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Sunny Murray Trio at The Vortex in London

Sunny Murray Trio
The Vortex
London, England
September 1, 2009

Two nights in north London with free-jazz drum pioneer Sunny Murray's European Trio was a prospect to set the pulse racing. That expectancy was widely shared, it appeared, as there was standing room only even on the second evening. Murray first found a way to shift beyond his bebop roots to pit a shimmering rhythmic undertow against Cecil Taylor's new thing in 1959, beginning a six-year tenure with the iconoclastic pianist, immortalized on the classic trio date Live at the Cafe Montmartre (Freedom, 1963).

As drummer of choice to feed the flames of another free jazz legend, Albert Ayler, Murray also appeared on the saxophonist's debut North American disc Spiritual Unity (ESP, 1964) and a host of subsequent sides. Since those heady days, his fortunes have been more mixed, with the flow of leadership dates in the 1960s and '70s drying to a more of a trickle in recent years. Though residing in Paris from 1968, due to a lack of opportunity Stateside, the drummer, often when in the company of reed maestro Sabir Mateen, has had his more recent American visits documented by the US-based Eremite label.

Completing the lineup tonight was English saxophonist Tony Bevan and his compatriot, the almost ubiquitous bassist John Edwards. This trio has a history going back some eight years, as Bevan recalled: "John and I first hooked up with Sunny about eight years ago, when a bloke called Paul Kelly, a sort of promoter/manager, brought him over to do some gigs in Leeds and Newcastle. I think Alan Wilkinson did the Leeds one, and I was invited to do the one in Newcastle. I got John on board because I thought it would work better as a trio—which it did. We really hit it off immediately, both musically and personally, so we decided to set up a tour. It's always great fun to play with, and to hang out with Sunny—a very special bloke." That rapport, developed during subsequent tours, was captured on the acclaimed Home Cooking in the UK (Foghorn, 2004), which made several year-end "Best of" lists, and more recently on another on-location disc with Bevan's imprint The Gearbox Explodes (Foghorn, 2007), recording a gig from a short 2006 UK tour.

Continues...

John Sharpe, www.allaboutjazz.com, September 25 2009

Tony Bevan, Chris Corsano, Dominic Lash: Monster Club

Chris Corsano is a widely name-dropped American jazz and noise percussionist, recently co-opted by Björk for her Volta album. Here’s a live recording in which his insistent rumble shakes the foundations of an Oxford pub, alongside two local improvisation kingpins, the saxophonist Tony Bevan and the double-bass player Dominic Lash. Two shorter tracks of high-velocity interplay shake out the cramps before the 30-minute centrepiece, This Is Murder, Bevan blasting low-end babble and Lash bowing the bass to a perfectly plucked finale.

Stewart Lee, Times Online, January 18 2009

Gyldene Trion
Live at Glenn Miller Café

Sunny Murray/John Edwards/Tony Bevan
The Gearbox Explodes!

Stark examples of the fissure that in many cases separates younger musicians from slightly older ones, the ironic situation pinpointed in these releases is that in some cases it’s elders who are willing to try more experiments in their playing than their junior counterparts.

Both of these saxophone-bass-and-drums CDs provide interesting listening, but if one is expanding the improvised music tradition, the other is merely extending it. What’s paradoxical is that The Gearbox Explodes! includes sounds from a saxophonist in his fifties, a bassist in his forties and a drummer heading for his seventy-first birthday. Meanwhile members of the Gyldene Trion are in their twenties and thirties.

There may be a certain geographical poignancy here too since Gearbox drummer Sunny Murray, an American Free Jazz pioneer who now lives in Paris, often played in Stockholm – where Live at Glenn Miller Café was recorded – with leaders such as pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist Albert Ayler years before any one of the Gyldene Trions was born.

Murray’s associates on Gearbox recorded at “live at St. Domincs (sic) Retreat Working Mans (sic) Club Newcastle Upon Tyne” are both from the United Kingdom. Tenor and bass saxophonist Tony Bevan is someone whose interpretative work with players like guitarist Derek Bailey created to a new roll for the giant saxophone in Free Music. Versatile and solid, bassist John Edwards is a frequent associate of saxophonists ranging from Evan Parker to John Butcher. As for Murray, he has been the epitome of the Free-Jazz drummer for almost 50 years. Excerpts from this concert appear in Antoine Prum’s documentary film Sunny’s Time Now as well.

