Release would be recorded by the producer Peter Eden for the Deram label, its episodes trimmed in order to fit the playing time of a 12-inch LP. In this version, with no time constraints and in front of a sympathetic and sometimes vocally appreciative audience, the musicians are allowed to stretch out in a majestic sprawl of relaxed creativity.

So we have a chance to appreciate at greater length the frantic brilliance of George Khan’s tenor and Bernie Livings’s alto, Surman reaching a peak of youthful ebullience, the nerve-tingling dialogue between Dave Holdsworth’s trumpet and Alan Jackson’s drums, Harry Miller’s unflagging support play, and the wonderful contrast of trombone approaches set up by Malcolm Griffith’s proud roar and Rutherford’s oblique nurdling.

A special place is reserved for the immortal Mike Osborne, whose solo feature linking the standard “Lover Man” and the Westbrook original “For Ever and a Day” occupied four minutes of the studio recording but here is stretched to more than twice that length in a breathtakingly contoured passage of soul-piercing, heart-stopping, sweetly bruised beauty. 

I wasn’t lucky enough to be there that night to hear all this magic filling a Chinatown basement. Perhaps you weren’t, either. But we are now.

1. The Few 06:51

2. Lover Man

3. For Ever & A Day

4. We Salute You

5. The Few (2)

6. Folk Song

7. Flying Home

8. Sugar

9. Who's Who

10. Can't Get It Out Of My Mind

11. A Life Of It's Own

Mike Westbrook Concert Band:

Dave Holdsworth - trumpet

Malcolm Griffiths, Paul Rutherford - trombones

Mike Osborne, Bernie Living, George Khan, John Surman - saxophones

Mike Westbrook - piano

Harry Miller - bass

Alan Jackson - drums

Compositions & arrangements by Mike Westbrook, recorded by George Smith 

Album produced by Mike Westbrook & Mike Gavin

John Surman - Invisible Threads (ECM January 19, 2018)

Saxophonist and clarinetist John Surman is often characterized as a quintessentially English improviser and composer, and hints of folk music and a pastoral ambience are attributes of his music on well-loved albums like “The Road to Saint Ives” or “Saltash Bells.” Yet he also has a long history of working with musicians from other countries and cultures, players united by such invisible threads as a shared feeling for melody that transcends the idioms. John Surman met pianist Nelson Ayres – known to aficionados of Brazilian jazz for his work with Airto Moreira, Milton Nascimento and Banda Pau Brasil – while on tour in South America. In Oslo, Surman came to know and appreciate the playing of Rob Waring, expatriate US vibraphonist (recently heard on ECM with Mats Eilertsen). The three musicians come together to play a new program of Surman originals – plus Nelson Ayres’s “Summer Song” – in a session recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow studio in July 2017, produced by Manfred Eicher.

1 At first sight  02:32

2 Autumn nocturne  06:50

3 Within the clouds  04:47

4 Byndweed  05:09

5 On still water  04:41

6 Another reflection  01:31

7 The admiral  05:13

8 Pitanga pitomba  07:02

9 Summer song  05:19

10 Concentric circles  06:30

11 Stoke damerel  03:34

12 Invisible threads  05:39

John Surman, soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet

Nelson Ayres, piano

Rob Waring, vibraphone, marimba