French cellist Didier Petit was born in Reims in 1962, and with frequent playing partner Denis Colin, was closely involved with Alan Silva's IACP (Institut Art Culture Perception: an unorthodox jazz school at the best of times), working as Pedagogical Director there from 1987 to 1990. The In Situ label, which Petit curated for a decade before passing the job over to journalist and Peace Warriors founding editor Théo Jarrier two years ago, is a good place to start any investigation of French improvised music. As the name suggests, Petit's aim was primarily to document live performances, through a complex series of co-productions with theatres, festivals and clubs throughout France. Not exclusively though: one of his earliest projects was to reissue pianist François Tusques' landmark 1965 Free Jazz (see below), and one of the most beautiful albums in the collection features violinist Carlos Zingaro playing in a Portuguese monastery accompanied by... a seven-second reverb (is076)! Other treasures on the label include the fabulous La nuit est au courant (is040), documenting a rare tour by an extraordinary quartet featuring enfants terribles Jac Berrocal (trumpet) and Jacques Thollot (drums), with bassists Francis Marmande and Hubertus Biermann, Impulse-Elan (is075), a breathtakingly intense collection of Joe McPhee/Daunik Lazro duets, and a 1985 solo set from Steve Lacy (Solo, is051) which no serious Lacy collector should be without. Come record shopping to Paris if you wish: the trademark red and black neo-constructivist graphics of the early In Situs are easily spotted in local shops. The entire In Situ catalogue is once more available, and though each item in it merits careful attention, I've selected just five (re)issues here to whet your appetite.
François Tusques
FREE JAZZ
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Journalists a while back were all celebrating – justifiably so – the reissues of the groundbreaking Joe Harriott Quintet albums Free Form and Abstract, but many seem to have overlooked Didier Petit's 1991 reissue of another epochal album recorded in October 1965 by a sextet led by pianist François Tusques, featuring saxophonist François Jeanneau, clarinettist Michel Portal, trumpeter Bernard Vitet, bassist Beb Guérin and drummer Charles Saudrais. The outstanding interplay between Jeanneau and Portal, both of whom are still major figures on the French scene while never perhaps quite living up to their real potential, inevitably recalls Coltrane and Dolphy; one could even hazard a bet that Eric would have been playing and recording with these guys about this time had he not died in Berlin the year before. Tusques is a lean, mean improviser with a keen sense of space – blind tested on this before I knew it I was pretty sure I was listening to Andrew Hill – and the rhythm section is as supple and subtle as any mid-Sixties Blue Note line-up you'd care to mention (Guérin, of course, went on to feature prominently in the 1969 explosion of fire music on BYG/Actuel detonated by the arrival of Shepp, Murray, Thornton, Burrell and others). Like the Harriott quintet, this is proof, were any needed, that free jazz was not just an angry cry of oppressed Black America, and whereas Harriott's group in 1961/62 was still solidly anchored in bop structure, Tusques' sextet three years later is moving into more abstract territory. Free Jazz is a document of singular beauty and passion that no serious jazz lover should be without.
Alan Silva &c:
TAKE SOME RISKS
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Though the name Alan Silva is no doubt familiar to anyone reading this – his discography after all reads like a roll-call of the all-time great free jazz albums – his post-Center of the World recordings are less well-known and sometimes hard to track down, particularly the later recordings of his Celestrial Communication Orchestra released on his IACP label). Take Some Risks was recorded in the Maximilien Guiol Gallery in 1986, and features Misha Lobko on clarinets, Bruno Girard on violin, Didier Petit himself on cello and Roger Turner on percussion. Those poor souls who take sides for or against free jazz in favour of improvised music could do no worse than go back to this album and clean their ears out: at its wildest, this could be the Cecil Taylor Unit of the late 1970s (though without the piano!), while next minute you might be fooled for a moment into thinking it was SME-style "insect music". Sure, Turner's extraordinary fireball percussion work is light years away from "conventional" jazz drumming (he was one of the first to abandon the standard kit set-up in favour of a seemingly miscellaneous pile of bric-a-brac, metal and toys), but Silva's booming bass work is just as recognisable as it ever was on his recordings with Taylor, Ayler and Frank Wright. The album is aptly named – the music lurches forward with apparent abandon, a blind man walking a cliff top footpath: some of it is absolutely breathtaking, some of it fails.. magnificently. Younger generations of improvisers who pore over master tapes in studios trying to mix out odd spots of trouble should go back and listen to this, have the courage of their convictions, and take some risks themselves.