On the other disc, tenor and baritone saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar is a multiple jazz poll winner in Sweden, who has played with wide-cross section of musicians ranging from pianist Ran Blake to the Norrbotten Big Band, while bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg and drummer Daniel Fredriksson are part of his working quintet. The rhythm section also plays in Copenhagen-based Italian saxophonist Alberto Pinton’s Quintet, and additionally Fredriksson and Kullhammar are members of Zetterberg’s perhaps sardonically named Hot Five

While the Murray Trio’s three long tracks are evidently long improvisations, the Gyldene Trion stick to songs. Kullhammar and Zetterberg each contribute a line, with the other tracks – Thelonious Monk’s “Friday The 13th” and “Stuffy Turkey” and the standard “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes” – augmenting the saxophonist’s stylistic resemblance to Sonny Rollins. On the other CD, playing tenor, Bevan too seems to be emulating Rollins, although his free-form innovations relate to Rollins most experimental period. Bevan however is also no one but himself on bass sax.

Having toured as a trio three years earlier, Murray, Edwards and Bevan are comfortable in each others’ company – with no one (i.e. Murray) pulling rank due to fame or age. There are some drawbacks in this however, since it seems as if each man must take a lengthy solo on each track. Considering each one is operating at the top of his game however, most of the solos are memorable themselves.

On the title tune, for instance, Bevan’s Rollinesque trills, honks and spetrofluctuation gradually build up to renal cries and extended half-swallowed broken tones. Meanwhile Edwards’ double thumping and stroking intensifies to such an extent that the resulting tone adumbrates Murray’s time-keeping. This includes flams and duple time resonations, spectacular cymbal resonation and press rolls. The finale is parceled out among staccato strums from Edwards and march-tempo tongue slaps and smears from Bevan.

More impressive is “Right On Guys”, with a percussion introduction by Murray which encompasses snare and tom tom rat-tat-tats, skittering paradiddles plus rattling and reverberating cymbal snaps. By the time Bevan and Edwards enter they have to work energetically and percussively just to keep up with Murray. The saxophonist tries out reed bites, forced air snarls and molten phrasing to highlight a theme awash with growling note clusters.

Strumming clawed handful of strings and pounding the instrument’s wood for additional reverberation, Edwards’ solo evolves in unison with Bevan’s work and at such fervor that the later is soon triple-tonguing and using glottal punctuation to vigorously push the thickening results decisively. Murray’s rebound introduce a slight Latin tinge, but as soon as Bevan brings out the bass saxophone for round after round of fortissimo gravelly timbres and Edwards responds in kind with spiccato-slicing, the older man simply lays out. With the reed output a mix of mine-shaft-deep honks and squealing tongue slaps and the bass centred on arco double-stopping, Murray mumbles “right on guys” and lets them take the tune out.

Melody and energy aren’t a problem for the Gyldene Trion. But somehow the compositions’ solid centres appears to be missing among the sluicing and snorting altissimo saxophone lines, the drummer’s cymbal smashes, press rolls and drags and the bassist’s sul tasto thumps. Unhurried, “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes”, for instance, has a basically conservative structure firmly rooted in the 1960s. As for the Monk tunes, in the trio’s interpretations, the little-heard “Stuffy Turkey” could be a Swing era throwback, while the treatment of “Friday the 13th” transforms it into a literal finger-snapper. Fredriksson’s drum head popping and snapping and Zetterberg’s a capella triple stopping output enough power. But when coupled with Kullhammar’s theme variations and quotes, the effects skirt Monk’s originality. As for band’s originals, ones such as the bassist’s “Hurricane Ann” merely serve as a showcase for his moderato walking and the saxophonist’s unaccompanied trills.

Kullhammar’s “Snake City Rundown”, named for the area in which he lives, is probably the best performance. On top of dense andante lines from the bassist, he snorts, sallies, cries and rumbles, repeatedly emphasizing similar phrases and resonating note clusters. Still the saxophonist’s point of reference appears derivative, though here it’s John Coltrane rather than Rollins.

Obviously those who follow Swedish jazz more carefully and fans of the Gyldene Trion members’ other bands may give the performance a higher grade. But matching man-against-man, singly and together, the judgment remains that more experienced players who have slogged out endless nights on the bandstand – such as Sunny Murray’s three – can impart a few lessons to younger improvisers.

Ken Waxman, Jazzworld.com, July 30, 2008

The Gearbox Explodes!: Sunny Murray Trio w John Edwards & Tony Bevan

Released under the titular leadership of drummer Sunny Murray, The Gearbox Explodes! features the same line-up as Home Cooking In The UK (Foghorn Records, 2004), and is in practice another exercise in collective music making of the purest and least hierarchical kind. Murray's leadership is confined to establishing an opening tempo and beat for each of the three tracks, and, later, bringing them to a close.

