Evan Parker and Ned Rothenburg

Continuing from last time... Evan Parker and Ned Rothenburg, an evening of purely improvised music in Fairchild Chapel. The location really played into the music here. Especially with the two solo pieces. Both musicians really 'played the room', with Evan sending multiple levels of screeching soprano saxophone harmonics bouncing off the walls and the organ pipes. His solo was by far the most enjoyable and least comfortable of the evening, the sheer volume (especially sitting in the front row) caused sections of my ears to vibrate and create tones and textures by themselves. Really stunning technique though, and a wonderful raga esque effect. Similar to Sibelius' 7th symphony, that was occurring at the same time not too far away, in that the speed of the music played on a deceptive duality... slow development on a macro level, very fast notes on a micro level.

Ned Rothenburg's solo was equally as impressive. He launched right into it with lots of momentum, quickly building 5 or 6 lines simultaneously on his clarinet. These lines slowly unravelled and fell apart, the momentum dropping, as the piece descended into a trough where it resided swaying back and forth for a good while before it picked up again to return to a similar density/intensity as the beginning.

The duets were, while still enjoyable, infintely less impressive/interesting. Fairly straight ahead conversations were had, the most impressive moments of each occurring in the first few seconds of each as the two musicians explored textures and tones on the edge of their instrument's capabilities before falling into a wide yet consistently busy array of acrobatics. A few stand out moments occurred when, while playing on bass clarinet, Ned Rothenburg would create the impression of cascades of sound falling around Evan Parker's bustling tenor saxophone through rapidly descending bass clarinet lines that spanned the instruments entire range.

Very enjoyable music all in all, although it left me with a thirst for more space... a desire to listen to the sounds in and of themselves, rather than the rough and tumble exchanges between tenor sax and clarinet/bass clarinet/alto sax/shakuhachi/etc.