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1.
Coalescence 02:02
2.
Open Systems 09:48
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3.
In Praise of Shadows 05:24
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4.
Air/Luft 04:34
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5.
Still Listening 06:47
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6.
Moon Over BCN 06:32
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7.
Smart Set 03:50
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8.
This One is for Kowald 06:35
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9.
Inner Silence 03:51
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about

CRYSTAL VISION

“Instants become crystals”, the American poet Robert Bly once wrote. His context was very particular, but the essence of his idea was that a given moment, dangled in the super-sa- turated solution of our increasingly crowded and complex experience, might well prove to be the seed of something larger that reveals the unique geometries existing within a creative live, susceptible to changes in chemistry, rendered unique by unpredictable accidents or “flaws”, hard, self-contained, reflecting and refracting light, objects of beauty and contemplation.

When Evan Parker, Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton renewed their association at l’Auditori in Barcelona in March 2006, they chose to call the resulting CD Zafiro, or “Sapphire”. The following day, the trio was joined by Catalan pianist Agustí Fernández at the same venue.The chemical suspension is imme- diately changed, but not so very different. Or, to take a related analogy, the topography of performance is more complex, with more sonic elements in the formula, a less predictable coalescence of individual voices. Here and there, one player or another drops out for a time, but continues to exert an influence on a structure which is neither pre-determined nor final but rather a series of organic and dynamic outcomes.

Where crystallography and topography (or utopics) come together is in the creation of ideal spaces which are also real creative spaces.There is a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of utopia, often translated as meaning “no place”, though the Greek also readily includes the possibility of “eutopia” or beautiful place. Some who might read this will be concerned at the thought of utopian performance, directed at the production of lapidary moments that have no existence other than as abstract expressions of some ideal state of consciousness. It is worth mentioning that Bly’s line was written in a poem written in 1968 called “Driving Through Minne- sota During the Hanoi Bombings”. It is concerned with real places, the harshest real-world experiences and, in an electro- nic world, the dissolution of any distance between our faraway acts and their psychic consequences. By the same token, these men are not in any sense detached from the physical reality round them.Their crystals are, instead, expressions of present moments at pressures that exceed the personal.They inhabit a world that includes bombings, tortures, intolerances, failures to understand, loss and grief (one section is dedicated to the recently deceased Peter Kowald, the German double bassist who was himself one of European free music’s most powerful catalysts), and the sheer contingency of working in a situation that enforces absences and separations.

They are not utopians, then, in the negative sense of that word, and nor are they content to produce music that is merely about itself. If one finds deep-structural echoes of John Coltrane in Evan Parker’s saxophone playing, a less-than-brief history of time in Paul Lytton’s percussion, ideas from the Baroque and from modern composition in Barry Guy’s bass playing,and perhaps even a fleeting echo of Federico Mompou’s piano music in Agustí Fernández’ part in this, then these are simply part of the solution, though not necessarily part of the answer to any question about what this music is.

That, mercifully, can only be answered in part and by reference to the processes that bring it into being.What we have here is four men communicating openly and freely and from the purview of their own complex experience, interrelationships, common ground and differences. Robert Bly is, of course, also the author of the hugely influential but also controversial and much-spoofed Iron John: A Book About Men which took a fairy tale and attempted to build on it a mythopoetic under- standing of how men interact and share experience. Iron has its own crystalline structure.That is the source of its strength and its occasional weaknesses. It is fair to say here – and certainly in response to those who fear that the music on Topos might prove to be nothing more than a gem-basket – that Fernández, Guy, Lytton and Parker create a music that is also rigorously male without being self-consciously masculine and which is smelted and forged with a lifetime’s devotion to craft.

It has discipline and democratic authority, as well as freedom and open-endedness.They are humane and breathing sounds, which exist here thanks to a technology that used to and still does rely on crystals and the light beamed through them but which are also offered in full consciousness that they began as instants in a passage through life and towards death,“Particles”, as Bly would have it, that “The grass cannot dissolve ...“

— Brian Morton

credits

released June 5, 2007

Agustí Fernández: piano
Paul Lytton: percussion
Evan Parker: tenor and soprano saxophones
Barry Guy: double bass

Tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 music composed by Fernández (SGAE), Parker/Guy (PRS/MCPS), Lytton (GEMA). Track 3: Fernández/Guy/Lytton. Track 5: Fernández/Lytton. Track 7: Fernández/Guy.Track 9: Fernández/Parker/Lytton · Recorded 26th March 2006 at l’Auditori, Barcelona, Spain by Ferran Conangla. Thanks to L’Auditori for the space · Produced by Agustí Fernández / Sirulita SL and Maya Recordings · Cover art: VANCHE “Points from Now” 1996 · Photos: Ferran Conangla · Text: Brian Morton. Graphic design: Jonas Schoder

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Maya Recordings Oberstammheim, Switzerland

Barry Guy and Maya Homburger founded Maya Recordings in 1991 to take care of their desires to document the various projects that occupy their musical lives. So unusually
you will find Jazz and improvised musics alongside baroque masterpieces. ... more

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