Evan Parker at Elastic

[Larry Kart]

A report:

Place was packed, I was in a distracted mood, so take what follows in that vein. Parker himself was in intense but rather mellow form; some of his soprano playing was almost pretty, and his links to various aspects of the "jazz tradition" seemed quite clear, especially in terms of depth of timbre and manipulation of same. Shoot me, but there were times when I almost thought I was listening to Rich Perry. The pairing with Ned Rothenberg was useless IMO; I just had to screen Rothenberg out, and that was mostly possible. The second set included a reticent electronic effects dude, Kevin Drum; Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (who so far -- I've heard him twice -- strikes me as a bit of a wanker); and Fred Lonberg-Holm, who was a daunting partner in that he was able to virtually mirror and at times even anticipate anything and everything that Parker played. How good an idea this was -- either in general or from Parker's point of view -- I'm not sure, in part because the rest of the people on the stand were IMO not really equipped to function well in such a setup, especially after Rothenberg joined in on the second and final longish piece. But it was quite something to hear Fred do what he did, and to do so from and within what was clearly a state of considerable physical and mental ease, no matter the intensity of the sounds he produced. I would say that if this had been a Parker/Lonberg-Holm duo, or if one or more simpatico players had been added to them, the results might have been remarkable. But I can also imagine that Parker might have found what Fred was doing to be annoying rather than stimulating -- though if get a vote, I'd say that if that were Parker's view, he'd be mistaken.

[DTMX]

Yeah, I saw Parker/Rothenberg at Edgefest in Ann Arbor two nights earlier and Parker was pretty mellow on both tenor and soprano. Well, as mellow as Evan Parker could ever be.