Free spirits invoke the plight of the dispossessed
By Chris Searle, Morning Star
IT’S a long way from Johannesburg to Hackney and when Ntshuks Bonga arrived in 1970 as a seven-year-old refugee from apartheid to live in London, I wonder if he ever envisaged that he would be playing alto saxophone some four decades on in a local jazz venue.
But that’s exactly where he ended up at Cafe Oto. Ntshuks was guest horn with the free-spirited trio of pianist Peter Urpeth, bassist Olie Brice and percussionist Terry Day.
As Day’s light brushwork and Brice’s sonorous, jumping beat unified with Urpeth’s gutturally super-rapid forays up and down his keys, Bonga’s battery of acerbic, vibrating and plunging cadences screeched and howled from his saxophone.
These were intensely free sounds, with the listener’s ways of hearing as creative as the inventions of the musicians. Urpeth is a tempestuous pianist, whose free thoroughfares of notes head in multiple directions simultaneously, while Brice’s pounding bass made the Balls Pond Road shake and Day tapped his drums with the thinnest of sticks, sparklers of sound.
As for Ntshuks, his addition to the trio sounded to me like the cries of the dispossessed, the uprooted or those forced to seek shelter in the bomb-ravaged cellars of their world. A million lives poured from his urgent horn — rasping, gravelly, adenoidal and powerfully defiant as one free collective sequence flowed into the next — and we heard the voices of the oppressed and jeopardised, with the insufferable cries of their children.
All this from four London free troubadours, improvising in a converted Victorian warehouse in Dalston and, as Ntshuks’s horn pealed like a nesting bird during the opening of the second piece, you knew that this was music that could fly anywhere and find immediate connection to humans living their lives in all the desperate places of our planet.
DownTown Music Gallery, New York:
WRAITH ISLAND [PETER URPETH / OLIE BRICE / NTSHUKS BONGA / TERRY DAY] - Live at Cafe Oto (FMR 439; UK) Wraith Island is Ntshuks Bonga on alto & soprano sax, Peter Urpeth on piano, Olie Brice on bass and Terry Day on drums. Similar to The Stone, Cafe Oto and Vortex, are the two main places where creative music thrives in London, throughout the year. This quartet combines four musicians from different scenes and sounding like they have been together for a long time. South African born saxist Ntshuks Bonga has been working with Louis Moholo for the past few years and does have that Township sound in his playing. I’ve just become familiar with pianist Peter Urpeth recently as he has two discs on FMR, one, a duo with Maggie Nicols and the other performing the music of John Cage. Bassist Olie Brice seems to be all over in recent years: he has a recent discs as a bandleader plus he has worked with Ingrid Laubrock, Paul Dunmall and Mikolaj Trzaska. Drummer Terry Day was the founding member of the People Band (existed way back in 1968-1970), as well as Alterations, legendary British improv band with a twisted sense of humor whose members included Steve Beresford & David Toop.
I listened to this long (79 minute) disc in its entirety earlier this week and was amazed by how consistently engaging it was. There are four quartet and two duet pieces. Whoever recorded this, did a great job as the sound is perfect. I really the sound of Mr. Ntshuks alto sax which is somewhere between Ornette, Thomas Chapin & John Zorn: intense, spiraling fragments quickly woven into tight lines. I doubt anyone would be able to figure out who any these men were in a blindfold test but I must admit that I was blown away throughout! - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
credits
released December 1, 2017
Peter Urpeth - piano
Terry Day - drums / percussion
Olie Brice - bass
Ntshuks Bonga - saxophone
Recorded at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London January 2017
Mastered by Keith Morrison at Wee Studio, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis
Cover art work - Terry Day
Produced by Trevor Taylor, FMR Records
Peter Urpeth is a pianist and composer working in free improvisation, experimental music and jazz, and performs commissioned compositions to classic silent movies. He was born in London and now lives and works from the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.
The Hein Weingard Trio mix free improvisation and controlled composition, making music for avant-garde jazz adventurers. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 10, 2023
