CDOTD 3/08/2023

 Tony Oxley: The Advocate (Tzadik)

Purchased at The Government Center

I'm an improvisor. I suppose if I had to pick one thing as a musician, that's it. Not saxophonist, or bass clarinetist, or composer, or even educator. I'm an improvisor before anything else. 

I have been played freely improvised music since the early 1980s. Some people are dedicated to the approach and firmly live there; others see the limitations in devoting themselves to playing without predetermined structure, and find ways to use open compositions, strategies, or even game play. 

Of those people, the former is a smaller, dedicated group. I am largely in the latter group, though still occasionally enjoy the exhilaration of playing a lively free session with interesting players. I like the idea of finding direction through composition. I think of composition in a very widely generalized way. If there is a group of improvisors collected together and someone determines that they will break into a succession of smaller sub-groups, that is engaging in a very open ended form of composition. A predetermination has been made that steers the performance. 

I don't find myself often revisiting free improv recordings often. I've listened to many more than once, but usually with years in between. A few come to mind in particular, such as Chris Burn's Ensemble's Cultural Baggage, Miya Masaoka/Tom Nunn/Gino Robair's Crepuscular Music, the Music Improvisation Company's LP on ECM. 

This is a disc of Tony Oxley largely playing duets with Derek Bailey. I have a couple of Bailey albums, including duets with Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, and the elusive Jamie Muir (short tenured percussionist with King Crimson), and some solo records. A friend who is very involved with the scene once said to me, "You only really need one solo Derek Bailey record." I know some who would disagree with him strongly. I have two, and maybe it's more than enough. He's a tough one. He went from composing initially in his career to devoting himself nearly entirely to free playing of a highly fragmentary style. It was the opposite trajectory for Gavin Bryars, an early collaborator.

Then there's Tony Oxley, who like Derek is a dedicated British improvisor. He's had a varied career. An early session is 1969's Extrapolation with John McLaughlin (a strong recording, I should pull it out). He had a double LP on Hart Art with Tony Coe, most famous for playing the saxophone in the soundtrack recording of The Pink Panther. He's worked with Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor. A particular favorite of mine is a one-off session he did with Anthony Braxton and bassist Adelhard Roidinger. Oxley's lightly frantic style, with lots of fast softly played notes, energizes the reading of Braxton's compositions. 

Three of four selections on this are duets, recorded in 1975 but released in 2007. It finds both players in fully brittle, ungrooving pointillism. It's a bit surprising when you hear Tony playing electronics, which is no less fragmentary than their acoustical playing. The four track is a solo work from 2006, dedicated to Derek.

How does one even comment on this music? It's a bit of: it is what it is. I find it engaging and both men are top players in their field. There is a thought among some improvisors that, if you can't tell a work of post-war avant garde is composed or not, why not improvise it? I don't completely agree with that viewpoint, but I don't discount it either. This session achieves the sometime density of fellow Brit Brian Ferneyhough, without being outrageously impossible to interpret from score. I'd even say it has more of a joie de vivre than recordings of Ferneyhough I've heard. 

Ultimately, I feel like I wish I had been in the room with them. It's great that this is documented, but the experience of being there just can't be duplicated on CD.