After many years, these four German saxophonists (or based in Germany) are finally thinking of publishing a testimony of their saxophone improvisation quartet. Stefan Keune, Jeffrey Morgan, Martin Speicher and Joachim Zoepf have a long experience as radical improvisers at the heart of the Germanic scene, focused on collective sound experimentation by teaming up with many other artists temporarily or in the long term. Listening to them through The Laws of William Bonney , we think of the first albums of the Rova Sax Quartet (Cinéma Rovaté), but more "extreme". Numbered from 1 to 11 in Roman numerals for each title with the year of recording (1993, 1998, 2006, 2007), the pieces presented here are (fairly) short: from 2 to 4 minutes and two pieces reach 6 and 7 minutes, so you won't have time to get bored. Indeed, this recording is a sum of "alternative techniques" and sonic discoveries interwoven in a creative coexistence. It doesn't matter if you know who's playing what. Tiny breaths, spats, disjointed vibrations of the air column, vocalizations, breath effects, pointillist articulations, fragmented spirals, slag, crunching, spasms, shocks, harmonics, chirping on the edge of the audible, circular breathing, fragments melodic notes, sustained notes, glissandi. Creating shapes. The whole range of possible avant-garde post-free-jazz sounds brought together in tight, imaginative and often surprising improvisations by their correspondences and their overlappings. In a very selective choice among numerous recordings of concerts and rehearsals, the musicians wanted to publish the pieces or extracts among the most significant through interaction and consistency, spontaneous ingenuity and sense of timing, etc....
Reference question. Joachim Zoepf has recorded with Günther Christmann and Vario, Conrad Doppert, Joker Nies and Wolfgang Schliemann, Marc Charig, Hans Schneider, Paul Hubweber and Ensemble 2INCQ. He's a great bass clarinetist. Stefan Keune, with Paul Lytton, Paul Lovens, Hans Schneider and Achim Krämer, John Russell, Steve Noble and Dom Lash. He is most recently part of King Übü Orchestrü and X Pact no. 2. Jeffrey Morgan, with Joker Nies, Mark Sanders and Peter Jacquemyn, Peter Kowald, Paul Lytton, Lawrence Casserley, Bert Wilson. Martin Speicher, with Michael Vorfeld, Georg Wolf, Hans Tammen, Martine Schuppe and Frank Ruhl. Let us also remember the existence of the sax trio of Philippe Lemoine, Michel Doneda and Simon Rose, Bows and Arrows. If the saxophone is the favorite instrument of improvisation and free jazz, it should be noted that a saxophone quartet is a rare commodity that is completely different from the ordinary. This is brilliantly demonstrated by The Laws of William Boney.
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