OPENING FLOWERS SEXTET - The Last Slide of Summer
4Tay Records CD4045
Keith Tippett - piano and piano interiors, wood blocks, pebbles, maraca, music boxes; Bruno Morello - saxes: tenor, baritone, alto and soprano; Anna Ventimiglia - flutes: soprano, alto, bass; Paolo Battaglia - guitars; Maurizo Morello - guitars; Antonio Moncada - drums and tools
The six performers listed in the credits of this CD (recorded in Spring 2014) appear in various combinations across its sixty five minutes duration, and on ten tracks that range in length from nearly thirteen minutes to just under two. The annotations of the track titles assign some as compositions to band members and others to the tag 'free improv', although that tag is not used in the sense many UK listeners might recognise as being of the more abstract nature of that genre.
The CD is a curious momento of the few days the musicians spent together, and I quote the CD's cover notes, 'in Sicilly, in a house on a hill facing the sea.'
The opening, 'The Butterfly in the Rainforest', promises much of this meeting, opening as it does with a forthright but brief fanfare from the piano of Keith Tippett, which then dissolves into an overly restrained and tentative series of often brief harmonic and modal improvisations. On route, again in typical style, Tippett injects fullsome and intense ideas, harmonically, rhythmically and latent with fresh ideas that momentarily lift the entire session to another plain of value, before the set melts again into its default meander. There are happening moments, glimpses of maye what could have been, but too few and their brevity and seperation on this CD kind of adds to its frustrations - and there are certainly too few to make this anything other than a CD that collectors and archivists of Tippett's music should rush to acquire.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
4Tay Records CD4045
Keith Tippett - piano and piano interiors, wood blocks, pebbles, maraca, music boxes; Bruno Morello - saxes: tenor, baritone, alto and soprano; Anna Ventimiglia - flutes: soprano, alto, bass; Paolo Battaglia - guitars; Maurizo Morello - guitars; Antonio Moncada - drums and tools
The six performers listed in the credits of this CD (recorded in Spring 2014) appear in various combinations across its sixty five minutes duration, and on ten tracks that range in length from nearly thirteen minutes to just under two. The annotations of the track titles assign some as compositions to band members and others to the tag 'free improv', although that tag is not used in the sense many UK listeners might recognise as being of the more abstract nature of that genre.
The CD is a curious momento of the few days the musicians spent together, and I quote the CD's cover notes, 'in Sicilly, in a house on a hill facing the sea.'
The opening, 'The Butterfly in the Rainforest', promises much of this meeting, opening as it does with a forthright but brief fanfare from the piano of Keith Tippett, which then dissolves into an overly restrained and tentative series of often brief harmonic and modal improvisations. On route, again in typical style, Tippett injects fullsome and intense ideas, harmonically, rhythmically and latent with fresh ideas that momentarily lift the entire session to another plain of value, before the set melts again into its default meander. There are happening moments, glimpses of maye what could have been, but too few and their brevity and seperation on this CD kind of adds to its frustrations - and there are certainly too few to make this anything other than a CD that collectors and archivists of Tippett's music should rush to acquire.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