Michel Doneda / Lê Quan Ninh / Dominique Regef:
SOC
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Soprano saxophonist Michel Doneda and percussionist Lê Quan Ninh have worked together on many occasions (you can find them along with Daunik Lazro on In Situ 037), but SOC was a relatively short-lived trio featuring Dominique Regef on hurdy-gurdy and israj. The album was recorded, as have been several In Situs, at the Musique Action Festival in Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy in 1992 and is regarded – rightly – as one of the landmarks of French improvised music in the 1990s. Doneda's soprano is rich and reedy, and his interest in Eastern European and Oriental musics to the fore, complemented by Regef's hurdy-gurdy, and Ninh's extraordinary percussion. The final track, "Le paradoxe en long", is a brooding, almost Mahlerian slow movement, with Ninh's cymbals and bass drum the ominous rumblings of an approaching storm and Regef's swirling drones the perfect backdrop to Doneda's searing soprano. Folk music for the 21st century.
Alan Silva / Johannes Bauer / Roger Turner:
IN THE TRADITION
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Seven years after the Take No Risks session, Silva and Turner teamed up again, at Vandoeuvre, with trombone whiz Johannes Bauer. The album title might lead one to expect one of those "respectful" tributes to the elders, à la Marsalis, or Carter (but also Braxton and Shepp), but five seconds into track one (all the tracks are called "Standard"s) it's clear we're in for a trip of another order. Silva is featured exclusively on synthesizer, perhaps to the horror of purists expecting his bass, or at least a bit of violin, and very impressive he is too: the synth has long been regarded as belonging to rock, techno and fusion, but Silva's wild work on it serves to remind us that free jazz musicians such as Burton Greene and Sun Ra were among its very first champions (and Ra's Moog adventures sound as far out today as they did back then). Bauer and Turner are just as insane (the tray curiously credits Turner on trombone and Bauer on percussion – a Silva joke or a cock-up?), and the album cooks from beginning to end. Slip this CD into a Conversations with the Elders jewel box and offer it to a jazz snob as a Christmas present.
Daunik Lazro / Carlos Zingaro / Sakis Papadimitriou / Jean Bolcato:
PERIPHERIA
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Recorded at Vandoeuvre just two days before In the Tradition was Peripheria, a killer quartet consisting of Daunik Lazro (alto and baritone), Carlos Zingaro (violin), Sakis Papadimitriou (piano) and Jean Bolcato (bass). Lazro, one of the first important French free (as opposed to jazz) players, and Zingaro have been frequent playing partners since the mid-Seventies (and are still active as a duo: check out 1998's Hauts Plateaux on Potlatch, P498), and their interplay is formidable – never forced nor violent, but always emotionally charged. Anchored in Bolcato's solid bass and gently underpinned by Papadimitriou's filigree piano work (his solo Piano Cellules, IS 010, is an unjustly overlooked landmark album of extended piano techniques), this 47-minute set is magic from start to finish. Once again the tape was rolling at the right moment: and Didier Petit had the foresight to release the resulting recording for the rest of us.
~Dan Warburton
As a postscript to my own piece (how indulgent!) - since it was written a while back - don't let's forget that In Situ is now under the nominal artistic direction of journalist Theo Jarrier, who has revamped the label in terms of look (away with the Man Machine red!) but has maintained the same high quality: witness the Joelle Leandre / Kazue Sawai duo ORGANIC_MINERAL (IS 235), and the recent excellent IS releases featuring Francois Tusques and Sophie Agnel / Olivier Benoit. Watch out for forthcoming work by Martin Speicher and Malcolm Goldstein.
Posted by: dan warburton at March 28, 2004 11:30 AM"an unorthodox jazz school at the best of times": I visited IACP in June of 1980, while visiting Denis Colin in Paris. I'd studied with Alan Silva at Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, and my trip to Paris was in part to play a gig at 14, Rue Dunois and to hook up with Alan, who'd invited me to come study with him at his school. The school was swirling with activity at the time. I'm not sure what happened there after I left, but at the time, which must have been one of those "best of times", there were students and teaching musicians practicing and teaching in the hallways and in classrooms. I remember having to step over people to get to Alan's office.
