FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon
| FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon | ||||
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| Studio album by Jacques Coursil & Alan Silva | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | RogueArt | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
15th |
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running time |
43:11 |
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Studio (s) |
Studios La Muse en Circuit, Alfortville |
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FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon is a jazz album by Jacques Coursil and Alan Silva . The recordings, taken on November 22nd and 23rd, 2012 in the La Muse en Circuit studios in Alfortville , were released on RogueArt in 2014 . It was Coursil's last musical release during his lifetime; the trumpeter died in June 2020.
background
Coursil and Silva, from the same generation, were both involved in the rise of free jazz on the east coast of the United States. They met for a duo session to pay tribute to trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon, who died in 2010 and who had also participated in this emerging movement. Coursil had participated in Dixion's Sessions ( New York, Lower East Side 1965-1969 ) in the 1960s when he had just come to the United States after studying in France. Coursil studied with Dixon in the mid-1960s and appeared in the trumpet pieces for the Orchestra of the University of the Streets . Silva, in turn, worked with Dixon in undocumented duosions and then in 1980/81 in Italy for recordings for the Soul Note label. FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon is a series of suites composed by trumpeter Jacques Coursil and showing him in a duet with bassist Alan Silva.
Track list
- Jacques Coursil with Alan Silva: FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon (RogueArt Rog-0052)
- An Evening and a Night at the Annex Bar (16:12)
1 Part 1 3:14
2 Part 2 3:51
3 Part 3 2:25
4 Part 4 4:01
5 Part 5 2:51
- Brooklyn Bridge, the River, the Metal and the Wind (14:06)
6 Part 1 3:05
7 Part 2 3:08
8 Part 13 2:51
9 Part 4 2:21
10 Part 5 2:41
- Bennington-New York, Round Trip (12:51)
11 Part 1 2:04
12 Part 2 2:26
13 Part 3 1:30
14 Part 4 2:47
15 Part 5 3:57
- All compositions are by Jacques Coursil.
reception
According to Olivier Marichalar, who reviewed the album in Citizen Jazz , on this album it is the students who symbolically take over the sessions. In addition to his dazzling bass and treble, Silva offers in particular his unmistakable bowing technique, whereas Coursil's play seems more reserved - tones are held or alternated, there are subtle modulations of the breath. Playing styles that reflect sound research, to which the author quotes Coursil: "To play a trumpet duo with Bill Dixon, you had to find the right tone , a little dark, vaguely hard, internalized, without aesthetics, without pathos , without vibrato ". These new sessions restore the raw nature of the [earlier] encounters - like the one with Bill Dixon - which would later be confirmed as crucial [to jazz history].
In Point of Departure, Clifford Allen noted that although he always played sparingly, Coursil's approach (compared to his early recordings in the late 1960s) was now much more pointillist. In his compressed runs he uses a very narrow range of notes, which form the cells of the music, and occasionally spreads out into breathtaking views that reflect the tense density of the topics. Silva, on the other hand, is still a sturdy counterpart to Coursil's floating arrows, who skillfully worked on a series of soft underlines and picturesque pages.
Both Dixon and Coursil focused much of their music on the bass, Allen continued (hence, in 1969 , Beb Guérin was the bassist of choice on Coursil's Way Ahead and The Black Suite albums ). For two players who knew this fascination well and were actually directly connected to it, FreeJazzArt was an appropriate homage , although one would have hoped that the music would deviate from everything that was possible in the past decades. “In terms of tone, Coursil has a fair amount of Dixon in him, at least in the scratchier passages, but there is another kind of clarity as his piercing ocher centrality is that of a unique voice. The way a limited range of colors can be used to create something of this breadth and magnificence is a lesson that is not often observed, and the world created here is both reduced and microcosmic. ”Certainly is the created sculpture is partly Dixonian, sums up Allen, but when building up its own concentrated environment this music is an extremely powerful work of art, for which the concept of a “tribute” is, however, imprecise.
Web links
- Listing of the album on Allmusic (English). Accessed January 1, 2020.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stylistic classification according to discogs
- ↑ a b Olivier Marichalar: Jacques Coursil with Alan Silva: FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon. In: Citizen Jazz. September 7, 2015, accessed June 27, 2020 .
- ^ A b Clifford Allen: Moment's Notice: Reviews of Recent Recordings. Point of Departure, July 1, 2014, accessed June 27, 2020 .
- ↑ Jacques Coursil with Alan Silva: FreeJazzArt: Sessions for Bill Dixon at Discogs