Trevor Watts/ Peter Knight
Reunion
Hi4HeadRecs
This is a live, totally improvised dialogue of the most honest and unvarnished kind: an unbroken hour-long single track, audience noises-off, closing plea to return the glasses to the bar, and all. Trevor Watts is one of Europe's great free-jazz and world-music saxophonists, and violinist Peter Knight is a former member of Steeleye Span. But jazz fans, folk fans and even chamber-music fans will be startled at how accessible this seamless, unrehearsed concert is from any of those perspectives, and more. It starts with a slow folk dance feel and changes to a chamber group stateliness. Then a brittle pizzicato passage turns into an ostinato that introduces a moody and bluesy alto sax passage. More blurted sax figures and jittery violin episodes are followed by reverential passages, or demented jigging, and finally a soulful, love song-Eke sax reverie toward the end. It's hard to catch the feel of those improvised nights when the audience knows something unique — and, in its way, perfect - is evolving as it listens, but this is a recording that does just that. The two play the South Bank's Purcell Room in October. JFordham. Guardian newspaper UK. |
