During a sabbatical in London, Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio (Day & Taxi) renewed his friendship with percussionist Roger Turner, with whom he had performed in a trio with Urs Leimgruber; meeting at Turner's London flat, they developed the spontaneous language heard on this freely improvised album, Gallio on soprano, alto & C-melody saxophones and Turner on drums & distinctive percussive devices.
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Christoph Gallio-soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, c melody saxophone
Roger Turner-drumset, percussion
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UPC: 752156105527
Label: ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd
Catalog ID: ezz-thetics 1055
Squidco Product Code: 34841
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: Switzerland
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded in London, UK, on December 14th, 2022, by Darren Clark.
"Early in July 2022, renowned Swiss saxophonist Christoph Gallio arrived in London at the beginning of a six-month sabbatical stay at the London Atelier of the Swiss Canton of Aargau. This was not a new experience as he had previously stayed in the Berlin Atelier, in 2009, and in the Buenos Aires Atelier of the City of Baden, in 2017. Gallio's application to stay in London had been selected over all others, maybe because he cited his reason for visiting London as his interest in the underground of the London improvised music scene. Among the items Gallio brought to London were copies of the album Unison Polyphony (ezz-thetics, 2022), the first album by the duo of Gallio and Swiss clarinettist Markus Eichenberger, and Gallio's first on the label.
It was not long before Gallio was blending into the London improvised music scene. Soon after his arrival, he was invited by percussionist Roger Turner to play at The Vortex jazz venue in a memorial concert for the late great saxophonist Lol Coxhill who had passed away a decade before. Turner and Coxhill had recorded together as a duo, as well as in the trio The Recedents with guitarist Mike Cooper. Turner and Gallio had history, a few years before having played together in Baden, in a trio with Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber. Following the Vortex gig, the duo of Gallio and Turner started to regularly play together in a studio-workshop basement room of Turner's two floor flat, the place where the drummer practised. In addition, as a way to meet and mingle with a cross section of London improvisers, Gallio was soon playing in the twenty-plus member London Improvisers Orchestra at their monthly concerts.
Gallio and Turner each have long experience of playing improvised music. Both of them are well travelled, and the list of esteemed musicians each has played with reads like a Who's Who of jazz and improvised music. There is far more to them than that, though; in their own way each is a polymath with a broad range of interests and experiences. From the start, the duo - soon named DUO GATU, from the beginnings of their surnames - got along well as people. Not only did they play in the basement room but, while drinking a lot of tea in the kitchen above, they also talked about the world, especially about fine art.
The nature of the basement and the players' awareness of neighbours affected their approach to how they played. On the positive side, they had to talk about such limitations, what they meant or allowed, and their approaches to improvisation. Gallio and Turner did not immediately get on musically but they struggled through differences together. The initial idea behind the basement meetings was not to record an album, but it was soon obvious that would be a sensible idea. In fact, it was not until 14th December 2022 - nearing the end of Gallio's six-month visit - that the album was recorded. Despite the time that the two had spent playing together in Turner's basement, when they recorded the album, everything was spontaneously played live, without any pre-conceived ideas about the content of what they would play.
The end result was the six tracks here which range in length from just over three minutes to just under sixteen. Despite the different durations of those tracks, it is immediately obvious that nothing was being forced; if the music was flowing and sounding good, they would go with it for as long as necessary to play everything that needed playing; if three minutes was long enough to say all that needed saying, why play more? Gallio played soprano, alto and C-melody saxophones, giving plenty of variety to his playing. Turner is credited with drums and percussion, which gives some idea of the scope of his playing. Throughout the album, the effects of the duo's basement meetings are plain to hear. For the majority of the time, both of them are playing together with neither of them leading and the other following; from the rhythms which they each play without either of them setting the pace, it is clear that they are listening to one another throughout, side by side.
In the history of jazz, The Art of the Duo has been used as an album title several times, most notably by US saxophonist Lee Konitz and German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff (Enja, 1988), by pianist Mal Waldron and saxophonist Jim Pepper (Tutu, 1989), and by Danish bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson and Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine (Enja, 1993). The Enja label once had a sub-label called Art of the Duo. All of the above preceded the series of five albums by the Brad Mehldau Trio which were entitled (or subtitled) The Art of the Trio.
