A thirty-minute tenor saxophone improvisation in his smallholding’s barn has become Phil Bancroft’s latest album, Testimony, released at the end of April on Phil’s own Myriad Streams platform. Shortly after its release he spoke to UK Jazz News about his approach to improvisation, his long-term plan for the barn and the album he calls “the most profound piece of music of my career to date.”
Testimony is that relatively rare beast, the solo saxophone album. “It’s a challenging format for a player,” says Phil, “A real challenge to make a complete piece of music. And what do you play? Choosing a programme is another challenge, unless it’s something that is sort of demanded by where your practice takes you, as it was in my case. It’s also seen as a challenge for the listener, a belief that a single musician with a single instrument lacks the variety to keep the interest, so it’s not seen as commercially attractive. I disagree. I’m a huge fan of single line pieces such as the Bach Cello Suites, which I play on saxophone. If the idea’s development is good enough, then the single instrumental voice is a beautiful format, the listener can really focus on the flow of ideas and small variations in tone and articulation become more meaningful.”
Choosing the instrument he used on the album was less of a challenge, as he only owns one tenor saxophone, a silver Mark VI Selmer from the late 1950s, “When the VIs were supposedly at their peak.” He obtained it from “the marvellous Iain Ballamy, a dear friend who has inspired, guided and supported me throughout my career, including teaming me up with this wonderful saxophone. Thanks Iain!”
The album emerged naturally through several elements in Phil’s life and musical practice. “When I recorded Testimony, in 2021, I was exploring solo improvisation, playing the first note with no plan, feeling the energy at the moment of starting, trying to properly improvise every note. I took a lesson with the great Lee Konitz in my twenties and he told me his main focus was to try and improvise every note. At the time I was like ‘What does that even mean?’ but after thirty years I think I know, at least my own version. Improvisation moved from being something to do with learning and playing within the jazz language and tradition, playing over standards (which I still very much do and deeply love) or playing within compositions, to include exploring the freedom and space of solo improvisations, playing with form in real-time with no constraints.”
Phil didn’t record his improvisation with a view to creating an album: “I had no specific plan, other than not being open to events. One of themajor parts of my artistic practice is captured in the phrase ‘Let’s see what happens…’.” The album presents the improvisation as a suite in nine parts, across eight tracks. “In terms of the order of the suite, I did move one section. Part 7 was played after Parts 2 and 3, and I thought it sat better later, although I think it would have worked in its original position.” Other than that the order is as Phil played it, with Parts 2 and 3 put together on a single track, as he felt they flowed well from one to the other while being too short to make individual tracks.
Phil explains his struggle with various elements of being an improvising performer as “the battle between what I wanted to happen, what I thought I wanted to create, and what I actually created. I work in music and creativity education with my brother Tom, and we talk and write about this a lot.” He views the emotional challenges of creativity through a ‘Birth/Death model’: “There has to be the Death of the thousands of potential things you wanted to create, to allow the Birth of the one thing you have actually created. This creates a conflict intrinsic to the creative process. In a truly creative process, what emerges is new to you.”
A key element of this practice is the avoidance of preconceptions: “I work very hard on the horn and the ideas I use when improvising, but I try not to have a fixed idea of outcomes. I believe we finish the surface of these things in the moment, in a fast, real-time, dialogue with the emerging work. It’s often outside our intellectual control as improvisers, as if we are under the surface, seeing it from the other side, from inside the emerging work. Only later, when you hear the music back a few times, can you get to know the surface from the outside, as the listeners do. This journey confused me as a younger musician, but now I am familiar with it.”
Phil has said that his best improvisation comes from his non-intellectual side, being “strapped to a wild beast that does the improvising.” He’s come to the realisation over a number of years. “I used to think that if I practiced and studied enough I would get the wild beast under control, but all that’s happened is that the wild beast got faster, more aware and more agile. If I am intellectually in control, the stuff becomes a bit pre-conceived and less organic. When I recorded Testimony, I had been thinking about setting up cameras and all that sort of stuff, so when it came to playing I was a bit distracted, then I was actually pretty negative about myself and my playing while I played it. The inner critic is one way I have of letting the wild beast crack on and do its thing.”
Phil believes this natural musical part of us deals with “the important stuff that makes meaning, the patterning or relationship between ideas, and the possibilities for the where the next line might go. This is all happening in real time, and it has become the centre of my teaching and artistic practice. For me at least the music makes sense, tells a specific story over all nine sections. Hopefully, other people’s brains get the same feeling.” Despite being “deeply proud” of the work, Bancroft is still trepidatious about its release, “properly scared and excited to send this recording out into the universe.”
As for the barn, it’s now a regular playing/recording space. “Since Testimony I’ve recorded Finding Hope (When All Seems Lost) there, with Graeme Stephen playing semi-acoustic guitar and Gyan Singh on Tabla. We played with the guitar amp in the barn amongst us, no amplification on the Tabla and no headphones: no barrier between us, or between us and our instruments. I also recorded a Trio album with my brother Tom on kit and bassist Mario Caribe, soon to be released on Myriad Streams, in the same way.” Phil believes the barn’s qualities result from its high roof, with wooden beams, and old stone walls called random rubble walls: “So while the shape of the space is broadly speaking two parallel walls, the surface on a millimetre to millimetre level is absolutely random so no standing waves build up.” As Phil describes it, the barn “is a real gift from the musical gods, and this is where I will record till I die.”
Testimony is released on Myriad Streams — www.myriadstreams.com
