ACOUSTIC SOLO IMPROVISING
As an improvisor, John Butcher prefers group from solo playing. He finds that the lack of interactivity is solo performances can drift one away from improvising and towards patterns and compositional ideas. However, he has ventured in the area of solo improvisation several times and has produced a number of solo works. One of the reasons he got involved in it was to try in a solo context the new material he came up with while improvising in groups, which basically involved performance techniques that made the instrument more "transparent" in a group context - that is less dominant. Another reason was that he considered attractive a situation in which somebody has full control of what happens. His solo playing is usually characterised by his engagement with the space where he performs; he tends to interact with the resonance, reverb and natural feedback.
John Butcher - Solo Improvisation at V22, London 24-06-2012
Richard Cook and/or Brian Morton write about his solo performances in his album Fixations (released by Emanem):
"Saxophonist John Butcher discovers something new during every one of the 14 solo improvisations on this marvellous compilation. Drawn from concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, the improvisations each wed the excitement and surprise of discovery to an engaging sense of proportion, pacing, and form. For instance, Woodland Drift is an elegant exercise in line and colour. The Train and the Gate part 1 is a continuous stream of bold assertive tones and sharp-edged trills, in contrast to the gestural daubs and splatters of notes and short phrases in Nearly Art. The four pieces recorded at Chicago's Empty bottle display an exacting control of tenor and soprano saxophone textures, dynamics, and colours. Quite often, Butcher produces more than one sound at a time, such as the simultaneous high-pitched twitter and low-pitched rasp that he fiddles with throughout Second Bottle. On Third Bottle, solid notes materialise from surrounding envelopes of sound, and Butcher gradually strings the notes into linear forms. These are all highly concentrated and intensely realised improvisation. It's their purity of sound and clarity of organisation that make this an exceptional document of the improviser's art."
- published in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 2002. Online at: http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
AMPLIFIED, FEEDBACK, MULTITRACKED SOLO IMPROVISING
His solo explorations led him to try technology along with the saxophone. The reason for that was the limitations of the instrument: a mostly monophonic, non-sustained instrument that does not allow, for example, the production of a new sound on top of a decaying one. So he turned to techniques such as unblown feedback saxophone and amplification through the use of close-miking techniques that helped him expand the sonic vocabulary of the saxophone. In the studio, on top of the techniques that were just mentioned he also experimented with multitracking, where he was recording an improvised performance. Then he would play back the recording and improvise again on top of and so on. Actually, most of his solo albums involve technology.
Dan Warburton writes about his performance in his solo album Invisible Ear (released by Weight of Wax):
"The upper register of the instrument is amplified (magnified would seem to be a better word) to ear-tingling extremes Tamio Shiraishi would be proud of. Butcher doesn't shy away from the ugly grit of feedback either - the opening moments of "A controversial fix for…" sound like a wonderfully dirty Chicago blues harp. The saxophonist is a shrewd observer of the scene, acutely aware (and not uncritical) of developments in what Noël Akchoté has amusingly referred to as the "shhhfllllfffwsshhhpfft school of improvisation", many of the younger practitioners of which will, one imagines, be listening in return just as carefully to his close-miked soprano work on tracks like "Cup Anatomical", "Dark Field" and "Bright Field"."
- published in Paris Transatlantic April 2003. Online at : http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/04apr_text.html#4
SITE-SPECIFIC SOLOS
As mentioned above, John Butcher in his acoustic solo improvisations has a tendency to engage with the space he performs in and interact with the unique acoustic phenomena of the place. In 2002, he took this idea further and started performing in a number of places with unusual acoustics around the world. These places include the giant Oya Stone Mountain in Japan, an outdoor tour in Scotland and Oberhausen's famous 200m gazometer. Click here to learn more about performance spaces.
John Butcher - Solo Improvisation inside the giant Oberhausen Gazometer, Germany 2006.
Jason Bivins writes about his performance in Resonant Spaces:
"The first four tracks feature Butcher playing solo tenor and soprano in the vastly resonant space of Oya Stone Mountain in Utsonomiya City. The roiling trilling tenor explorations that are Butcher’s stock in trade are certainly here, but on tracks like the opening “Ideoplast,” the saxophonist takes a new angle of vision onto these familiar stratagems, not only experimenting with the reverberations of the metal bell of his instrument but also layering them with the cavernous echoes of the performance space (he explores similar ideas with his soprano on the dense “Mustard Bath,” the most Evan Parker-like piece here). It frequently sounds like an angry cave-dwelling animal poised to strike. “Ashfall” opens with a somewhat tentative exploration of intervals, but Butcher slowly layers different grains, tones, and articulations into the mix, creating a fascinating palimpsest. Heavy tenor popping opens “Ejecta,” but the piece soon evolves into a raucous session of brash glossolalia."
