Search - Ned Rothenberg :: The Crux: Selected Solo Wind Works 1989-1992

Rothenberg's meditations on influences and individuality.

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 07/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For me, one of the more interesting facets of imporvised music has to do with the nature of influence. Some musicians like Sam Rivers go to great lengths to make sure that they sound like no one else. Others absorb all they hear and come out with something both new and grounded in tradition. Then there are the cases of the simultaneous development of similar ideas or approaches. And there are individual performances that crystalize many different people's work and reveal the underlying unities.One corner of improvised music that exemplifies all of the above is the recent history of solo saxophone performances. When Anthony Braxton unleashed For Alto on us back in the late sixties he was not the first person to do solo saxophone work. Coleman Hawkins had recorded unaccompanied. Jimmy Giuffre had recorded clarinet solos. Cadenzas by tenor players like Coltrane and Rollins were miniture masterpieces in and of themselves.
But Braxton recorded a double album of solo work. Solo work that was wildly different from anything that I, for one, had ever heard before.
It unleashed a torrent. Joe McPhee, Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Lee Konitz and many others releashed solo albums. On the other side of the Atlantic, Evan Parker started his thirty plus year exploration of the possibilities of solo saxophone. For all I know, he was doing so before Braxton. The tradition includes those like Konitz whose solo work is grounded in traditional saxophone technique but whose solo work exposes their melodic logic and tonal control. Parker uses circular breathing and insanely precise articulation to create simultaneous melodies. Think of a dissonant saxophonic Bach. Urs Leimgruber is fascinated by the sound of the breath in the instrument not just the tones the breath produces. He can play an entire evening and not make one sound Adolph Sax would recognize.
And then there is the subject (finally) of this review: Ned Rothenberg. Rothenberg cannot help but reflect what he loves. His solo work is the disciplice which he uses to test and distill his ideas and influences. He has studied the shakuhachi with Ralph Samuelson, Goro Yamaguchi and Katsua Yokoyama. He has adapted pretty much all of the shaku technique to the alto sax. He can even give his alto tone that hollow breathy quality. He also loves the sound of funk. One of the songs on this album is dedicated to Maceo Parker (of James Brown fame). He uses extended techniques as well as anyone, particularly microtonal fracturing of the sound on his bass clarinet and multiphonics on the alto.
All this talk about technique and influences. In the final analysis, this is a beautiful and accessible album by a contemporary master of the solo saxophone tradition. If you have never listened to solo saxophone before this is a good album on which to start. If you listen to solo Braxton or Parker before your morning coffee (and you know who you are!) then this album will be unique to you because of the shakuhachi influence. In any case, it is standout work both within the tradition of solo saxophone music and within the body of Mr. Rothenberg's work. If you can find it, get it."