Paal Nilssen-Love: Oxford Brookes University (From The Oxford Times)

Paal Nilssen-Love: Oxford Brookes University

2:23pm Wednesday 17th December 2008 in

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With the demise of the Port Mahon the last Oxford Improvisers’ event of the year was forced to decamp at the last minute to the Drama Studio at Oxford Brookes. While improvisers can make music virtually anywhere, audiences are not so easily relocated so the Paal Nilssen-Love trio, on a tour of the UK, played to somewhat reduced numbers. Nevertheless it was a privilege to experience such a powerful and prestigious group.

Though still young, drummer Nilssen-Love already has an international reputation having worked with Ken Vandermark and toured worldwide.

Frode Gjerstad, playing clarinets and alto, has a long affiliation with free improvisation while bass player Nick Stephens goes back even further and is the creator of the record label Loose Torque.

These three players created a mesmerising flood of sound in which the individual contributions shifted with great expertise to assume different angles of prominence.

This was playing that pushed aside the prejudice that free improvisation involves everyone blasting away together.

Here there were times when there was a unity of sound, others when the clarinet of Gjerstad, a master of altered harmonics, flowed and skirled over the top or the fluttering rhythms from Nilssen-Love shifted forward only to be overtaken by the unusually muscular bass work of Stephens.

Much of the time the superbly varied yet constantly intense sound from Nilssen-Love’s minimal drum kit operated like sonic adhesive.

But there were moments of sudden tranquillity when the trio dropped to a duo particularly with drums and bass when the intricacy of Nilssen-Love’s drumming became suddenly clear.

The evening began with a wonderfully unusual piece conceived by guitarist Chris Brown, who, with John Greave on sax and Miles Doubleday, Malcolm Atkins and Sarah Verney Caird making an improvisers barbershop trio, performed with wit and musicality. At the end all the musicians plus Pete Mcphail and Dominic Lash came together as a surprisingly rich yet delicate septet.