Evan Parker & Agusti Fernandez - Tempranillo (1996)

Tracklist

1. Part I (Mercerioso)
2. Part II
3. Part III
4. Part IV (31 Davids)
5. Part V
6. Part VI
7. Part VII
8. Part VIII (Nana for Nuria)

personnel :

Evan Parker - soprano & tenor saxophones
Agusti Fernandez - piano

The pairing of legendary soprano saxophonist Evan Parker with Spanish pianist Augusti Fernandez on record is one of those magical dates where everything that happens does so for a reason, and the result clarifies the process without much effort. This is deeply instinctual music that reflects the artist's drive to create against his given means of expression in order to engage it more fully. Parker's skeins of cascading arpeggios are employed throughout here, using his circular breathing technique to take the arc out of arpeggios and render the range of chromatic color useless against his barrage of forced air heroics. Fernandez doesn't play foil so much as accomplice. There is no contrapuntal relationship between pianist and saxophonist. His greased-lightening acrobatics create chords and tone cluster based not on Parker's root idiomatics, but on his sense of intervallic flow and legato phrasing. His unusually large two-handed chords offer a perfect middle drop for Parker to come roiling out of on at least six of this suite's eight parts. Where Parker advances into the mechanics of his horn, Fernandez speaks out of the tonal facility of his pedals and middle register offering Parker the wide way out into the open with his angular dissonances and bleating song lines. There isn't anything remotely "intellectual" about this music, but that said, it is artful carefully considered music that comes from a familiarity with instinctual process. The talk and flow, skip and shove of these two musicians create mannered tensions that are not resolved so much as taken into account. By the time it's all over, and Fernandez touches the last seven 16th notes from Parker's horn with a two chord tonal vamp, the pair will have switched places countless times and will have virtually become one another. This is as fine a duet record as Parker has ever released with anyone, and better than most of them.~Thom Jurek