I understand that the focus of the article is to feature In Situ and their catalog, but I just wanted to point out that the week I was there, the IACP was presenting more than 17 performances in and around Paris, including two with the Celestrial (sic) Communications Orchestra, which at the time boasted players Colin, Joelle leandre, Bobby Few, Muhammad Ali (yes, the boxer was playing great tuba at the time, silly boy!) and Steve Lacy came in for a guest shot on one of the two CCO concerts. It was very creative and not-so-unorthodox, from what I could tell, though at one point Alan took me to a strange room in the center of the IACP building and put me through some sort of light and sound show; I was then blindfolded and sensorially deprived for a short while, after which Alan asked me to draw my impressions on a large sheet of paper. That, stated the enigmatic and laughing Alan Silva, is the way in which he was able to predict how a particular soloist would perform with his ensemble, and he would place students in his school on different levels of study by using this....er...unorthodox method. He then went on to tell me what my thinking was (at the time, and before I was "saved" by Roscoe Mitchell) and how I went about constructing my solos, and what I could do to improve. I must say that he was quite "right-on" in his critique, even though he'd had a chance to hear me play in Woodstock with Cecil Taylor's band the December before.
Posted by: Dennis Gonzalez at April 6, 2004 8:08 AMDennis, great stories (Roger Turner also went through the lightshow test!). I met Alan in 1992 or thereabouts - by which time the IACP school was on rue Oberkampf, just before it moved again to the XX arrondissement and Silva was ousted in a "boardroom coup" - and after a very unorthodox interview, which consisted of the two of us talking about Monk, as I recall, he appointed me Professor of Ear Training, or something similarly grandiose. As things turned out I didn't take up my post as Alan was replaced, headed off to Germany, and operations were downsized. IACP today is a "standard" jazz school, complete with unimaginative Big Band classes and sweaty rehearsal rooms. Since Alan moved back to Paris a couple of years ago, he's been trying to get control of the school back (see the interview he gave me at www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/silva.html ), but whether the legendary "administration francaise" would agree to reforming the kind of IACP that once existed is certainly doubtful.
I have heard several recordings of the 1980 Celestrial line-up (not with Lacy or Léandre, but with Arthur Doyle on blistering form), which were made by Jean-Marc Foussat at the Café de la Gare on October 26th / 27th. Was that about the time you were over here Dennis? Compared to "The Shout" (surely one of the world's most unfairly neglected big band albums, and worthy of comparison with any Gil Evans you'd care to mention) and "Desert Mirage", which really does sound like a sweaty rehearsal room, these live dates are wiiiild. Alan of course wants to release them himself, but given the man's insatiable appetite for ambitious Web-related projects that often come to grief, we're still waiting. I wish someone could persuade him to have them released elsewhere. Maybe we can start a petition or something. Anyway, great post Dennis. Want to add anything to the CT debate on the other string?
Nice to see that the In Situ label gets some attention.
Besides the records commented here, I like to add another title worth of consideration: Denis Colin/ Clarinette basse seul.
This record is a real "tour de force" by a musician who masters this instrument like nobody else that I have heard - at the sole exception of the "belgium best kept secret" called Jacques Foschia, an extraordinary clarinetist and bass clarinetist that you can hear, since 2002, with the London Improviser Orchestra during The Freedom of the City festival.
And I like most of the contemporary bass clarinetists (who is my favorite instrument besides the tenor sax), from David Murray to Rudi Mahall, going throught Louis Sclavis, Oscar Noriega, Ned Rothenberg, Joe Giardullo, Douglas Ewart, André Jaume, Vinny Golia or Frank Gratowski, to name few.
But none of them has ever accomplish what Denis Colin does in these record: soloing throuhgt thirteen pieces where he explores all the range of the instrument without repited himself and without be anything than thrilling to the very end.
What has follow this astonishing record from Colin (in term of career and recordings) has never reach, by far, this level again.
This record will stay as a splendid exception in the carrier of the musician, I'm afraid.
But it is one whorth to be remembered. And to be listen to (Clarinette basse seul has been recorded in 1990.)
Yessir, Monsieur Warburton...that is exactly the time I was there, July of 1980, at rue Oberkampf and Alan was recording every "thing". Arthur Doyle was replaced in the lineups those weeks by American expatriate and alto player Byron Pope who was living in Switzerland at the time.
