Solos - East West

Album Review

This split album of saxophone solos is a delight in that it showcases two men who are legends in the avant sax world, but seldom get to play solo on recordings. Haslam is up first with a program recorded at Krivoy Rog in 1995 by The Ukranian Broadcasting Company. The most beautiful thing about his program on baritone saxophone is that all of his improvisations are based around a program of well-known jazz standards, such as Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing," linked with the sax player's own "Pepper Vodka," and back to Ellington for "I Got It Bad." His movement from his own improvisations into the standards is seamless, strident, and full of warmth and humor. After this he goes headfirst into a program of Bernstein ("Somewhere"), Romberg ("Softly as in a Morning Sunrise"), Warren ("Lulu's Back in Town"), and Youmans ("Tea for Two"), with his own tunes providing bridges to difficult harmonic leaps. Coxhill's moment (21 minutes' worth) is from a single performance in 1990 in London. Entitled "Incognitose," it was recorded at a reading by Jeff Nuttall from his book, The Bald Soprano. Coxhill uses the entire time to improvise in the middle and upper registers of the soprano — a curved Borgani — and traverse his way into the unknown with multiphonic studies of tonal terrains he hasn't freely explored in years. In all this is a wooly, very different, and thoroughly enjoyable listening experience for any solo saxophone fan or those interested in the development and work of either Haslam or Coxhill (and believe me, you haven't heard Coxhill this way before).