SIMPLY IN THEIR WORDSJOHN BUTCHER
Interview conducted by Tom Sękowski
This is the second of a regular series of "simply in their words" series interviews with some of the musicians from the improvised, jazz and new music genres that are making a real mark on the landscape. I don't want to add any additional text to these musicians' responses, as my words would only clutter what it is they're trying to convey to the readers.
John Butcher needs no introduction whatsoever. Over the past two decades, he has made music that is true: true to himself, and true to his audience. Though the jazz community at large (many will argue, that's not where he belongs anyhow) has shunned him, he persists. John survives as he knows what he has to say through his music is needed in this day and age of boredom and complacency. Maybe he’s not a new face anymore, but the statements made through his mouthpiece are relevant and fresh.
This is an e-mail interview I'd conducted with John Butcher in March of 2003.
Tom Sękowski: You've had several opportunities to document your solo saxophone work to date. I'm wondering if you can tell us what is the approach to preparing and producing such a recording? Do you have any "strategies" for playing solo gigs?
John Butcher: The recordings span a bit over 10 years now, so the approaches have obviously evolved and changed over that time. The first, "Thirteen Friendly Numbers" (Acta), was a studio recording - and at a time when I only had a few releases - and my solo work wasn't well known. So I wanted it to capture convincingly the ways I had been working in concert. But I found this very difficult (playing to just a microphone and an engineer), - the way I like to improvise solo needs an audience and the sense of a one-off event where you can't stop and start and choose (as in a studio) but have to battle through a unique playing situation. As a consequence the eventual pieces were partly planned (structurally, if not in details) and the multitracks (a response to my dislike of most saxophone quartets) were thought through, but done in real time without editing, to try to keep the freshness of improvising.
"London and Cologne" (Rastascan), and "Fixations" (Emanem) come (except for one multitrack) from concerts in Europe and the USA. I found this approach made more sense. The pieces have the sense of occasion of live music evolving in front of people, with all the different acoustics and geographies - but I could program it for CD, a different listening experience.
The newest, "Invisible Ear" (Fringes), takes a different approach - digging more deeply into some ideas I used to work with back in the early 80s. Amplification and feedback. I'd been developing this a little more in concerts recently - especially when playing with the increasing number of electronic/laptop players around - and wanted to push it further for a solo voice. It's mainly a studio recording - solos and multitracks. Two of the multitracks are acoustic and I never try to sound like a saxophone 'group'. "What Remain", for instance, works with tape derived ideas of synthesis through layering - superposition to create new sounds, and should sound like a giant imaginary instrument.
One thing in general, - I try to avoid playing preplanned routines, the curse of solo improvising. It's terrible when solos sound like they're trying to demonstrate some instrumental discovery. I like searching out new connections and hearing reasons for a piece to develop the way it does.
TS: Is the Durrant / Russell / Butcher trio still a functioning one? Can you tell us a little bit about the beginnings of this infamous trio?
JB: It's came to an end - mainly because Phil Durrant's violin playing interests are now almost exclusively with ultra minimalism. I met Phil around '85 at a workshop run by Phil Wachsmann. He'd be playing with John Russell for a few years, and invited me to play with them. It went well. Somehow the three 'melody' instruments found ways of getting inside each other’s sounds and keeping their space at the same time. We rehearsed weekly at John's house for about a year, doing a few local concerts - and it grew from there. It was with them, and, earlier, with Chris Burn, that I started developing a language away from most conventional saxophone styles. Something flexible that I could work with. I think it was influential that they were all string players (Chris only played directly on the piano strings). A vibrating string has so many colours that can be brought out by different bow pressures, attacks etc, and I tried to find ways of manipulating saxophone colour with the something like
the subtlety they could bring to it.
TS: Acta - Your own label that you've been running now for over 15 years. Why did you start it? Was it simply to have your recordings made available to the public? Why are the releases so sparse recently? Is it officially dormant? Have you laid it to rest?
JB: It was started to put out the LP "Conceits" by Butcher/Durrant/Russell. Pre-CD it was a major undertaking to release material, and also more of a special event, (there's a discussion worth having about ease of CD production versus quality control). Anyway, we were only just beginning to play outside of England and it was a way for more people to hear what we were doing. I just don't have the time now, so Acta's over.
TS: How did you begin your working relationship with Polwechsel? Did you approach them or did they approach you? What's in the works for the quartet?
