Wednesday 22 January 2020, 7.30pm
French composer and improviser, Jean-Marc Foussat, performs solo and in a very special trio with Daunik Lazro (baritone & tenor saxes) and Evan Parker (tenor & soprano saxes). A pioneer in the fields of music concrete and exploratory electronic music since the 1970's, Foussat has performed with the likes of Joe McPhee, Jean-François Pauvros, Makoto Sato, Evan Parker and Roger Turner to name just a few. We're delighted to welcome him to OTO for the first time.
“At the beginning of the year 1980, when I started recording, one of the first musicians I met was Daunik Lazro, in Angoulême. He played a solo "in" the history of jazz, it was splendid. I think he liked my way of doing things and we have been friends since all that time.
The same year, in the summer, by accident at the festival of Pisa & Firenze I met Evan. He was accompanied by the finest improvising musicians of that time and I was so captivated by their music that I decided to immerse myself in it immediately.
When Cafe OTO asked me to come to London to play solo ... and with the training of my choice, I immediately thought to find there these two initiating friends, "together and with me ...". Without them I will probably never have become the person I am and it is humans like them who have always encouraged me to persevere in this requirement of basic consciousness that is improvised music. It's been 40 years since we dreamed of music together and we will be there together for the first time. Thank you.” – Jean-Marc Foussat
“In my dreams there are shops in exotic beach-side towns that contain racks full of contemporaneous records with this level of stylistic abandon & next-level technical prowess, and yet I’ve, thus far, only had the pleasure to discover this one.” – Soundohm on Abattage by Jean-Marc Foussat
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
French saxophonist (b. 1945), involved in jazz and free improvisation. First personal records (vinyls) for Hat Hut label, begining of 1980s. Played, toured and recorded with a lot of imposing musicians - Carlos Zingaro, Raymond Boni, Joëlle Léandre, George Lewis, Michel Doneda, Lê Quan Ninh, Evan Parker, Joe McPhee, Paul Rogers, Paul Lovens, Phil Minton, J-F. Pauvros, Roger Turner…
Likes to perform in solo, duet and small groups allowing strong interplay. One could define his playing in terms of expressivity, «cubism» or abstract lyricism.
