John Butcher is a prolific musician, both performer and composer, with a particular focus on free improvisation. Born in Brighton in 1954, he took classical piano lessons at school and his first live concerts on keyboards were with the 'avant' rock group Habilis while studying physics at the university of Surrey. Soon he left piano and turned to saxophone as as he was growing gradually interested in jazz, but also because he considered piano to be a solitary instrument in terms of repertoire and he was more interested in playing with other people.
After completing a PhD in Theoretical Physics, he left Academia to focus on music. As a musician, he was particularly influenced by the avant-garde scene and specifically Stockhausen, but also from different types of jazz music which he played a lot during his university years (Click here to read more about his influences). It was after meeting and piano player Chris Burn that he was gradually drawn to free improvisation. The two of them started rehearsing together at least once a week and eventually started developing their own ways of improvising, drifting away from the jazz idioms. Since then, he became more and more involved in the free improvisation scene and now he counts numerous collaborations with other free improvising artists (More about his collaborations here).
As a saxophone player, he has developed his own personal style of playing, generally characterised by a virtuoso use of multiphonics, production of multiple tones, over-blowing, complex and slowly evolving textures. He is also experimenting with electronics focusing on amplified saxophone, feedback and multi-tracking, and he is also interested in extreme acoustics, having performed in a variety of unusual places. Although he seems to prefer group improvising, he counts a number of solo projects too.
Steve Koenig writes about John Butcher's style:
"John Butcher is one of the leading lights in what might be termed the post-Evan Parker school of saxophone improvisers. While Parker elaborated on and extended to great lengths ideas derived in part from the playing of John Coltrane, musicians such as Butcher take the abstractions limned by Parker (among others) and go one or two steps further. One aspect of these players is to consider the saxophone more as a sound-producing combination of metal and reed and to uncover the multitude of sound that it can produce as an object, whether or not those sounds are obtained in traditional fashion. While Butcher, on this release, largely confines himself to breath-induced attacks (though the clacking of keys can also be a significant element), the range of sounds he's able to conjure up is astonishing. Each piece seems focused on a particular sonic territory and that area is wrung and investigated until almost dry. In this sense, his approach is similar to Braxton's solo studies where each composition is explicative of a particular 'language', the grammar of which is set forth. Butcher, however, is further removed from jazz concerns and more directly involved with the physical nature of his instrument, especially its timbres."
- published in Jazz Weekly 2002. Online at:
http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
Sources / More about John Butcher:
Biography:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Biog.html
Pictures:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Lightbox/Photoearlier/Photoearlier.html#habilis
Interviews:
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/mbutcint.html
http://www.hcmf.co.uk/John-Butcher-Where-the-Saxophone-Ends
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/butcher.html
http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-john-butcher/
Review:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/solo_invisible_broomer.html
After completing a PhD in Theoretical Physics, he left Academia to focus on music. As a musician, he was particularly influenced by the avant-garde scene and specifically Stockhausen, but also from different types of jazz music which he played a lot during his university years (Click here to read more about his influences). It was after meeting and piano player Chris Burn that he was gradually drawn to free improvisation. The two of them started rehearsing together at least once a week and eventually started developing their own ways of improvising, drifting away from the jazz idioms. Since then, he became more and more involved in the free improvisation scene and now he counts numerous collaborations with other free improvising artists (More about his collaborations here).
As a saxophone player, he has developed his own personal style of playing, generally characterised by a virtuoso use of multiphonics, production of multiple tones, over-blowing, complex and slowly evolving textures. He is also experimenting with electronics focusing on amplified saxophone, feedback and multi-tracking, and he is also interested in extreme acoustics, having performed in a variety of unusual places. Although he seems to prefer group improvising, he counts a number of solo projects too.
Steve Koenig writes about John Butcher's style:
"John Butcher is one of the leading lights in what might be termed the post-Evan Parker school of saxophone improvisers. While Parker elaborated on and extended to great lengths ideas derived in part from the playing of John Coltrane, musicians such as Butcher take the abstractions limned by Parker (among others) and go one or two steps further. One aspect of these players is to consider the saxophone more as a sound-producing combination of metal and reed and to uncover the multitude of sound that it can produce as an object, whether or not those sounds are obtained in traditional fashion. While Butcher, on this release, largely confines himself to breath-induced attacks (though the clacking of keys can also be a significant element), the range of sounds he's able to conjure up is astonishing. Each piece seems focused on a particular sonic territory and that area is wrung and investigated until almost dry. In this sense, his approach is similar to Braxton's solo studies where each composition is explicative of a particular 'language', the grammar of which is set forth. Butcher, however, is further removed from jazz concerns and more directly involved with the physical nature of his instrument, especially its timbres."
- published in Jazz Weekly 2002. Online at:
http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
Sources / More about John Butcher:
Biography:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Biog.html
Pictures:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Lightbox/Photoearlier/Photoearlier.html#habilis
Interviews:
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/mbutcint.html
http://www.hcmf.co.uk/John-Butcher-Where-the-Saxophone-Ends
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/butcher.html
http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-john-butcher/
Review:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/solo_invisible_broomer.html
