08 febbraio 2010


Quattro anni or sono ci lasciava Elton Dean.
Oltre ad estratti presi dal doppio dvd ufficiale del concerto di Soft Machine Legacy al club parigino New Morning il 12 dicembre 2005, su YouTube si trovano altri brevi filmati dai concerti del compianto sassofonista negli ultimi mesi: per esempio con Soft Bounds, nel giugno 2005, una sera che era ospite del gruppo Jean-Michel Couchet, oppure nell'ottobre dello stesso anno con i belgi The Wrong Object, nel concerto dal quale è tratto l'album The Unbelievable Truth.

Al sito dell'etichetta MoonJune Records i cenni biografici sono rivolti soprattutto alle vicende più recenti: "Elton Dean (born October 28, 1945, Nottingham, England; died February 8, 2006) was a jazz musician who performed on alto saxophone, saxello (a variant of the soprano saxophone) and occasionally electric piano. From 1966-67, Dean was a member of the band Bluesology, led by Long John Baldry. The band's pianist, Reginald Dwight, afterward combined Dean's and Baldry's first names for his own stage name, Elton John. Dean established his reputation as a member of the Keith Tippett Sextet from 1968 to 1970, and in the band Soft Machine from 1969 to 1972. Shortly before leaving Soft Machine he started his own group, Just Us. From 1975 to 1978 he led a nine-piece band called Ninesense. His own groups since then, usually quartets or quintets, have most often worked in the free jazz mode, with little or no pre-composed material. At the same time, he has continued to work with other groups that are very composition-based, such as guitarist Phil Miller's In Cahoots, drummer Pip Pyle's Equipe Out, and various projects with former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. In 2002, Dean and three other former Soft Machine members (Hugh Hopper, drummer John Marshall, and guitarist Allan Holdsworth) toured and recorded under the name Soft Works. With another former Soft Machine member, guitarist John Etheridge, replacing Holdsworth, they subsequently toured and recorded as Soft Machine Legacy, playing some pieces from the original Soft Machine repertoire as well as new works. Featuring Dean, three albums of theirs have been released: Live in Zaandam (2005, MoonJune Records), New Morning - The Paris Concert (2006, DVD/2cd – InAkustik Records) and the studio album Soft Machine Legacy (2006, MoonJune Records). Dean's last musical collaborations also included those with Soft Bounds (a quartet comprised of Dean, Hugh Hopper, Sophia Domancich and Simon Goubert), Alex Maguire's project Psychic Warrior, and Belgian rock-jazz band The Wrong Object. Dean's playing style could be equally tonal as scarily atonal; his forays into rock with Soft Machine feature a pioneering use of extreme amplification (particularly the live period between albums Third and Fourth)."

07 febbraio 2010


Un'intervista a Kerry Minnear realizzata pochi giorni fa si può ascoltare, divisa in tre file .mp3, al blog We Will Rock You.
Scrive l'intervistatore: "I have been lucky enough to interview both Derek Shulman and Gary Green from Gentle Giant previously, so I was very happy to get the opportunity to interview keyboardist Kerry Minnear, who called me from his home in the UK on Thursday, January 28th to discuss the new releases and his career with Gentle Giant. Over and over what strikes me about the members of Gentle Giant is how different they are from most of the rock musicians I deal with. I routinely interview some of the most famous musicians of a certain time period, as well as some lesser-known people, and they tend to fall into two distinct categories. The ones who have succeeded but whose success is mostly in the past tend to be embittered, looking back over their shoulders at a time in their lives that has been gone for decades, but continues to define them in the public eye in a way they can never really escape. The ones who took a shot but didn’t really achieve commercial success tend to be embittered by their lack of success.
The members of Gentle Giant, by sharp contrast, seem to genuinely celebrate the music they created together; they seem to understand that the very nature of what they created was always going to limit its commercial prospects, and they seem to be okay with that, even proud of it. There’s a humility about the members of the group that isn’t really the norm for musicians. In the case of Kerry Minnear in particular, he is so soft-spoken and unassuming that it’s almost difficult to picture him in a setting where he was required to earn his living by going out and entertaining people en masse, and it’s almost impossible to imagine him having to function in the shark tank of the Seventies music business."

06 febbraio 2010


Un concerto stasera a Bruxelles segna il debutto ufficiale del nuovo album di Univers Zero, Clivages (su etichetta Cuneiform Records). La formazione è un sestetto: Daniel Denis (drums), Michel Berckmans (oboe, bassoon & English horn), Pierre Chevalier (keyboards), Dimitri Evers (bass), Martin Lauwers (violin), Kurt Budé (clarinets & saxophones).

Univers Zero, Magma e Madelgaire saranno i protagonisti del festival Alter Ego il prossimo 20 febbraio 2010 a Soignies, Belgio: "Cette édition du Festival Alter Ego promet, d’ores et déjà, d’être à plus d’un titre exceptionnelle puisque, d’une part, l’Espace culturel Victor Jara servira pour la première fois d’écrin à l’événement et que, d’autre part, le légendaire groupe Magma en assurera la tête d’affiche. Ce groupe fondé en 1969 par le compositeur-batteur-chanteur Christian Vander est, en effet, toujours en activité et est à l'origine du genre musical baptisé Zeuhl, mélangeant rock, jazz, avant-garde et chant choral. Le groupe a exercé une influence inestimable sur le jazz-rock et l'avant-garde musicale à travers le monde et a fait connaître des musiciens français et étrangers de premier ordre, comme Didier Lockwood ou Claude Engel, parmi de nombreux autres. On retrouvera également sur la scène du festival Univers Zéro et Madelgaire. Un partenariat Alter Ego, Centre culturel de Soignies et Centre culturel régional du Centre."
Espace culturel Victor Jara - Place Van Zeeland, 31 - Soignies - 20 février 2010: www.alterego-asbl.be