AMM, Last Calls Matchless CD
Various artists, Widdershins Matchless CD
Various artists, The Art of Noticing Matchless CD
Various artists, A Company of Others Matchless CD
John Butcher and Eddie Prévost, Unearthed Matchless CD
Marjolaine Charbin and Eddie Prévost, The Cry of a Dove Announcing Rain Matchless CD
Weeks after turning 80 on June 22 of 2022, drummer Eddie Prévost celebrated the milestone with four Saturday concerts at London’s Café Oto in July. He took the opportunity to reflect on a life devoted to improvised music, organizing performances with collaborators spanning his history. Subsequently called the “Making a journey to a Bright Nowhere” series, recordings from those events have turned up on a 4-volume set from the percussionist’s long-running Matchless label. The final program of the series was announced publicly as the last ever performance by AMM, his revolutionary improvising ensemble with a cast that included Keith Rowe, Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, and John Tilbury, among a few others.
Last Calls gets no special attention from the label, just another concert on the program and, from outward appearances, a rather unsentimental closing-the-book gesture. Illness impacted every concert in the series, and it prevented Tilbury from participating, leaving Prévost and Rowe to toggle to a duo mindset, the sort of unexpected challenge that’s often preceded their most fecund work. Despite Parkinson’s Disease limiting Rowe to tapes and samples, the exchanges remain stunning, with a strong overarching metallic character—between Prévost’s bowed cymbals and Rowe’s brittle harshness—occasionally pierced beautifully by Baroque choral singing or some other incongruent sample. Obviously Tilbury’s piano playing is missing, and the whole performance is permeated by a sense of absence and subtraction, expressed in part through the perpetual tension between these two strong-willed musicians. Things rise, gingerly, and fall, a struggle to not struggle playing out in real-time, capturing vulnerabilities rarely displayed so openly in improvised music. I’m not sure if the lengthy silence that concludes the performance was longer at Oto, but it packs a punch either way, leaving a contemplative space before a gorgeous, Feldman-esque solo that Tilbury recorded later, rolls in, offered as his own memento. It’s Tilbury that draws from his correspondence and writing to cobble together his thoughts on AMM in the enclosed booklet, a crucial component of all six of these albums.
While AMM represents Prévost’s oldest collaboration, the music captured on Widdershins is devoted to a group of musicians that’s still evolving, with members from the improvisation workshops he’s been leading since 1999. Granted, though the fifteen musicians featured here are hardly novices, the two most well-known participants both missed the concert due to illness: Prévost himself, and guitarist N.O. Moore. Naturally, the percussionist released the music despite his own absence, devoted as he is to fostering and representing a discipline he’s had a massive hand in shaping. The album features various groupings, whether trio, quartet, or octet. Impressively, the alacrity and agility of the larger ensembles remains on par with the more compact units, all of which indicates that the absent leader has been able to impart something deep to others.
Prévost was back in action the following week, joining forces with seasoned players for whom collective sound is paramount. On this Saturday violinist Jennifer Allum was laid low by sickness, but the remaining cast delivered stunning performances, which makes The Art of Noticing my personal favorite item from the series. Prévost dispatches his usual kit in favor of a bass drum turned on its side and he uses it as a resonating device, clearing a path for pianist Marjolaine Charbin, cellist Ute Kanngiesser, and saxophonist John Butcher to construct a vibrant sonic fabric of shifting texture, weaves, and motion. Both sets are models of communal sound making, where variegated timbres and densities are worked over like molding clay. That context is nicely countered by the surging free jazz of A Company of Others, where Prévost, back at the kit, sits alongside veteran pianist Veryan Weston, cellist Marcio Mattos and guitarist Moore, rolling and roiling for a parade of six fiery saxophonists—of the eight programmed, two fell ill—where flinty group unity survives the occasional horn solo, but more often gets energized by the collision of voices, including Jason Yarde and Seymour Wright. As a whole the set is a testament to Prévost’s aesthetic values and his commitment to community, letting this be a marker of time and a record of where they stood momentarily in June of 2022.
But the work continues, and Prévost has also released two newer duo albums with musicians from the Bright Nowhere series. Unearthed is a typically bracing, spell-casting performance with Butcher, pushing toward ebb-and-flow blowing and hydroplaning sustains, with the drummer leaning in hard. He pulls back initially on The Cry of a Dove Announcing Rain, two ravishing duos with pianist Charbin, with cymbal bowing that floats and sometimes seethes, caressing and buffeting the keyboardist’s swelling intensities, subtle extended techniques. and spartan spreading of notes, terse and resonant. Prévost is still listening.
Peter Margasak