review

Edouard Bronson/Tenor and Soprano saxophones, clarinet Sandy Evans/Tenor and Soprano saxophones Andrew Robson/Alto and Soprano saxophones Steve Elphick/Double Bass Hamish Stuart/Drums

Reviewed by John Shand/The Sydney Morning Herald Side On Cafe, February 26th, 2001

Highwire jazz without a safety net

Music as exhilarating as this exposes much jazz for the wretchedly safe art it is. Here the gloves were off and chances were taken which put a premium on the ears and the musicality of the participants. No-one was found wanting.

Among the many sources of wonder and joy was the players' ability to toy with the time. Pulses emerged, mirage-like, in spontaneously composed rubato sections, to fade again, evolve or solidity. Drummer Hamish Stuart was the most assured I have heard him in such a context. His playing brimmed with concrete options for the others to pursue, while remaining supple and subtle enough not to bulldoze the music into corners from which there was no escape.

Bassist Steve Elphick was in his element: anchoring, suggesting directions and liaising between the skittering drums and the mighty array of horns. His solos embodied his ability to say so much with so few notes, due largely to the magnanimity of his sound.

The assemblage of three of this country's very best saxophonists was as good as it looked on paper. Edouard Bronson, Sandy Evans and Andrew Robson share a love of communicative expression, as opposed to musical artifice. Their approaches diverge wildly, however. Evans (tenor and soprano) commanded attention with playing that was always bold, mostly magisterial, and often kaleidoscopic in its range; Robson (alto and soprano) was more quicksilvery, darting between ideas and insinuating others; Bronson (tenor, soprano, clarinet and slide didgeridoo) reinvented his style from piece to piece and not just because of his multiple instruments. His tenor, for instance could be a vehicle for austere probing or a simple motif, or an outpouring of emotional complexity, or for digging down to the grittiest R 'n' B imaginable.

One swooping clarinet cadenza was as profoundly moving as the climax of a Puccini aria. This band must not be a one-off project.