Description
The ‘saxophone trio’ pioneered by Sonny Rollins in the mid 50’s, was taken as the format of choice by the leading saxophone players of the 70’s. The removal of the harmony instrument and the strictures of even temperament, liberated the potential horn and rhythm section – as the TRIO AIR with Henry Threadgill, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins, and the seminal 3D Family by David Murray, Andrew Cyrill and Johnny Dyani so aptly attest. The Ames Room with saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, bassist Clayton Thomas and drummer Will Guthrie, definitely draw on this lineage, but far from being another ‘Neo-NewThing’ tribute band, The Ames Room pursue a radical music that attempts to make the unique, personal and devastating impression, the aesthetic leap, that the AACM, the Loft Scene, and for example, the minimalist community made in their most feverish moments of creativity. All three members are well documented players and researchers in the music we broadly call ‘experimental’ – working across the spectrum of electro-acoustic composition, to noise, to ‘Improvised Music’. In this trio the listening experience is reduced, amplified and codified. This recording documents their final concert of a two week tour, where the literally bloodied mouth and fingers and hands of the trio were at their most precise.
