The Guardian - 9th September 2016
Don
Cherry / Irène Schweizer: Musical Monsters review – technical class and
experimental appetite
3 / 5 stars
(Intakt)
Marking history … the Swiss piano
virtuoso Irène Schweizer, who called for the release of the Willisau tapes for
Musical Monsters. Photograph: Markus di Francesco
By John
Fordham
This encounter between world-jazz
trumpet legend Don Cherry,
Danish-American
alto saxophonist John Tchicai, Swiss piano virtuoso Irène Schweizer,
bassist Léon Francioli and percussionist Pierre Favre had been buried in the
vaults since the original performance at Switzerland’s Willisau festival in
1980. Schweizer recently heard the tapes and called for their release as a
unique document in the story of European free jazz. Loosely based on sketchy
arrangements the five cooked up in a pre-gig chat, it’s blustery, exhilarating
music, in which minimal trumpet patterns become genially wayward Ornette Coleman-like
motifs and fast bass-walks spark avant-swing sprints. Over these, Tchicai’s
eerie violin-like alto soars, or the horns tussle above Favre’s hustling drums
and Schweizer’s streaming runs. There’s a good deal of manically abstract
vocalising as well as strutting slow marches like Albert Ayler band numbers.
The track Musical Monsters 3 is approximately and unexpectedly danceable, and
the unaccompanied solos demonstrate both the technical class and experimental
appetites of all the players. It’s one for the free-jazzers, but a rare one.
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