JB:In '97 I got a phone call from Werner Dafeldecker. Radu Malfatti had just left the group and Werner asked me to come to Vienna to record what became "Polwechsel 2" (HatHut). I didn't know any of them at the time, although I knew the first CD. In Vienna we played a mixture of compositions and improvisation. I like working on compositions for recordings, but am not so interested in going out and playing them in concerts, so I'm pleased to say that recent Polwechsel concerts have been largely improvisation. (The first time we worked like this was on a Polish tour in 2001). Recently we have been playing with Christian Fennesz, and have a US tour later in the year.
TS: Will News from the Shed ever be resurrected or do all four musicians see it as a short-lived experience?
JB: We played together from '89 to '94. Radu Malfatti - for similar reasons to Phil Durrant, (his interest in ultra minimalism) - is not interested in working with this kind of improvisation any more. I still play with Lovens whenever possible, most recently in trio with Steve Beresford. The 1989 LP "'News from the Shed" (Acta) will soon be re-issued on John Corbett's 'Unheard Music' label. There will be 20 minutes of additional music from the original session.
TS: Can you tell us a little bit about your musical history with Chris Burn?
JB: We met at Surrey University, where he was studying music. I was doing physics. Initially we played various types of jazz together, from quartets to big-bands (somehow picking up a BBC award for the latter along the way). But both of us knew it was a student activity, to do with learning about past music, and we had to find a way forward that was not so second-hand. We evolved towards free improvisation - which involved a period of trying to completely discard the ways we had previously been playing our instruments. Chris worked only directly on the piano strings, and I would avoid anything that sounded like traditional saxophone notes and try to work without creating 'lines' which seems to be the natural saxophone language. We rehearsed privately for about a year before really giving any concerts and released an LP "Fonetiks" (Bead) in 84. By this time we'd re-introduced some more conventional musical language back into our playing, but had managed to re-think their significance (for us) - to break away from the more jazz derived instrumental cliches.
From then on we've played together in many settings - and in the late '80s formed the large group Ensemble - with the aim of developing a more chamber approach to large group improvising. Trying to improvise, where everyone has a voice - but no-one leads the music.
TS: What effect did playing with John Stevens and Spontaneous Music Ensemble had on your life as an improviser, as a musician?
JB: Strangely, I knew very little about the history of the SME when I started playing with John. But their approach had had such an influence on the London scene over the years that it had rubbed-off on many things I had been listening to - so it felt very natural to work with him.
Just before this was at a time when I wasn't very interested in playing with drummers (too continuous and dominating) - so it was a revelation to me how incredibly transparent John could make his playing, but still give it great drive and propulsion. And I always felt the direction could be changed by quite small musical movements from me or Roger, as John was listening on a very close and detailed level, prepared to change his own playing in a split second (which is a quality I like in most improvising). Another thing, is that he generated a sense of the importance of each, specific concert - as a never to be repeated, special event - even if the actual circumstances were less than ideal.
TS: Can you pin-point one of your recordings, which in your opinion, encompasses every aspect of John Butcher? Or perhaps, do you not subscribe to this theory, that one recording is able to capture "all" of you?
JB: Well, it's a mistake to try to put everything into each performance. Improvising means choosing, excluding, and inventing according to whom you're with. And, a recording is often a way of moving on. After making it you think "that's done now - so what next." I have favourite recordings - but they're all attached to circumstances and particular times rather than being all-encompassing.
TS: Do you have a favourite duo / trio / ensemble formation that was regrettably too short-lived, that you'd like to resurface again?
JB: Groups usually live the right length life for their musical possibilities.
TS: At this point in your musical journey, is there anyone with whom you've not yet had the chance to play with?
JB: It's important to have a proportion of new encounters each year, both players you know and those you haven't heard. A new venture that almost happened this summer, with Keith Rowe, is one I'd like soon, and there's plenty more.
TS: You've played with quite a few vocalists - Vanessa Mackness and Phil Minton among them. The question remains what do they add or take away from your playing? What challenges are your faced with?
JB: Voice and sax - well, we're both breathers and the process of making sound is very physical, so it's very intimate. The combination can be claustrophobic, and people tend to interpret voice sounds in very direct, emotional ways. I suppose we're programmed to - but vocalists are often working quite abstractly with sound - it is the listener creating associations, that may or may not be there. I like this ambiguity.
TS: When I saw you last at FIMAV (Victoriaville) in May 2002, shortly afterwards, you were headed for a Polish new music festival. Was this your first time playing in Poland? Do you have any plans for future concerts there?
JB: I've had three trips to play in Poland. Solo in 2000, with Polwechsel in 2001 and then this Festival with Ensemble (Musica Genera Festival in Szczecin, Poland). Robert Piotrowicz has done great things in bringing many improvising musicians to Poland. No current plans to revisit - unfortunately.
TS: Many people that have interviewed you in the past make a lot of noise about your university background (physics degree and a PhD in theoretical physics). Did you (do you) in fact tie in your educational background to your improvisations in any way? Can you expand more on the dilemma of playing with your gut vs. over-analytical improvisations.
JB: I think that most of the analytical work is done in preparation for improvising (listening, practicing, thinking), and the actual performance works at a much more intuitive, almost sub-conscious level. I try to enter an improvisation with something close to an empty mind.
Over the years I've done quite a lot of work on learning to control aspects of the saxophone that are on the edge of instability - and this has led to discoveries and surprises which I've correlated and partly systematized. Maybe this has some connection with a temperament that led to me doing physics research - but I think the actual musical concerns and performance practices have almost no tie-in. In science, imagination and inventiveness mean nothing if they don't agree with physical reality - in music you can create your own reality, a subjective world that might contradict and challenge many others.
TS: Who was the most significant model for you when you first took up playing?
JB: Everyone's playing history goes through all kinds of changes and developments, and there's a mammoth, and expanding list of musicians I've enjoyed and admired over the years. But I never know what to say when people ask about influences - everything, perhaps - positively and negatively. (Deciding that you don't want to play like certain people is pretty important).
In terms of free improvising, the most direct influence has come from the practical business of playing with people. Being able to experiment, in the 70s/80s, with musicians of my generation (Burn, Russell, Durrant etc) rather than playing with more established people was important. We could try to find our own way (even if it meant re-inventing the odd wheel here and there).
TS: Since you'd started playing, have you seen opportunities to play live and to put out your recordings increase or dwindle?
JB: Increase, definitely. In my early free improvising days there was very little interest or support, apart from other musicians (which was vital for sustaining the work). And the 80s were a terrible time for non-commercially motivated activities.
TS: What does the future hold for you in terms of new recorded works?
JB: Out March: "Invisible Ear" (Fringes) - solo, amplified, feedback and multitracked saxes; "Thermal" (Unsounds) - with Thomas Lehn (synth), Andy Moor (guitarist from the EX); "Optic" (Emanem) – with John Edwards (double bass); "Tincture" (Musica Genera) - with Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), Michael Zerang (percussion)
Out May: Chris Burn Ensemble – "Live in Szczecin" (Musica Genera)
For more detailed info on John Butcher’s discography, tour information and article links, go to: www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mbutcher.html
Recent or selected recommended John Butcher's recordings:
'News From The Shed (Acta, 1989)
Frisque Concordance "Spellings" (Random Acoustics, 1993)
Butcher/Durrant/Russell "Concert Moves" (Random Acoustics, 1993)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble "A New Distance" (Acta, 1994)
John Butcher/Vanessa Mackness "Respiritus" (Incus, 1995)
John Butcher "London and Cologne - Saxophone Solos" (Rastascan, 1996)
Fred Van Hove t'Nonet "Suite for B... City" (FMP, 1997)
Chris Burn's Ensemble "Navigations" (Acta, 1997)
Polwechsel "Polwechsel 2" (HatHut, 1999)
John Butcher / Gerry Hemingway "Shooters and Bowlers" (Red Toucan, 2001)
John Butcher "Fixations (14) Solo Saxophone Improvisations 1997-2000" (Emanem, 2001)
John Butcher / Derek Bailey / Rhodri Davies "Vortices and Angels" (Emanem, 2001)
Polwechsel "Polwechsel 3" (Durian, 2001)
John Butcher / Phil Durrant / Peggy Lee "Intentions" (Nuscope, 2001)
Chris Burn's Ensemble "Horizontals White" (Emanem, 2002)
Andy Moor / Thomas Lehn / John Butcher "Thermal" (Unsounds 2002)
John Butcher / Mike Hansen / Tomasz Krakowiak "Equation" (Spool, 2003)
John Butcher "Invisible Ear" (Fringes, 2003)
Interview conducted by Tom Sękowski
