KARL EVANGELISTA - Apura!
Astral Spirits CD AS130 (2 CDs)
Karl A.D. Evangelista – guitar; Alexander Hawkins – piano; Trevor Watts – alto and soprano saxophones; Louis Moholo-Moholo - drums
Live dates in the USA saw Francis Wong on saxophone and the legendary Andrew Cyrille at the drums.
Recorded October 14/15, 2018 at Fish Factory Studios, Willesden, London, England.
Guitarist Evangelista has worked in or performed with a wide variety of groups and artists such as, among others, Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Frith, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder, Roscoe Mitchell.
Apura is the Tagalog equivalent of Very Urgent (1968) the album by Chris McGregor Group's South African sextet on which Moholo played drums. Tagalog is the name of a Malayo-Polynesian group in the Philippines and its language. Karl Evangelista is US-based Filipino-American.
Moholo and Watts are of course honoured widely as key, establishment figures in an older generation of British free jazz; this set brings us up-to-date with the cultural collaboration initiated by The Brotherhood of Breath (Moholo), Moiré Music (Watts) and experimental big band, The London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra.
The music on these two CDs presents a very broad and ethereal pasture from the free jazz gamut, though it hardly ever touches on a solo. Instead, it depends largely on collaboration and communication between the four, and switches group formations between quartet and trios. There is much weaving in and out and between offerings from each of the four, but their cohesion is paramount, even when their audacious alliances become jagged. This is especially noticeable, for example, in the trio piece Harana in which there is heard an extremely feisty alto/guitar discourse, delivered against a background of drum scurries until the trio winds it up in a scintillating finale.
This impressive set is loaded with unquestionably consummate inventiveness, an erudite album of archetypical collective improv.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Astral Spirits CD AS130 (2 CDs)
Karl A.D. Evangelista – guitar; Alexander Hawkins – piano; Trevor Watts – alto and soprano saxophones; Louis Moholo-Moholo - drums
Live dates in the USA saw Francis Wong on saxophone and the legendary Andrew Cyrille at the drums.
Recorded October 14/15, 2018 at Fish Factory Studios, Willesden, London, England.
Guitarist Evangelista has worked in or performed with a wide variety of groups and artists such as, among others, Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Frith, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder, Roscoe Mitchell.
Apura is the Tagalog equivalent of Very Urgent (1968) the album by Chris McGregor Group's South African sextet on which Moholo played drums. Tagalog is the name of a Malayo-Polynesian group in the Philippines and its language. Karl Evangelista is US-based Filipino-American.
Moholo and Watts are of course honoured widely as key, establishment figures in an older generation of British free jazz; this set brings us up-to-date with the cultural collaboration initiated by The Brotherhood of Breath (Moholo), Moiré Music (Watts) and experimental big band, The London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra.
The music on these two CDs presents a very broad and ethereal pasture from the free jazz gamut, though it hardly ever touches on a solo. Instead, it depends largely on collaboration and communication between the four, and switches group formations between quartet and trios. There is much weaving in and out and between offerings from each of the four, but their cohesion is paramount, even when their audacious alliances become jagged. This is especially noticeable, for example, in the trio piece Harana in which there is heard an extremely feisty alto/guitar discourse, delivered against a background of drum scurries until the trio winds it up in a scintillating finale.
This impressive set is loaded with unquestionably consummate inventiveness, an erudite album of archetypical collective improv.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
