Music / free jazz
Review: Trance Map +, Arnolfini – ‘Free music veteran Evan Parker still has the power to surprise’
Even after a sixty years-plus career at the forefront of improvised music Evan Parker still has the power to surprise.
Creeping into the darkness of the Arnolfini performance space banging slowly on a hand drum he took his seat centre stage for a solo introduction to the concert.
Reaching for his soprano saxophone – the instrument of which he is a virtuoso with a unique style of playing – he explained that a recent temporary inability to actually blow the instrument had led to him developing yet another way to use it.
Evan Parker
Things went dark, spotlights picked out his hands and he proceeded to make a fascinating percussive solo from the rhythmic clattering of the keys.
While using the notes of the lower register like a range of tuned tom-toms the higher keys gave a spattering reminiscent of the relentless rain drops we had just walked through outside.
It was a clever and quirky warm-up for what was to follow as he was quickly joined by his Trance Map co-conspirator sound designer Matt Wright and guest electronicist Filipe Gomes.
Evan began by embarking on his more usual blown saxophone sound, at first subtly lyrical, then increasingly complex as he built towards trademark cascades of multiple voicing through circular breathing.
Matt and Felipe matched this process, feeling their way gradually into the saxophonist’s developing idea before Felipe began dropping sudden heavy drum crashes and Matt released multiple processed sax samples.
Trance Map +
From this point on the three musicians continued to refine and change the musical context, whether in pairs, solo or all together.
Each had a distinct role: Filipe’s electronic music woven around Evan’s natural acoustic voice with Matt controlling the overall sound environment.
Matt’s left hand kept straying to a turntable where a vinyl record delivered the crackles and clicks of a stylus misplaced: an unnerving sound to anyone who ever had a dodgy record player made worse by the hip-hop trick of ‘scratching’ to and fro.
Filipe, meanwhile, deployed extreme glissando swoops of synth chords and murmuring cicadas.
A spell of industrial noise with a sinister tolling bell shifted slowly into a muffled sub-aqua episode from the depths of which the flurrying sax rose and something like a beat emerged, Filipe nodding like a dance DJ.
After that a free playing piano sound, reminiscent of the late Keith Tippett – a frequent collaborator of Evan’s – heralded a final torrential trio, full-on sax in ‘call and response’ with the electronics.
The pulsing electronic duel gradually subsided as Evan put down his sax and reached for a small gong as a clear signal that they were done.
There was a moment of reflective silence before the attentive audience broke into appreciative applause.
It had been an excellently judged demonstration of collectivity rooted in respect for Evan Parker’s individual virtuosity.
Then the lights went up and there was a sense of dislocation as we abruptly left the absorbing sound world Trance Map had built for us and made our way back out and into the drizzling dark of the dockside.
All photos: Tony Benjamin
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