last weekend was the vancouver international jazz festival, and i spent the usual couple of days at the roundhouse's performance centre soaking up hours of improvised/free jazz.

one of the highlights for me was british bassist john edwards. i've never seen anyone attack their bass with such violence. slaps, kicks to the back of the bass, bowing across the side of the instrument - at times he looks as though he wants to break the instrument apart and smash the pieces in order to construct new sounds. he does everything he physically can to force the bass to bend to his will.

here is a crappy photo of his bass. the venue was dark and there was a no photo policy in place during the performance, so i tried to grab a quick shot before the show. it didn't turn out, but here it is anyway:

he played a couple of shows with saxophonist evan parker, complementing parker well. while the first show, which included mark feldman (violin), torsten müller (bass), peggy lee (cello), stefan smulovitz (violin and laptop), and ron samworth (guitars), was a bit muddled. improvised music often works best when it's performed in quartets or smaller. these musicians are all stellar, but it didn't work. evan parker seemed to have a hard time finding an entrance point, and mostly played his keys silently. one interesting bit was when smulovitz did some processing of parker's sax playing, feeding parker back on himself. i'd like to see more use of electronics in jazz.

the next day edwards and parker performed with tim berne and tom rainey. berne joined parker on saxophone, and rainey sat in on drums. this was an entirely different grouping, and parker and berne played off each other, building several frenzies. rainey plays as though he's in a trance, or homicidally fixated on someone in the audience. it's intense, and you get the sense that he is seriously tapped into the music. there are moments in improvised music when everything clicks into place and there is a moment of transcendence, and these players achieved this. when i stumbled from the dark venue out into the sun i felt like i had undergone some kind of catharsis.

shows at the roundhouse performance centre, vancouver, july 3/4, 2004