The music on this album was recorded in 1977, without an audience, in the auditorium of the Aston University Centre for the Arts at Gosta Green in Birmingham. It was originally released on two audio cassettes. The standard World On A String from Side A of 005 does not appear on this release, but two extra live tracks do which were included in a lunchtime concert by OME at the same venue earlier that year. The principal performers were David Panton - alto saxophone, piano and radio, Jan Steele - flute and alto saxophone, and Anthony Pither - piano. Melvyn Poore - tuba, makes a brief guest appearance
I had written in a 1968 journal that I wanted ‘…to begin the fusion of music into one music….’*** This rather grandiloquent statement did not become a deliberately conscious and active project until 1970 when I began developing a solo performance and formulated my One Music concept. ‘It was about using any resources/sources without discrimination, whether in terms of style, genre, methodology, instrumentation, personnel, musical/non-musical elements and so on, but inclusively - the diametric opposite of the exclusiveness of the non-idiomatic approach of Derek Bailey, or the almost pointillist approach of John Stevens.’*** ‘These many sources, no matter from where they derive, become One Music in a singular eclectic mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, the juxtapositions of which can be as bewildering and disturbing as more original voices - the comforting familiar surface may possibly mask a more acerbic centre’.*** But this is not a fusion as such, but a refusal to respect/recognise lines of demarcation, exclusivity or prohibition. This re-release illustrates an important aspect of this approach with a classically trained pianist improvising freely within a jazz context, and a player associated with jazz and improvised music playing a through-composed pieces modelled on classical forms. It was recordings of such performances which eventually led to the release of Nondo HTLP1370 which launched the Nondo label in 1972, and which remained central to its output.
DP
* Charles Fox. Transcript of Jazz Today broadcast 1973 (private communication) ** Geoffrey Sentinella, Waltham Forest Society for Contemporary Music 1965 (private communication) *** David Panton. Private journal (1968). Liner notes to Nondo HTLP1370 (re-release 2011). Liner notes to Nondo DPLP002 (re-release 2012).
credits
released March 9, 2018
Recorded at Aston University Centre for the Arts, Birmingham 15 March, 17 & 25 November 1977
Works by Panton and Panton/Steele published by D & ED Panton Music
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