Rabble Without A Cause, March 5: solo improvisations
Mostly new releases of solo performances - drums, flute and saxophone
For a change of pace, I’ll be featuring solo improvisations on the show this week. Most of the tracks to be played are from late 2024 and 2025. The show will start, however, with an overlooked release from 2023 (in my defence, I only started hosting this show early in 2024).
Devin Gray is an American drummer and I’ll play a few tracks from his 2023 release, “Most Definitely”. Gray writes on the Bandcamp release page:
Listening is the most important form of communication we have, its effects are greater than speaking. You will learn more by allowing yourself to be truly open, focused, and by challenging your everyday listening beyond what your ears and mind are capable of comprehending. I honestly and most definitely believe that through increased listening to not only human words, but to artistic musical and sonic actions our world will be a better place. One where we connect more, express more, relate and vibrate on a higher level; one where we try to understand each other more deeply through our actions of sonics and beyond.
The whole manifesto is worth a read in these troubled times.
Laura Cocks is a flautist with a new solo release, FATHM. In the liner notes written by poet and vocalist Shara Lunon, she writes:
This is music that asks you to stay—not just to listen, but to be in the space it creates. Let it unfold slowly. Let it breathe through you. And when it ends, let the silence find you. Let it hold you.
Ornella Noulet is an alto saxophone player based in Belgium. We will hear from her new release, “Promise of Faithfulness”. The album title is based on the last words of Albert Camus’ speech for the Nobel Prize:
It remains for me to thank you from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to him/herself in silence every day.
Another alto saxophone player based in Belgium has a new release of solo sax and “preparations” - “Prose Metallique”. Audrey Lauro lives in Brussels and has a Canadian connection, having worked with the Canadian ensemble, GGRIL. Here’s a performance she did with them in Rimouski in 2023.
Ryoko Ono is a Japanese alto saxophone player, also with a new solo release, “The Days”. Ono writes:
We are living through the same time. The worst day ever for someone might be a happy day for someone else. "THE DAYS" are solo saxophone pieces of drama from someone's life.
The show will end with Steve Baczkowski on tenor and baritone sax from his 2024 release, “Cheap Fabric”, recorded on the night of a November lunar eclipse.
You can listen live at 93.1 on the FM dial in the National Capital Region or online at CKCUFM.com, at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5. The show is also available for on demand streaming.