Having your first solo record appear on Evan Parker's imprint is quite a notch for a young trumpeter, a nod of recognition from one of the masters of unaccompanied horn improvisation. Having the second be a two-disc set on that same label would seem to buy one a permanent plot on the map.
Peter Evans' 2006 release more is more was a maximalist explosion. Evans has technique out the wazoo, and with seeming ease can employ a wide swath of characterizations: humor and disgust lie side by side within his expansive, accomplished improvisations. And as nimble as he is on his horns (he plays both the common and the smaller piccolo trumpet), he's also smart about how he presents himself. The last thing any of these three sessions is is dry. The 2006 disc was recorded in a chapel in Oberlin, Ohio, and the two sets comprising nature / culture are carefully thought-through studio configurations.
Disc one is a remarkable realization, not just of his technique but, presumably, of how Evans wants to sound, or even how how he sounds from his own vantage while playing. A multiple microphone configuration, allows him not only to "play the room" (as might be said of the Oberlin recording) but to quite literally play the rig. With room mikes as well as close mikes at both ends of the trumpet, Evans plays to various sound sources, from room-filling blasts to the quiet, almost internal sounds which are the lingua franca of contemporary minimalist improvisation. While for the most part he pointedly doesn't use in effects or processing, the first half concludes with the album's tour de force, a ten-minute piece constructed from multiple but largely unison tracks.
The second disc replicates his concert approach, both in the arc of the set (long, then short) and his use of a condenser mike on his horn running to a volume pedal and guitar amplifier, allowing him to play harsher passages, creating sounds at times reminiscent of early analogue synthesizers. It's an effective tool sparingly used; the dominant force over the 42 minutes, however, is the player's singularity of thought. It's a striking monologue.
Evans is well capable of conversing in both the systems of, say, Parker — that is, long, full, multi-linearity — and the less orthodox, perhaps more exploratory structures of (to keep the allusion adhering to British saxophonists) a quieter, more tactile player like John Butcher. He is, in that sense, bilingual, a kid who grew up speaking two languages so much that they became one, and words and phrases intertwine, often within a single sentence. (Evans is also schooled in the vernacular of bop, as evidenced by his role in Moppa Elliott's Mostly Other People Do the Killing, but alas the bridge of simile here grows wobbly.) Having played with Parker, as well as Peter Brotzmann, Steve Beresford and other staples of European free improvisation, is surely beginning to afford him what level of stardom such a career path allows. Fortunately, he's up to the job.
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