‘I have a two-track mind: one is about feeling, and one is about technique. After 50 years of blowing the horn on stage, I’ll take the feeling over the technical part every time ….’ Saxophonist David Murray, with his unparalleled depth and breadth of musical experience, was very clear, in his UKjazznews interview with Morgan Enos, about the role of the emotional in live performance. It was this gut feeling that came to the fore in his unbroken, near-on ninety minute set at Cafe Oto with the power rhythm section of Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on double bass, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, with whom he had toured five years earlier.
It was a welcome surprise to find Murray booked in to Cafe Oto, and well worth the hour-long delay in the snaking queue outside the venue whilst the trio went through an exacting sound check. Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love are well known to the Dalston audience, through The Thing, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, and Atomic (all reviewed for londonjazznews) and were the perfect complement for Murray’s Cafe Oto debut.
As the audience settled, Murray, in a neat, dark suit, walked through the room to retrieve his tenor sax and bass clarinet before the trio took to the stage. Murray’s strident blast struck the match to light the fire. Håker Flaten pounded his resoundingly resonant bass and Nilssen-Love flipped from handwork on congas to intensely percussive play on cymbals and skins to set the course for a profoundly inventive and energetic journey.
At the core of Murray’s playing was his natural ability to move from a brightly melodic figure to raw, jagged explosions of notes that would flow with practiced ease and suddenly skid and stutter, honk and squawk to punctuate and rip apart a rhythmic statement. This was, unashamedly, not polite playing as Murray forced out notes and phrasing drawing on Albert Ayler’s affirmative spirit, recalling also Peter Brötzmann’s range and versatility. The thunderous rhythm section reinforced Murray’s unswerving determination as he pinpointed those moments of change fundamental to the trio’s inventive dialogue.
Murray generously sat back to allow extended solo and duo spells giving Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love full licence to explore the potential of the paper scores which served as starting points for several of the set’s numbers. ‘The paper of the music becomes almost unimportant,’ Murray said in the UKjazznews interview, ‘after you’ve spent hours and hours on the bandstand. The best music is off the page.’
Late on, Murray swapped to bass clarinet. Nilssen-Love, soloing, set up a gentle rhythm with brushes, countered with slowly spat out staccato sparks and oddball sounds from Murray to lead in to a funky, jumpy dance beat and Håker Flaten’s deep bass notes synching with those of the bass clarinet.
For their encore, with Murray back on sax, after swift deliberation Nilssen-Love led the trio steaming in to a carnival-flavoured sunset with a favourite from his Brazilian portfolio, rounding off an evening which had been filled with bubbles of invention, leaving the audience in no doubt that they had been in the presence of one of the great saxophonists.
