Cadence Solo Piano CD Review - met@ cd-001/Edgetone 4004

Scott R. Looney, on the other hand, is a superb keyboardist. I'm most familiar with his work for prepared piano, but on SOLO PIANO (Edgtone 4004), he delivers a superb recital for "unprepared" piano....This is highly personal music, dense and brooding, but capable of sudden lyrical flights or unexpected silences. Looney is certainly indebted, at times, quite audibly, to some of the giants of this idiom (there were times when i though very specifically of Cecil Taylor's "Indent", and others which evoked the ruminative mood of a Bley recital), but he is working out his own voice quite compellingly. "Wander" is a particularly intense pursuit of lines, errant though they may be. And the austerity of "Ken", K'an", and "Sun" is very striking, beautiful in its starkness. His massive deconstruction of standards like "A Train" are rewarding, too, but I'd rather have heard a whole disc of Looney's stuff. Nonetheless, this guy deserves you attention. He's got power, emotional heft, but also an abundance of musical intelligence and subtlety.




sale of tickets for money was abolished - liner notes by Reuben Radding

The trio on this recording are as much a part of their place in historical evolution as any group operating today, clearly a product of prodigious awareness of history. The subcategories improvised music are re-revealed and ignored on this recording with a satisfying fluidity. As extended instrumental techniques have been exploited by more and more players they become less the property of any one player, and more the building blocks of a worldwide language. Scott Looney's piano preparations and alternate methods of activating (combined with his electronic components) could remind one at times of the inside-the-piano work of say, Paul Bley and Denman Moroney, yet his combining of these languages with an eye on the future comes through. I also hear in him a healthy nod to Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, and in a way that sounds wonderfully organic. Like his cohort, Damon Smith, a virtual encyclopedia of modern bass styles and extended techniques, Scott has artifacts in his playing that range from pre-Jazz listening, and combined with Smith's, they become almost like Vladimir Ussachevsky interpreting the works of Conlon Nancarrow with Ronnie Boykins!

Tony Bevan is a man after my own heart. To dedicate oneself to the bass saxophone: now this is a statement. And then to play it as he does. Grinding, singing, growling, finishing contrabass or piano notes, or providing the attacks for the notes of others. He's like the air-traffic controller of this group, taking everything in and giving it back in a new way. I guarantee you've never heard the bass sax exploited to this degree. While the extreme register instruments have been utilized regularly since the late-60's by creative improvisers, almost none have devoted themselves to the lowest and highest-pitched instruments of the family full time. Netherlander Klaas Hekman has traveled the world with his bass sax, and the original master of the instrument was the great Adrian Rollini who is best known for his work with Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer. Now we have Englishman Tony Bevan to add to the list with a singular voice.

All the overblown expectation that built up during the approach of the new century has lifted and now important dynamic shifts can begin without all the pressure of outdated questions. The avant-garde tradition has extended itself beyond analysis that was based in the language of Jazz. The answers are self evident to those who passionately explore this music. The music poses new questions if you are willing to hear them. Are you really hearing or are you just listening?

Reuben Radding, 2001



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