Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists Vol.1 - All Told

Edwards / Parker / Prévost

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This is the first recording made in a series of concerts at The Network Theatre, Waterloo, London, in which Eddie Prévost invited notable saxophonists to make music with him. 

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John Edwards / double bass

Evan Parker / tenor saxophone

Eddie Prévost / drums 

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Recorded at the Network Theatre, Waterloo, London, on the 30th May 2011 by Giovanni Le Rovere. Mixing and editing by John Butcher. Cymbol photography by Tom Mills. Design my Myuh Chun. 

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Review:
 
The first was All Told with arch-bassist John Edwards and the huge and brilliant breath of the Bristolian tenor saxophonist Evan Parker. “I want life!” exclaims Prevost of his endless quest for improvisation in the album’s sleeve notes, and “a metamusical approach; one which revels in personal discovery and surprises as well as being sensitive and active towards incoming signals from others.” It is a commentary and metaphor for art as life, and this record is full with it, the three musicians playing as an amalgam, unifying their powerful technical dexterity with an intense and reflective beauty, humanity and generosity towards each other and their listeners. Edwards’s musical mastery is also in every way remarkable, as if he is the pulse of all that we hear, while Parker’s assertion of breath-with-end gives us a simile, an onomatopoeia of continuing life and hope enveloped in aural radiance. As for Prevost, in his drums is an insistence of the real, of the touching, tapping, hammering, striking, pounding, ringing of the detail of work and action which is everywhere in our lives, in every second, awake or asleep, the sonic edge of production. Like his Huguenot forebears, he works in a world of workshops: but his workshops are the workshops of drums.
 
Chris Searle — Morning Star 26th January, 2016

Available as a 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC download.  

Tracklisting:

1. All Told - Part 1 - 34:44

2. All Told - Parl 2 - 34:19

John Edwards

John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.

"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment

Evan Parker

"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. 

Eddie Prévost

Eddie Prévost began his life in music as a jazz drummer. A recurring interest in this form has been maintained, although always with an experimental ethos. Along the way he has maintained his fifty-year plus experimental credentials with AMM and numerous other improvisation projects, including his now twenty-year long weekly workshop. But drumming has generally been backgrounded to his experimental percussion work. More though, is to be expected of his drumming in 2020 on forthcoming multi-CD album: The Unexpected Alchemy. A part of this Krakow festival recording features the drums and saxophone trio of Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and Eddie Prévost. His most recent released recordings include AMM’s: An Unintended Legacy, and a duo with John Butcher - Visionary Fantasies, both on Matchless Recordings. Also, a solo percussion LP on the Earshots label called Matching Mix. Later, in 2020 he meets with Jason Yarde and Nathan Moore, while in March concerts and recording will hear him drumming with US guitarist Henry Kaiser and saxophonist Binker Golding.

“Prévost's free drumming flows superbly making use of his formidable technique. It’s as though there has never been an Elvin Jones or Max Roach.” - Melody Maker

“Relentlessly innovative yet full of swing and fire.” – Morning Star