25th September 2009

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Evan Parker/Ned Rothenberg Duo

I was able to check out the Evan Parker/Ned Rothenberg Duo at Bezanson last night, which I’d been looking forward to for a couple of weeks.  It was part one of this year’s Solos and Duos concert series, which is usually a good place to start if you’re looking for some of what  “creative musics,” what most people would call free-jazz or avant-garde jazz.

Evan Parker plays tenor and soprano sax, and Ned Rothenberg plays a load of instruments, but last night, he played clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, and shakuhachi, which was a pleasant surprise.  The start of the show was pretty interesting; both of them just sort of got on and off the mouthpiece, making it seem as if they weren’t really sure they wanted to get going.  It sort of served to build tension; you keep thinking they’re going to start, and they don’t.  Pretty much every number had some false-starts like that, and I enjoyed it.  But then they really got going.  And it was out there.

My initial thoughts during their first number was that “this sounds like bats flying around your head feels.”  The notes swarm around each other, and frequently it sounded like three or four instruments, rather than just two.  I think a lot of people imagine free-jazz to be just some guys getting up on stage and playing anything, often independent of what the rest of the ensemble is doing.  And, when you’re at one of these performances, you can see how one might think that.  But then, they’ll do something so perfectly synchronized, you know these guys have a serious rapport.  They play so crazily out of time, and then, all of a sudden, they’re both holding the same note, and you know there’s some next-level shit going on.  I’m still, more or less, an outsider to this kind of music, only recently making my way into it, so I’ve got only a basic understanding of it.  But when you see something like this, you get the feeling that there’s definitely more structure in place than there seems.  And, if so, it must be strikingly complex.  I mean, maybe not.  Maybe this is all just chance.  But I’d be surprised.

Those thoughts all occurred during the first number, which was probably ten minutes.  They had six more songs (if you can call them that), after that.  Both Parker and Rothenberg had a solo piece each, and, while Rothenberg was pretty nasty, I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I was blown away as much as I was by Parker’s solo set on the soprano sax. First, I think it’s important to realize that I, like I think a lot of people, associate the soprano sax mainly with this jerk.  So it has a sort of connotation of irritation that comes along with it, right from the start.  And it was, at times, piercing.  But not annoyingly so.  While watching Parker do his thing, I started wondering how he was able to keep so many lines straight in his own head; it seemed as if there were three or four melodies going on all at the same time, but he was only playing one instrument.  Once I realized I had actually been hypnotized for a couple of minutes, I realized that Evan Parker’s the real fucking deal.  He’s so good, he must be the result of genetic mutation.  I started thinking of Nietzche and Odd John, and wondered if his people would one day rule over us lesser beings.

And then he was done, and Rothenberg came back out with the shakuhachi.  I just spent a long paragraph gushing over Parker, but it should also be said that Rothenberg has a wide range of talents as well.  He definitely had more interesting instruments, the shakuhachi and the bass clarinet being some of the cooler parts of the show.

During Parker’s solo set, I could see people in the audience start to shift in their seats, and the couple behind me started quietly discussing their plan to leave (“right after this”).  This kind of stuff is definitely not for everyone, and that’s the way it should be.  If some of the audience didn’t get uncomfortable, then Parker and Rothenberg wouldn’t be doing it right.  But, for those of us that can really get into that kind of discomfort, I don’t know what can beat it.

Tagged: beardoesgetting into a serious thinghonkers and squeakersEvan Parker