Peter Evans solo + 4tet w/ Evan Parker / John Edwards / John Russell

Event information

Peter Evans is one of the most brilliant figures in the new wave of improvised music, a technical master who has reconfigured the trumpet in the same way Evan Parker did the saxophone, pushing his playing to the limits of physical endurance, and in so doing revealing new sonic possibilities and future directions for the instrument. An inspired inventor rather than a mere technician, Evans' restlessly protean output includes his own complex compositions (and radical recompositions of jazz standards) with his quartet and quintet, the wild outpourings of 'terrorist bebop' band Mostly Other People Do The Killing, various appearances with Evan Parker, including in the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, collaborations with Weasel Walter, Nate Woolley, Mary Halvorsen, Okkyung Lee, and, of course, his staggering solo performances. This two day residency will explore various aspects of Evans' musical personality and will feature some of the UK's finest performers.

On the first night, Evans is joined by jazz pianist Liam Noble for a duo and then by Adam Linson, John Butcher and Steve Beresford for an electro-acoustic quartet.

Liam Noble is one of Britain's most open-minded and imaginative jazz musicians, a consummate pianist whose work ranges from reinterpretations of Dave Brubeck to the free improvisation of Sleepthief (with Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey).

On the second night of his two day residency Evans is joined by the trio of Evan Parker, John Russell and John Edwards, who have established themselves as one of the most sensitive and fluent improvising trios working today. One feature of their playing is an openness to collaboration, and the trio has been joined by a wide range of musicians, including Chris Corsano, Aleks Kolkowski, Ikue Mori, and, in memorable performances at both Mopomoso and Freedom of the City, Peter Evans himself.

“Parker seems to defy any logic of uniformity, everything heard from him revealing — in each and every instance — a plethora of alternative solutions and quicksilverish intuitions informed by the flexible intelligence of a performer whose melodic concepts predate the future of decades. The interaction with Russell's guitar is unequivocally brilliant: apparently infinite unidiomatic propagations, consistent dynamism sparkling with radiant harmonics, intricate sonic poetry exuding from the crackles of fingerings and lines. Edwards contributes to this viscerally refined exchange by instinctively inserting splendid arco suggestions between all those splintered statements, or by pummeling the low-frequency bag in an unintentional depiction of his resilient vision, ultimately resulting as the trio's collating factor.” - Massimo Ricci, The Squid's Ear