Each evening, for three days, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Seymour Wright will play an alto saxophone solo. Both have developed unique, physical, technical and often extreme approaches to their instrument, and sound like no one else.

Since first meeting a decade ago in London, regular encounters here and in Paris have followed. Often, these have involved them hearing each other play (solo, and in regular groups such as Hubbub, the Ames Room, SUM and lll人), and talking about their particular conceptions of the saxophone; for example, Seymour has spoken of a baffle-to-bell saxophony, describing his 2009 solo record, Seymour Wright of Derby, as ‘improvised and about the saxophone – music, history and technique – actual and potential’.

In 2010, one such exchange of ideas moved them through the open soprano invention of Steve Lacy, over the food of Fergus Henderson, and into the role of surprise, risk and structures (like the saxophone) in improvisation. A result of the conversation was a possible, possibly imagined, approach, or challenge – the total saxophone. An open way of working with the instrument today, and into the future. Another result was the suggestion of an open-ended series of playing opportunities, challenges, to test this possibility.

The first of these was a concert of solos that took place this summer in Paris, and included also French alto-saxophonist Pierre-Antoine Badaroux. These three evenings in OTO’s project space will continue this on-going series of solo-alto-saxophonic work. Sharing the challenge of revisiting and projecting the same space and structure – the alto saxophone – through the same space and structure – the project space – over the same space and structure – an evening – into the same space and structure – London.



JEAN-LUC GUIONNET

Guionnet is a Parisian artist active in many fields (music, visual arts, philosophy and cinema), he has mostly worked in electro-acoustics and free improvisation playing alto & soprano saxophone, church organ, and piano. A quick selection of collaborations: Jerome Noetinger, Mattin, Toshimaru Nakamura, Hubbub, Taku Unami. He studied musique concrete under Iannis Xenakis. Guionnet also produces the Ateliers de Création Radiophoniques ("creative radio workshops") for a national radio.

www.jeanlucguionnet.eu/
theamesroom.wordpress.com/

SEYMOUR WRIGHT

“Saxophonist Seymour Wright has emerged as the most important saxophonist of his generation. . . [He] shows a command of the saxophone which in contrast to most ‘non-idiomatic’ playing – cynically translated as ‘make your saxophone sound like anything other than a saxophone’ – has deep roots in a tradition of playing that goes back to Frankie Trumbauer, Coleman Hawkins and Willie Smith.” - Brian Morton