Evan Parker: The Eleventh Hour - Live 2004 on CD

“The Eleventh Hour” is the fourth ECM album by Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, the group formed by the English saxophonist in 1992 to explore the nexus of free improvisation and real time sound processing. The hour-long title piece was developed in response to a commission from Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts and premiered as the culmination of CCA’s “Free RadICCAls” concert-and-workshop series in November 2004. Over the course of a week Parker rehearsed his expanded 11-piece ensemble, refining and adjusting the new piece, and each evening the ensemble members played in different semi-ad hoc combinations. On the first night, November 3rd, Parker played one of his extraordinary soprano saxophone improvisations which was subjected to the spontaneous electronic and electro-acoustic modifications of Lawrence Casserley, Joel Ryan and Walter Prati. Working with the depth of the sound as well as with transformations of Parker’s musical material, these three scientist-composers helped create a piece of vast dimension, sculpting the space in which this improvisation was heard. Now titled “Shadow Play”, this sub-group improvisation opens the present disc.

The version of “The Eleventh Hour” heard here is the live first performance from November 6th 2004. A new physicality in the ensemble sound, immediately evident, is in part attributable to the input of guests Richard Barrett and Paul Obermeyer. Both well known as composers in their own right – particularly Barrett whose recent work has included commissions from the Cikada Ensemble and the BBC Symphony Orchestra – they also comprise the tough-minded live electronic improvising duo FURT, a group with a 20-year history. Barrett / Obermayer contribute a tangled, ever-permutating riot of sound, fast moving and densely-packed with event, that is at the centre of several ‘movements’ in the new work.

The FURT duo first worked with the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble at the Donaueschingen Festival in 2003 in a performance of Parker’s “SET (for Lynn Margulis)”, in preparation for which they loaded their laptop computers with sound samples from each of the acoustic players in the band. These sounds form only a small part of their huge sonic vocabulary on “The Eleventh Hour”, but if there are fleeting moments when it feels like Barry Guy is present, then FURT is the reason why. There is a sense in which Barrett / Obermayer seem to ‘complete’ the group: their hard, very concrete sounds are in stark contrast to the spacious reverberations of the electro-acoustic processing team.

Young American bassist Adam Linson, substituting for Guy on the Glasgow gigs, brought energies of his own to the concerts and recording. A former student of George Lewis’s in San Diego, Linson now lives in Berlin where he works regularly with Alexander von Schlippenbach.

Spanish pianist Agustí Fernandez made a strong contribution already to “Memory / Vision”, the Ensemble’s 2003 release and has a yet more central role to play in “The Eleventh Hour” where his lyrical side as well as his more motoric playing is well-deployed. Inspired initially by Cecil Taylor and Iannis Xenakis (with whom he also studied at Darmstadt), Fernandez has worked with a wide range of artists from Butch Morris to Spanish Butoh dancer Andrés Corchero, from Mat Maneri to Marilyn Crispell.

Joel Ryan was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He came to music gradually via physics and philosophy (he was a student of Herbert Marcuse). Ryan’s musical teachers included Ravi Shankar and Mexican film composer Jose Barroso and, while living in California, he was inspired by live performances of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Harry Partch and Jimi Hendrix, and has played with Evan Parker in many contexts over the last decade, including the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and the scaled-down Electro-Acoustic Quartet (with Parker, Lytton and Casserley), and works regularly with Frances-Marie Uitti and with Joelle Leandre’s group.

Lawrence Casserley was one of the pioneers of electronic and electro-acoustic music in Britain. Founder of the Colourscape Festival, professor of electronic music studies at the Royal College of Music for more than 25 years, composer, computer musician, instrument inventor, he has been ubiquitous in this area of creativity. In the last decade he has emphasised collaboration with improvisers.

Milan-based Walter Prati is also recognised as a composer bringing fresh ideas to electronic music, and his reputation is growing both in new music and in improvisation. He has also collaborated with musicians from rock’s progressive wing, including Robert Wyatt and Thurston Moore, and recently has played – as a cellist – in trio with Barry Guy and Maya Homburger. Prati’s associate Marco “Bill” Vecchi is currently responsible, in the increasingly complex sound world of the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, for “sound projection”, faithfully conveying the balance of acoustic and electronic forces, especially in concert.

Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton were both founder members of the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, and have frequently played together, in diverse musical combinations, over the last thirty years. They have a duo album on ECM “Some Other Season”, and work alongside each other in the King Übü orchestra, in trio with electronic musician Michael Bunce, and in a new quartet with AMM pianist John Tilbury and American saxophonist Ken Vandermark.

Parker himself is, meanwhile, the most prolific and, arguably, the most influential player to have emerged from European free improvised music. He has appeared on around 250 albums, including many as a leader or co-leader, but has always considered the ECM discs special. He first recorded for ECM in 1979 with the Music Improvisation Company, the far-sighted group which combined electronics and free improvisation and established a blueprint for the work the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble is continuing today. Other ECM recordings include discs with the trio with Paul Bley and Barre Phillips, with Kenny Wheeler, and with Gavin Bryars.

Further ECM releases with Evan Parker are in preparation, including Munich recordings with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble, the project co-led with fellow saxophone innovator Roscoe Mitchell.

Pressestimmen:

Saxophonist Parker is one of the most single-minded musicians that the British jazz scene has ever produced. He is ferociously attached to the spontaneity of improvisation and has systematically extended the parameters of his chosen instrument with an arsenal of split harmonics, fluttery articulations and subsonic growls. Here he mixes modern computer technology and sampling into an already abstract palette and develops a series of disembodied, spacious soundscapes from which snippets of acoustic instruments emerge like vague shapes in the mist. The overall effect is remarkably appealing. Mike Hobart, Financial Times

Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble produces one of the most difficult and mystifying masses of sound in modern music. ... The English saxophonist’s experiment is something terrifying, which throws off its moorings entirely. Regular notions of line and rhythms are gone, forcing listeners into an emotional space that most rarely – or only reluctantly – go. The fundamental idea hasn’t changed on The Eleventh Hour. Parker creates a sound field for acoustic instruments and electronics, where free improvisation wrestles with real-time sound processing. That’s the basis of the five-part 60-minute title piece, which is a platform for duos, trios and other groupings. … It’s powerful music, and the embodiment of an acquired taste. Greg Buium, Downbeat

This is the fourth album from Parker’s ever-expanding Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and things begin to assume the scale of a big band or orchestra. … It doesn’t matter where these sounds begin or end, nor which is “acoustic” or which “electro”. What matters is the seemingly endless shapes, structures, ideas and colours that emerge. A dialogue between piano and live processing instrument assumes a marvellous liquidity of sound, while violin or saxophone mutate into shards of glittering glissandi. Form is important here, though much of it arises in the interaction, and there is a strong sense of something of developing suite-like proportions. It would make wonderful music for a film, preferably something futuristic or expressionistic. … Highly original and absolutely remarkable. Duncan Heining, Jazzwise

Malgré toute la technologie engagée, l’ensemble est souvent dans la retenue, plutôt aéré, délicat et cristallin, voire vaporeux et champêtre, évoquant ici un bourdonnement de ruche, là un envol d’hirondelles. Si c’est un solo de soprano de Parker qui constitue l’objet du premier morceau, chaque mouvement de la suite met successivement en valeur l’un ou l’autre des solistes acoustiques dans une manière de « concerto » improvisé passionnément interactif. Loin des tendances « lourdes » des musiques électroniques actuelles (house, techno etc.), la subtile sophistication abstraite de l’EAE d’Evan Parker marque une fois encore d’une pierre bleue le territoire trop méconnu de l’electrimprov. Gerard Rouy, Jazzmagazine

Das Electro-Acoustic-Ensemble des englischen Sopran- und Tenorsaxophonisten Evan Parker ist über die Jahre auf zehn Musiker angewachsen. Gemeinsam haben sie ein sensibles und komplex verflochtenes System geschaffen, bei dem die Elektroniker auf das Spiel der Akustiker Einfluss nehmen, es drehen, umstülpen und spiegeln. Sie modifizieren und verfremden Klänge und geben so Hand zu faszinierenden Interaktionen. Die vor wenigen Augenblicken gespielten Klänge fließen sensibel verändert ins Spiel zurück, steigern sich von kaum hörbaren filigranen Bildern zu furiosen Action Paintings. Die Wochenzeitung

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