Paul Rutherford - Neuph

Emanem 4118

Albert Mangelsdorff’s passing earlier this year levied a heavy toll on the global brotherhood of improvising trombonists. Luckily, Paul Rutherford is still among the living and active. The two Europeans were separated by roughly a decade in age, but both delved heavily into multiphonics and built immeasurably on the language of the instrument. Mangelsdorff more on the jazz end of the gamut and Rutherford on the free improv side (though these distinctions are little more than lip service to sand-sketched boundaries that hold increasingly little credence these days).

Emanem has long championed Rutherford’s work. Seminal documents like Gentle Harm of the Bourgeois and Sequences 72 & 73, the latter set gathering revelatory evidence of Rutherford’s composerly skills, communicate the label’s lasting stewardship. This latest collection reissues the contents of an LP on the SFA originally released in 1978 and adds concert music from two years later that is of a different cast. The twist to the studio portion of the program lies in Rutherford’s shrewd application of overdubbing to multiply his horns into various ensemble combinations. Also notable is his use of euphonium on four tracks, and in two instances a trombone played back at double tape speed to create a tonal range closer to that of a trumpet.

The usual Emanem “File under:” directive typed in the traycard’s upper left hand corner reveals the puzzle at the heart of the original album pieces: “Improvisations for composer or compositions for improviser.” Which is it and from which frame of reference is Rutherford working out of. A better question, as intimated above, might be does it really matter? Composition certainly enters the picture on various pieces with the lines of sibling brass instruments diverging and overlapping in comparatively-orderly patterns that sound at times at least partially preconceived.

A Rutherford album wouldn’t be complete without some wry humor so to satisfy that requirement he includes the unsolicited and quite animated reactions of a yelping dog on “Paunch and Judies.” Martin Davidson’s notes relay the sad tale of her demise by tire tread subsequent to the session. Rutherford doesn’t shy away from including evidence of the effort expended in birthing his sounds either. Grunts, wheezes and coughs are recurring parts of the process, particularly on the solo pieces. “Yep 321” hinges on the garrulous chatter of a pair of euphoniums, their blustery tones twining in an expansive chamber-tinged conversation filled with flocculent asides. “Realign 4” convenes a closely-packed quartet of similarly talkative trombones flanked by the occasional clatter of metal slide percussion. The comparatively austere “Chefor” narrows the field down to a lone and lonely-sounding euphonium, though tape delay or echo gives the semblance of spectral second instrument in the snatches of silence between Rutherford’s phrases.

The program ends with more extant material from the fabled Pisa Improvisors Symposium of 1980 (a large corpus of which is also collected on Psi compilation of the same name) rendered by single trombone. While longwinded and somewhat circuitous in spots it’s a sensible addition and one that boosts the disc’s running time to a bounteous seventy-plus minutes. Mangelsdorff may be gone. But as these sounds demonstrate, Rutherford more than maintains the benchmark when it comes to bass clef brass improv.

~ Derek Taylor