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1 | monday: for C.T. | 4:05 |
| 2 | tuesday: for N.J.P. | 1:40 | |
| 3 | wednesday: for P.G. | 5:34 | |
| 4 | thursday: for K.I. | 4:20 | |
| 5 | friday: for D.T. | 2:33 | |
| 6 | saturday: for J.J. | 4:16 | |
| 7 | sunday: for R.Q. | 0:52 |
Using 7 days in a week of lock-down as his aural canvas, John Butcher renders his daily thoughts, feelings and experiences with a rich array of solo works for Tenor saxophone, Soprano saxophone and Saxophone driven piano. John’s work and remarkable technique is usually brought to life by the milieu of tempered environments and interaction with both other players and the audience. Alone, enclosed within 4 walls with a microphone, he unveils a side to his practice that is rarely revealed. There’s tense tonal passages that meet glimmers of melodic lines. Moments of slow, searching refrains that roll out, before the next day sputtering in warbler-esque lexicon. On ‘Thursday’ spirals of notes ascend, descend and wind around as if battling with gravity. Driving a piano with his saxophone, he conjures vaporous fogs of sound, capturing dense subjectivity in thick clouds. Like Steve Lacy’s solo experimentations documented on ‘Lapis’ and ‘Straws’, ‘STUCK’ offer an aural vantage point into John’s complex inner worlds. A rewarding experience on several listens.
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John Butcher / saxophones & recording
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Tenor saxophone (1, 6)
Soprano saxophone (2, 4, 5)
Saxophone driven piano (3)
Recorded at home, London, June 1-8, 2020.
Artwork design by Oliver Barrett
Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Matthew Shipp.
Additionally he values occasional encounters - with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee.
Recent compositions include “Fluid Fixations” (an hcmf commission), “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, “Good Liquor…” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts” (shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award).
"Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic, or vague”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld." WIRE - October 2024. The Primer by Seymour Wright
