GUS GARSIDE AND HERVÉ PEREZ – The Unexpected Visitor
577 Records Orbit577 - Available from Bndcamp
Gus Garside, double bass; Hervé Perez, saxophone
Recorded in Brighton and elsewhere, March to May 2020
Hervé Perez is a French composer, audio artist and saxophonist, originally from France but now living in Sheffield. He works in a variety of fields encompassing contemporary jazz, electro-acoustic improv and free jazz.
Gus Garside has been bedrock of the improvised music scenario in Brighton, playing double bass in contemporary music settings, cabaret, dance and theatre, as well as alongside of foremost artists in music improvisation.
The bass and sax duo are highly practised improvisers who bring an atmospheric clarity to their music that reflects their close heeding of each other. There are also less-tangible selections that replicate and resonate the inherent mood of what this music is about.
The musicians have set out to illustrate the depth and the air of a 13th century poem, The Guest House, by the Sufi mystic, Mewlana Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. The poem is quite famous, as it is very commonly used as one of the most important facets of mindfulness training: ‘embrace whatever you experience with an air of non-judgemental acceptance’. Sufism is a 19thC term for what was originally taṣawwuf in Arabic; it is essentially Islamic mysticism.
This music is contemplative and peace-making and I think it appropriately reflects Islamic spiritual concerns.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
577 Records Orbit577 - Available from Bndcamp
Gus Garside, double bass; Hervé Perez, saxophone
Recorded in Brighton and elsewhere, March to May 2020
Hervé Perez is a French composer, audio artist and saxophonist, originally from France but now living in Sheffield. He works in a variety of fields encompassing contemporary jazz, electro-acoustic improv and free jazz.
Gus Garside has been bedrock of the improvised music scenario in Brighton, playing double bass in contemporary music settings, cabaret, dance and theatre, as well as alongside of foremost artists in music improvisation.
The bass and sax duo are highly practised improvisers who bring an atmospheric clarity to their music that reflects their close heeding of each other. There are also less-tangible selections that replicate and resonate the inherent mood of what this music is about.
The musicians have set out to illustrate the depth and the air of a 13th century poem, The Guest House, by the Sufi mystic, Mewlana Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. The poem is quite famous, as it is very commonly used as one of the most important facets of mindfulness training: ‘embrace whatever you experience with an air of non-judgemental acceptance’. Sufism is a 19thC term for what was originally taṣawwuf in Arabic; it is essentially Islamic mysticism.
This music is contemplative and peace-making and I think it appropriately reflects Islamic spiritual concerns.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
