Steve Lacy - Outings - Nueva NC 1012 (1986) / Nexus - Open Mouth Blues - Red Record VPA 169 (1983)

AMG Review by Brian Olewnick

Though soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy recorded many volumes of solo music, on only a handful did he use overdubbing and rarely to the extent of this obscure album recorded in Italy in 1986. Sponsored by the official Italian radio station, RAI, and apparently intended as the first of a series of radio broadcasts called Sounding Islands, Outings consists of two lengthy pieces very much in the inimitable Lacy style: clean, almost singsongy themes that gradually expand, fracture, and wend their way into unexpected and beautiful territory. The first piece, “Labyrinth,” dedicated to the painter Giorgio de Chirico, overdubs three saxophones at the beginning and end but is otherwise given over to a “standard” solo performance with Lacy keeping to the lower ranges of his instrument and eschewing any shrillness or abrasiveness. “Islands” opens with a sextet of overdubbed soprano saxes playing a repeating, minimalist theme in the foreground with plaintive moans in the rear (reminiscent of some work by the duo of Anthony Braxton and Richard Teitelbaum) before reverting to a duo format, here recorded with substantial room ambience. The reverberations of the soprano and the generally mournful tones provide a fine, melancholy aura. In fact, this selection features some of the calmest, almost pastoral playing that one is likely to hear from Lacy until some squeaks and multi-phonics set in during the final third of the piece. If lucky enough to find a copy, Outings is a worthwhile addition to the Lacy catalog and should be of substantial interest to the serious Lacy collector.

I must add that this recording was sponsored not only by the Italian radio station RadioUno but even, I say almost by the important ISMEZ (Institute For The Musical Development Of Southern Countries) which was, through the figure of musicologist Gianfranco Salvatore the producer of the record.

From the cover notes written by Gianfranco Salvatore he says:

“In preparing for ISMEZ, of a research project on the Mediterranean musical archetypes that also provided for the production of relevant original compositions by contemporary musicians, it was easy to think of Steve Lacy as the ideal musicians…a musician to whom one could entrust the ancient achetype of the Labyrinth. In all of Lacy’s work in fact, one can perceive something that looks like a geometry of the Arcanum: his soprano sax(“divine, perverse instrument, not yet quite determined”, as he once said to me in an interview) has always expressed a “reasoning spirituality”, a music that appears at the same time visionary like an oracle and convincing like a science”

Steve Lacy soprano sax overdubbed

Recorded in Rome 1986 april 12 and 13 and june 20.

01 Labirinth 20.05

02 Island 20.50

All compositions by Steve Lacy

NEXUS - OPEN MOUTH BLUES - RED Record VPA 169

In my opinion one of the most exciting records of Italian (European?) jazz in the eighties.

The first output of a neglected group, and a little known album never reissued on cd. Music so strong and yet lirycal, swingin’hard and with themes that fills in your head without givin’ up to timbrical and compositional research.

The source of this music is in Andrew Cirylle groups (Tiziano Tononi studied with Cirylle who is by his admission his musical and life teacher) and perhaps Tim Berne.

Recorded & mixed at Studio Barigozzi, Milano, 1983 June 24th and 25th
Released September 1983

A1) Amanita Muscaria (P.DallaPorta) 16.20
A2) Open Mouth Blues (T.Tononi) 6.46
B3) Night Raga Falls (D.Cavallanti) 8.22
B4) Song for the Seals (T.Tononi) 11.22

NEXUS:
Daniele Cavallanti tenor & baritone saxes
Pino Minafra trumpet, flueghelhorn, pocket trumpet
Luca Bonvini trombone, sackbut
Paolino Dalla Porta bass, tambourine, kalimba
Tiziano Tononi drums, percussion, gongs

A music post seemed to me the only possible way to THANKS Sotise and Boromir. and try to overcome the great sadness in me.

No More Words. Listen And Enjoy the music!

See YOU. :-) LYM