Barre Phillips Albums (15)
What The Critics Say
The story behind this album brings together the names of six of the top bass players on the free improv circuit. Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre, William Parker, and Barry Guy were approached to perform a quartet concert at the Victoriaville FIMAV 2003 festival as a tribute to the late Peter Kowald. Guy cancelled his trip for personal reasons and Tetsu Saitoh, already scheduled to appear in Victo as part of Michel Doneda's French-Japanese quintet, agreed to take his place. After You've Gone documents this concert, a double bass summit, if you will. One could have expected a string of solos, duos, and trios, with the occasional quartet thrown in for good measure. On the contrary, all four improvisers are heard simultaneously most of the time. The performance is rather uneven: the music is dense, busy and crowded, but often lacks direction or simply doesn't live up to the expectations inevitably attached to a "supergroup" of this kind. Nevertheless, there are precious moments on After You've Gone. "Whoop Yer Tal" sees the bassists abandon textural playing to foray into more playful territories, and the result is amazing. The same applies to "Bleu Grek," a dynamic improvisation with many mood swings and a delicate finale. The encore, "P.S.-Te Queremos," is a grave arco quartet, requiem-like, a mournful drone hovering over a tonal center, with occasional atonal escapades. The group playing on this track eclipses most of what was previously heard, and leads one to think that the quartet had just warmed up by the time the concert was over. ~ François Couture, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In the late '60s, bassist Barre Phillips recorded his first solo bass album, Journal Violone. It has been hailed as a classic of extended technique and free improvisation on this particular instrument. Phillips occasionally used the same title for his subsequent solo recordings, prompting often disgraceful comparisons. Of course, things have changed. Extended techniques have spread -- battalions of young bassists use them in avant-garde music. If Phillips has not reinvented his playing considerably since then, he still has the fire within. Proof can be found in Journal Violone 9, a set of studio improvs recorded over two days in March 2000. The CD begins with a long piece, the 17-minute "Time, Our Time," a nice display of dynamics using only pizzicato playing. "Dear Doctor" contains some passionate strikes of the bow and "Windwalk" gets very evocative, especially when Phillips dives into a ultra-quiet passage. Phillips was one of the first bassists of his generation to move completely out of jazz. On this CD he stands his ground, using every possible mean to extract sound from his instrument without becoming lyrical, tonal, or jazzy (with one exception: "Row Bear"). He has achieved better results (his CD, Camouflage, for Disques Victo comes to mind), but Journal Violone 9 still makes a worthy addition to his discography and will appeal to fans of Barry Guy and Peter Niklas Wilson. ~ François Couture, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Get two of the finest bassists in the world together in a studio, throw in a fellow who needs to make a half-dozen trips to cart in all his horns, and one has the makings of a good session of improvised music, to be sure. How much one enjoys this outing will depend on whether one appreciates reed player Vinny Golia's approach to playing with bassists, which despite avant-garde trappings is the pretty traditional hornman's stance of playing over the bass. For free improvised music, for example, this could be contrasted with players such as Evan Parker or John Butcher, who design their playing to be heard on an equal footing with the bass, as if all the instruments were involved in creating one big sound. Some listeners may feel that Golia's activity, including some swinging phrases played with a nice touch on his various clarinets, takes away from the impact of bassists Barre Phillips and Bertram Turetzky. It also sometimes changes the focus of the music itself. While the bassists tend to play texturally with many bowed harmonics and knocking sounds, Golia chooses to play quite melodically, his use of sounds almost always tied in with an emotional climax. His work is expressive and heartfelt as always, but he tends to take over, grounding the music with grandly lyrical held notes or cluttering up the atmosphere with rapid runs packed with pitches. Like many jazz-influenced improvisers, he inhabits a netherworld in which the playing of an actual, interesting melody is shunned, while noodling around a scale or mode is not. When the players do convene on certain pitches, an ensemble sound is established, but this hardly represents the potential level of complexity one expects from such major players. The best track is "It Was Probably the Last One to Be Named," in which the delicious sound of the contrabass clarinet inspires much spirited bowing. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Recorded live at Vancouver's Western Front in 1990, this solo recording by bassist extraordinaire Barre Phillips is a set of improvisations. They explore not only Mr. Phillips' more than considerable abilities as a musician, but the limits of the instrument itself as a method of expression. Over six tracks and nearly one hour, Phillips bows, plucks, strums, bangs on, and beats his double bass, wrenching from it every possible emotion and tone that he was capable of revealing at the time. The title track, completely bowed, opens the record. Beginning as somber reflection, it gradually builds in tension using the D and A strings as elemental forces against the bottom C and G. About midway, that taught wire snaps and a cacophony of textures and timbres emerge, offering new rhythmic possibilities and sonic architectures. "Covered," which follows at ten minutes, is Phillips' solo playing as evidenced on his solo recording for ECM. While played traditionally, the harmonic ideas are anything but. There is a complexity here that reveals how drones, when played against various rhythmic figures, accentuate dynamics and create chordal backdrops for other melodic frameworks that in turn create a framework for new drones. The recording closes with the meditative "Around Again." This is Mr. Phillips making his bass "sing" reflectively, creating the manner and syntax of a sung ballad by using the instrument's "traditional" voice and stretching its tonality over three-and-a-half octaves. Longer lines give way to short staccato bursts that are deeply expressive and sonorous. Camouflage is a recording of seeming disguises for an instrument thought to be merely a rhythmic tool to anchor soloists to a structure. In the hands of a master musician like Mr. Phillips, his 40 years as a professional have taught him that appearances in vision and sound can be deceiving. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Bass improvisation king Barre Phillips accepted a commission to score a ballet in 1987. Naxos, or at least part of it, recorded with his quintet, is the result of that collaboration. Featuring piano, bass, saxophone, and guitars (courtesy of Jean-Marc Montera), as well as vocals by daughter Claudia, the Naxos ensemble is an entire world apart from contemporary groups that improvise. The score, consisting of loose compositional frameworks, spontaneous composition, and improvisation, is a textured, nuanced work that weaves elements of classical music and jazz together in an airy, restrained mix that allows ample room for cross-pollination and individual expression. Indeed, with musicians so well-attuned to their leader's viewpoint, it is difficult to know where one work ends and another begins and where the compositional element is scripted or is coaxed into being by collaborative effort. Claudia is a remarkable vocalist who sings by pure instinct. From wordless cascades of chant and open-throated tonalism to tight, clipped percussive expressions of sound and resonance, her presence is indispensable to this music. Phillips himself has been deeply influenced by various folk traditions and the microtonal compositional style of Joe Maneri; both are on display here, particularly in the ballet's more formal section like "MOANA," and "FAEDANT." All players carefully wind around one another to create a conical mass of sound that can easily be either extrapolated from or expanded upon. The non-ballet works are marked by their involvement, on a smaller scale, with tonal exploration and Claudia's vocal insinuations of timbral counterpoint. Naxos is a phenomenal work, one that can be heard in a number of different settings and still offer delight, surprise, and occasionally even astonishment. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Call Me When You Get There'
Release Date 1/1/1984
Tracks 8
Label ECM
See Album Tracklist and Review