A little aside here to continue the storytelling: This guy Pope reminded me in a lot of ways of Noah Howard (except his personality was "doux", and not grating like Noah's), and he had a self-produced album that he gave me while I was there in exchange for my first LP "Air Light (Sleep Sailor)". I really liked the record and promised to play it on my radio show in Dallas. At the time I was exploring the outest free jazz I could find, and even though this was not free music, it had the spirit, and it was well-played (maybe Bobby Few was on it?). Anyway, one evening, I decided on a lark to take it down to KERA-FM...I hadn't played it or even looked at it in a year or so. At that time, my show was ending at midnight, at which time the next deej came in to spin the LP's, mostly Canterbury prog-rock. Well, sir, Craig Shropshire, the prog-rock programmer was running a bit late, so I had a rare chance to play a bit more music, and I reached down to the bottom of the box, pulled out the Byron Pope (it's sitting in the next room, I'm just too lazy to go and see what the title is), put it on the turntable, announced the selection, and fired it up. It was mighty nice to relive the time in my head when I was hanging with Alan and Byron and all the crew at IACP as I listened to the fine alto playing on this record. So here it is, midnight or just after in Dallas, Texas, on a Saturday night and the studio phone rings - I'd just given the top-of-the-hour station ID and the time and station phone number - or rather, it starts flashing. I almost didn't answer it, figuring it to be a disgruntled prog fan chastising my selection. But it kept on flashing, so I put on my courteous FM voice and said "90.1 FM, this is Dennis."
A slightly tired-sounding voice, but elated and wondrous at the same time says, "Dennis?", and I say , "Yep...that's me!" There is a slight break and I thought the caller'd hung up, and he says, "Dennis...Gonzalez...the trumpet player?", and I say, "Yes, one and the same..." Another pause. "This is Byron Pope. Don't say anything yet, and don't hang up, just listen at this. I haven't been back home to the US in 20 years, and I'm driving on I-20 just south of Dallas on my way from L.A. to Nawlins flipping through nighttime radio and decided to try FM...and Jesus, here you are in the middle of the night, in the middle of this country, playing *my* music! I just can't fucking believe it! Oh, sorry, man, I have my little girl with me and I gotta be careful what I say..."
Chills ran up and down my back. What were the odds of that? A long cross country drive and he *happens* to hit my airwaves just at the right time...?!
So I tell him, "Man, come here right now. I'll play the rest of the album and I'll interview you. Then we'll go home and you can crash at my house..."
But of course he had to keep on driving, and eventually Byron Pope's music faded into the night out on a lonely stretch of dark highway somewhere between Terrell and Shreveport.
Posted by: Dennis Gonzalez at April 22, 2004 8:05 PMPUBLISH THIS!!!
Posted by: Michael Schaumann at April 22, 2004 8:29 PMI'd like for you to get in touch with Dennis Gonzales for me and give him my email address and tell him thanks for the publicity. At seventy years old now and playing like an angel you should do a story on my life and my band Speed of Light.
Posted by: Byron Pope at November 6, 2004 5:28 PMI hope someone out there has been able to hook Byron & Dennis up - I don't have their emails myself. Dennis, if you're still reading this and manage to wade through the party poker spams that all too often screw things up, there'll be a review of two of your recent albums in the Paris Transatlantic webzine December issue
Posted by: Dan Warburton at November 8, 2004 10:03 PMDan -
Rob Cambre in New Orleans here. I've got an email address on Dennis - so you can e-me at anxmf@hotmail.com and i'll send it over.
This is a great series of posts - Dennis' story is beautiful and i'm really intrigued to hear this Byron Pope. And why was he headed to my town? Is he from here? I'll have to ask Kidd Jordan if he knows Byron.
-- thanks
Hey boys and girls..
...My wife got a call this weekend from my man Byron Pope and talked to him for a while. I was away on gig duty with my boys, and so missed talking to him.
I got all your particulars, Byron, and I'll contact you by e-mail soon. I'm going through car wreck troubles at the moment and preparing for a trip to play with Faruq Z. Bey next week. Thanks for reaching back through the years.
For those of you who contacted me on Byron's behalf, thanks for your time and trouble...good to hear from y'all!
Posted by: Dennis Gonzalez at November 10, 2004 7:30 AMOK...I sent off an e-mail to Byron and it came back saying that the host is unknown!
Does someone have Byron's e-mail address?
Byron, click on my name, and e-mail me!
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