-published in Dusted February 2005. Online at: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/1972
Sources/ More about John Butcher's solo projects:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Solo.html
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/solo_jazztimes.html
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/04apr_text.html#4
http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/1972
http://otoroku.cafeoto.co.uk/products/511847-john-butcher-winter-gardens
http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
As an improvisor, John Butcher prefers group from solo playing. He finds that the lack of interactivity is solo performances can drift one away from improvising and towards patterns and compositional ideas. However, he has ventured in the area of solo improvisation several times and has produced a number of solo works. One of the reasons he got involved in it was to try in a solo context the new material he came up with while improvising in groups, which basically involved performance techniques that made the instrument more "transparent" in a group context - that is less dominant. Another reason was that he considered attractive a situation in which somebody has full control of what happens. His solo playing is usually characterised by his engagement with the space where he performs; he tends to interact with the resonance, reverb and natural feedback.
John Butcher - Solo Improvisation at V22, London 24-06-2012
Richard Cook and/or Brian Morton write about his solo performances in his album Fixations (released by Emanem):
"Saxophonist John Butcher discovers something new during every one of the 14 solo improvisations on this marvellous compilation. Drawn from concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, the improvisations each wed the excitement and surprise of discovery to an engaging sense of proportion, pacing, and form. For instance, Woodland Drift is an elegant exercise in line and colour. The Train and the Gate part 1 is a continuous stream of bold assertive tones and sharp-edged trills, in contrast to the gestural daubs and splatters of notes and short phrases in Nearly Art. The four pieces recorded at Chicago's Empty bottle display an exacting control of tenor and soprano saxophone textures, dynamics, and colours. Quite often, Butcher produces more than one sound at a time, such as the simultaneous high-pitched twitter and low-pitched rasp that he fiddles with throughout Second Bottle. On Third Bottle, solid notes materialise from surrounding envelopes of sound, and Butcher gradually strings the notes into linear forms. These are all highly concentrated and intensely realised improvisation. It's their purity of sound and clarity of organisation that make this an exceptional document of the improviser's art."
- published in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 2002. Online at: http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
AMPLIFIED, FEEDBACK, MULTITRACKED SOLO IMPROVISING
His solo explorations led him to try technology along with the saxophone. The reason for that was the limitations of the instrument: a mostly monophonic, non-sustained instrument that does not allow, for example, the production of a new sound on top of a decaying one. So he turned to techniques such as unblown feedback saxophone and amplification through the use of close-miking techniques that helped him expand the sonic vocabulary of the saxophone. In the studio, on top of the techniques that were just mentioned he also experimented with multitracking, where he was recording an improvised performance. Then he would play back the recording and improvise again on top of and so on. Actually, most of his solo albums involve technology.
Dan Warburton writes about his performance in his solo album Invisible Ear (released by Weight of Wax):
"The upper register of the instrument is amplified (magnified would seem to be a better word) to ear-tingling extremes Tamio Shiraishi would be proud of. Butcher doesn't shy away from the ugly grit of feedback either - the opening moments of "A controversial fix for…" sound like a wonderfully dirty Chicago blues harp. The saxophonist is a shrewd observer of the scene, acutely aware (and not uncritical) of developments in what Noël Akchoté has amusingly referred to as the "shhhfllllfffwsshhhpfft school of improvisation", many of the younger practitioners of which will, one imagines, be listening in return just as carefully to his close-miked soprano work on tracks like "Cup Anatomical", "Dark Field" and "Bright Field"."
- published in Paris Transatlantic April 2003. Online at : http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/04apr_text.html#4
SITE-SPECIFIC SOLOS
As mentioned above, John Butcher in his acoustic solo improvisations has a tendency to engage with the space he performs in and interact with the unique acoustic phenomena of the place. In 2002, he took this idea further and started performing in a number of places with unusual acoustics around the world. These places include the giant Oya Stone Mountain in Japan, an outdoor tour in Scotland and Oberhausen's famous 200m gazometer. Click here to learn more about performance spaces.
John Butcher - Solo Improvisation inside the giant Oberhausen Gazometer, Germany 2006.
Jason Bivins writes about his performance in Resonant Spaces:
"The first four tracks feature Butcher playing solo tenor and soprano in the vastly resonant space of Oya Stone Mountain in Utsonomiya City. The roiling trilling tenor explorations that are Butcher’s stock in trade are certainly here, but on tracks like the opening “Ideoplast,” the saxophonist takes a new angle of vision onto these familiar stratagems, not only experimenting with the reverberations of the metal bell of his instrument but also layering them with the cavernous echoes of the performance space (he explores similar ideas with his soprano on the dense “Mustard Bath,” the most Evan Parker-like piece here). It frequently sounds like an angry cave-dwelling animal poised to strike. “Ashfall” opens with a somewhat tentative exploration of intervals, but Butcher slowly layers different grains, tones, and articulations into the mix, creating a fascinating palimpsest. Heavy tenor popping opens “Ejecta,” but the piece soon evolves into a raucous session of brash glossolalia."
-published in Dusted February 2005. Online at: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/1972
Sources/ More about John Butcher's solo projects:
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/Solo.html
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/solo_jazztimes.html
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/04apr_text.html#4
http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/1972
http://otoroku.cafeoto.co.uk/products/511847-john-butcher-winter-gardens
http://www.emanemdisc.com/E4045.html
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