Music so wholly unpremeditated and in-the-moment as this requires listening musicianship of the highest degree, and courage on the part of its creators. The analogy has probably been used before, but free improvisation is not unlike skydiving. In defiance of caution, or indeed sanity, you jump out of a plane into a void and trust in your parachute, or in this case your fellow musicians, to bring you down safely.

The Gearbox Explodes! succeeds because Murray, tenor and bass saxophonist Tony Bevan and bassist John Edwards are each fearless and have, over time, developed a level of group empathy which enables deep and vigorous interaction.

Murray (born 1937) is an elder statesman of the music with an impressive provenance—he played with pianist Cecil Taylor in the early 1960s, was featured on saxophonist Albert Ayler's totemic Spiritual Unity (ESP Disk, 1964), and made his debut as leader with Sunny Murray Quintet (ESP Disk, 1966). Bevan and Edwards are younger, but both are seasoned adepts of British free improv, and have recorded and performed together frequently since making Nothing Is Permanent But Woe (Foghorn Records, 2000).

Recorded live on tour in 2007, the new album opens with "Right On Guys," a 38-minute tour de force of fierce, but nuanced, energy and considerable rough beauty. Bevan takes the first "solo" (the term is relative in this context), playing the tenor with unusual lyricism for the first four minutes, before moving into more abstract and intense terrain. Twenty minutes later he returns on bass saxophone, over a free rhythm which morphs under Murray's direction into a conventionally swinging 4/4 section with propulsive walking bass. Between times and later, Murray and Edwards delight with duets brimming with novel sounds and textures (Edwards' reverberating, wrenched strings are especially memorable).

"Right On Guys" is packed with incident—it's like a big dipper ride, one which leaves the listener exhilarated and intoxicated. The track segues into "Hold It Right There," by comparison a rather uneventful bass saxophone showcase, but at about six minutes one that doesn't outstay its welcome.

The closing "The Gearbox Explodes!" is another incident-packed collective workout, its first 10 minutes performed over funky drum and bass lines, before moving into free rhythm, still with an R&B feel, for the second half. Another remarkable album from this hard-wired trio..

Chris May, www.allaboutjazz.com, March 14, 2008

Sunny Murray Trio with John Edwards and Tony Bevan: The Gearbox Explodes!

True artists thrive on opposition. Last month, the London Jazz Festival misplaced the veteran saxophonist Charles Gayle’s trio at a swanky Southwark “jazz restaurant”, but the musicians held their nerve as a waitress reassured unhappy diners: “Don’t worry. It is jazz.” Likewise, Sunny Murray beat new paths around the kit with Cecil Taylor in the 1960s, but a double booking at a Newcastle jazz club last year saw his trio decamp to the working men’s club opposite. You can sense Sunny’s boys start to snag the regular drinkers during the first of three lengthy binges. The saxophonist Bevan relishes accompanying a legend; Edwards is the best bassist in Britain. All play like they have something to prove.

Stewart Lee, Times Online, December 9, 2007

Bruise: We Packed Are Bags (Foghorn)

At times Bruise sounds like free jazz’s answer to gamelan, as interlacing patterns of notes and percussion join together in a delicate sound mosaic. At other times, the musicians seem to be trying to step outside of time altogether, draping the aural space with huge sheets of noise: the buzzy electronic washes of Ashley Wales (of Spring Heel Jack), saxophonist Tony Bevan’s lung-shredding howl, Orphy Robinson pummelling steel pans until the notes distort. When the band settles into a groove, the music judders, sways and doubles back on itself like one of Sun Ra’s multi-percussionist assaults.

Nate Dorward, www.exclaim.ca, December 2007

Bruise: We Packed Are Bags

The saxophonist Tony Bevan, who assembled Bruise, is barely into his fifties, but embodies the spirit of British free improvisation’s 1960s progenitors. Bevan’s playing on the second of three live tracks, Long Face, may be too lyrical for the movement’s most astringent followers, but electronic interference from Spring Heel Jack’s Ashley Wales, the percussion of Orphy Robinson and the London scene’s current rhythm section of choice (John Edwards and Mark Sanders) help him tow Bruise into uncharted waters. On the closing track, Bard, the group drift in a shifting Sargasso, haunted by the ship’s bell of a lone, pounding drum.

Stewart Lee, Times Online, April 22nd 2007