Evan Parker Saxophone Solos Import LP (Vinyl)

OTOROKU reissues Evan Parker's first solo LP Saxophone Solos. Recorded by Martin Davidson in 1975 at the Unity Theatre in London, at that time the preferred concert venue of the Musicians' Co-operative, Parker's densely woven and often cyclical style has yet to form; instead throaty murmurs appear under rough-hewn whistles and calls - the wildly energetic beginnings of an extraordinary career. Reissued with liner notes from Seymour Wright in an edition of 500.

"The four pieces across the two sides of Saxophone Solos - 'Aerobatics 1' to '4' - are testing, pressured, bronchial spectaculars of innovation and invention and determination. Evan tells four stories of exploration and imagination without much obvious precedent. Abstract Beckettian cliff-hanging detection/logic/magic/mystery. The conic vessel of the soprano saxophone here recorded contains the ur-protagonists: seeds, characters, settings, forces, conflicts, motions, for new ideas, to delve, to tap and to draw from it story after story as he has on solo record after record for 45 years. 'Aerobatics 1-3' were recorded on June 17th 1975, by Martin Davidson at Parker's first solo performance. This took place at London's Unity Theatre in Camden. 'Aerobatics 4' was recorded on September 9th the same year, by Jost Gebers in the then FMP studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin. Music of balance and gravity, fulcra, effort, poise, and enquiry. Sounds thrown and shaken into and out of air, metal and wood. It is - as the titles suggest - spectacular." -Seymour Wright, 2020

These pieces are about sonic texture, tonality and atonality, and why they're both the same thing, and they reveal also the mechanical possibilities for the instrument that weren't even considered before he came along - things like playing in all three registers of the instrument at the same time. ...These early recordings of Parker's solo performances pointed the way for a body of music that is singular in its achievement, and stand the test of time on their own as brilliant, investigative, and provocative works of a musical firebrand.