Andrew Robson and Paul Cutlan
Simpatico
(Limelight Records)
The improvvisatori were amongst the most in-demand entertainers in 18th-century Italy. No reputable party was without one. Give them a topic, a rhythm and some musical accompaniment and off they go for hundreds of lines at a stretch, improvising verse. They sometimes performed as duos and it often ended up competitive; whoever ran out of ideas first was the loser. Sometimes, however, the duos were collaborative – bouncing ideas of each other, passing themes back and forth, conversing, creating something larger than just two people throwing words at each other. 1+1=infinity.
Andrew Robson and Paul Cutlan have inherited this collaborative spirit. Simpatico is a series of improvised duets. Robson plays alto sax throughout and Cutlan plays tenor sax, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet. These days this probably doesn’t sound like entertainment to most people, but I’m going to pose – arms akimbo and chin jutting out – and say that they would be my choice as present day improvvisatori. Yes, I would stand them up at one of my parties and tell them to go at it for 45 minutes. No, I am not a pretentious geek. With so many other things going on in contemporary life this kind of music can seem a bit inaccessible but I think there’s absolutely no reason not to mix it up. Robson and Cutlan for a bit, then throw on a bit of drum and bass. It’d be like mixing drinks: messy the next morning but a trip to the moon on the night. The party would have that no-holds-barred, 18th-century Venetian soirée feel, without the puffy shirts. It’s a glorious vision and the only thing preventing it from happening is that I can’t afford to pay the entertainment (there is no material reward that could soothe my savage pen).
The album starts with even trills from the clarinet. The alto joins, holding longer notes. The harmony created adds a shade but the overall tone colour is held at monochrome; clarinet and saxophone are trying to sound the same. It’s the start of a conversation between two people who are basically on the same wavelength. The tones of the instruments diverge more as the album goes on. It grows into a conversation between two people who happen to be friends but have individual points-of-view. The alto takes on more of the saxophone-ish immediacy of attack while the clarinet gets more strident.
The album progresses and the two players’ styles become more distinct. Robson’s voice takes on a wildness while Cutlan usually seems a bit more restrained and meticulous. Again, these attributes don’t clash; they blend and become something bigger than the sum of parts. And while their personalities sound different, they seem to share the same influences. They have obviously both studied the language of modern jazz but they are using it to say something new. For instance, at times the music sounds like Eric Dolphy multitracked: when the bass clarinet is producing long, fast melodic lines in the low register that seem to turn back in on themselves like an enormously long snake eating its own tail, or when the alto is starting fiery runs at fortissimo and leaping octaves at random moments. I’d mention track names in reference to these points, but they become a bit meaningless with this music. You get absorbed by the sounds and forget to have a look at the display on the CD player.
This is not to say that the music is entirely “out”. It doesn’t sound like 1960s-style freedom. It is entirely improvised but they are improvising structure and melody as well as just pure sound. And they are listening to each other. At one point Cutlan starts off a track with a traditional-sounding marching bass line and Robson joins in with a very jaunty little melody. The end result is somewhere between The Pirates of Penzance and Baby Elephant Walk. In this sense the disc probably comes more from the classical tradition of improvised music, which seemed to die out completely in the 20th century. Musicians like Debussy, Beethoven, Mozart **and **Bach often sat down at the keyboard and produced wonderfully structured pieces, extempore. They were the life of the party. And then you throw on the drum and bass.