Despite such usages, it is not easy to find a description of what constitutes "the art of the duo" in jazz or improvised music. Suffice to say that any credible description would have to encompass the duo of Gallio and Turner, their approaches to playing together and the contents of You Can Blackmail Me Later."-John Eyles, December 2023
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Christoph Gallio "Christoph Gallio was born in 1957 and lives in Baden, Switzerland. Self-taught, he began playing 19 years soprano saxophone. He studied saxophone with Iwan Roth at Basel Conservatory and Music at Steve Lacy in Paris. MA in Transdisciplinarity at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Gallio in 1987 received the Special Art Prize of the city of Basel and the Canton Aargau 2009 Berlin studio and 2012 a work contribution. He directs the bands DAY & TAXI (with Silvan Jeger and David Meier), MÖSIÖBLÖ (with Sylvia Nopper, Marino Pliakas and Thomas Eckert), and ROSES FOR ALL (with Jan Roder and Oliver Steidle). With the visual artist Beat Streuli him on a longstanding cooperation. The latest joint project is the interdisciplinary performance ROAD WORKS (with Andrea Neumann, Ernst Thoma, Dominique Girod and Julian Sartorius). Since 1977, played and plays Christoph Gallio among other things with Irene Schweizer, Irene Aebi, Urs Voerkel, Peter K. Frey, Daniel Studer, Günter Müller, Stephan Wittwer, Norbert Möslang, Ernst Thoma, Peter Kowald, Alfred Zimmerlin, Matthew Ostrowski, Hans Koch, Werner Lüdi, Urs Blöchlinger, Erhard Hirt, Dieter Ulrich, Fred Frith, Phil Minton, John Russel, Lindsay L. Cooper, Peter Schärli, Bernhard Bamert, Takashi Kazamaki, Yoshiaki Onnyk Kinno, Samm Bennett, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Kazutoki Umezu, Tetsu Saitoh , William Parker, Rashied Ali, Christian Wolfarth, Martin Lorenz, Hans-Christian Sarnau, Lara Stanic, Olaf Rupp, Kazumi, Helmut Erler, Hans Benda, Sven Åke Johansson, Andrea Neumann, Julian Sartorius. Solos and performances with the dancers Christine Brodbeck, Yvonne Meier, Tomiko Takai, Franz Frautschi and Hideto Heshiki. Cooperation including with the artists Alex Silver, Eric Hattan and writer Kurt Aebli. Since 1986 Gallio composes for himself, his band and others. Concerts and tours at home and abroad. Various recordings." ^ Hide Bio for Christoph Gallio • Show Bio for Roger Turner "Roger Turner (born 1946, Whitstable, England) is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts. Turner studied English literature and contemporary philosophy at Sussex University, playing with Chris Biscoe for the British Council in 1968, a first concert in improvisation. His move to London gave him contact with the first and second generation improvisers and he began to play primarily with Lol Coxhill, Gary Todd, John Russell, Hugh Davies, Steve Beresford, and Phil Minton. In the years immediately after 1974 his work was primarily concentrated on opening the way to a more personal percussion language. This was also a period of intense collaborations that structured many of his future approaches to music-making and saw the formation of two long-lasting acoustic duos with Phil Minton and with John Russell. Recordings of these duos document an extreme attention to timbre and pitch, as well as a constantly shifting speed that typified much of his work at the time. The duo with Minton toured extensively throughout Europe, USA and Canada. In 1979 he established CAW records with John Russell and Anthony Wood, and recorded the solo album The Blur Between focussing on single surface improvisations: a linear and reduced equipment approach he had started using with Carlos Zingaro and others in live performances. In addition to forming Trump music with Gary Todd to promote improvised music in London, he also involved himself in formative activities of the London Musicians Collective during this period. He was awarded Arts Council of Great Britain bursaries for solo percussion in 1980, and in 1983 for investigation into percussion with electronics. Extensive festival and club solo work followed, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival and the Brussels Festival of Percussion. In 1982 the trio The Recedents was formed with Lol Coxhill and Mike Cooper exploring the possibilities of electro-acoustic music, in which Turner initially played drumset and EMS Synthi A as a means of bending the sounds of various metal percussion instruments. This group, still existing, mixes song, jazz, punk/thrash, with acoustic detail in always shifting sonorities, and has worked throughout Europe, Canada and the UK, also recording for the French Nato label. Involvements with experimental rock musics and open-form song included extensive work in duo with Annette Peacock 1983-5, with whom he toured in Europe and Scandinavia. They recorded the album I have no feelings for Ironic. In 1984-5, he was invited for workshop residences at Alan Silva's Institute Art Culture Perception in Paris, where long-term collaborations with Alan began, culminating in The Tradition Trio with Johannes Bauer. This group was central to his explorations of forms of free jazz, an interest that has seen him working with musicians on both sides of the Atlantic (including Elton Dean, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, Roy Campbell, Henry Grimes, The Wardrobe Trio and Charles Gayle). Since the early 1980s his work has focussed on numerous projects with improvising musicians and groups, touring Europe, Australia, USA and Canada. Perhaps the most important of the later groups would be Konk Pack, formed in 1997, with Tim Hodgkinson and Thomas Lehn, a group whose use of volume and sense of detail continues the exploration of an electro-acoustic dynamic that forms one of his main musical concerns. This group has toured extensively in Europe and USA. He forged working relationships with Japanese musicians over the years: in the 1980s with Toshinori Kondo in the trio with John Russell, but since the mid-1990s in concerts and recordings with guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi in Austria, Japan, and U.K, and in the recent (2009) Hana-Bi three-day event in London that included the guitarist and the pianist Chino Shuichi. An active involvement in visual art has always been in dialogue with his music, and an inspiration for it. In the forefront of this is his work with Susan Turcot (the investigation/documentation of music and sound-drawing both in Europe and Canada-including the Being Rich box collection --, and music for her 2008 animation film Bitumen, Blood, and the Carbon Climb. His music for dance/performance includes work with Alexander Frangenheim's Concepts of Doing, Stuttgart ; Carlos Zingaro's Encontros projects in Lisbon and Macau; and most recently in the Josef Nadj production etc.etc. (premiered Vandeouvre, France, 2008) and which is a continuing involvement. In March 2009 he was invited to travel and perform on the Arctic island Svalbard, and was also invited to attend and play in the Comprovise event in Cologne, Germany in June 2009, set up to examine any possible relationship between improvisation and composition. Turner's music-making with international improvisers in ad hoc and group collaborations have since the 1970s to the present day included Toshinori Kondo, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Otomo Yoshihide, Shelley Hirsch, Joelle Leandre, Keith Rowe, Ab Baars, Barry Guy, Barre Philips, Henry Grimes, Paul Rutherford, Gunter Christmann, Marilyn Crispell, Irene Schweizer, Frederik Rzewski, and Malcolm Goldstein." ^ Hide Bio for Roger Turner
1/17/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
1/17/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. The Box 06:01
2. Service 03:10
3. East End Streets 15:55
4. Dark Chill 08:06
5. You Can Blackmail Me Later 03:04
6. Fuck Off 09:41
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European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
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ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd.