After 20 years of this sort of thing, one might expect Barry Guy to have adopted a certain equinimity about the scope and direction of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. The tumultuous power of „Double Trouble", a seventeen-strong performance which seems to maintain a precarious balance in a state of remarkable turmoil, suggests instead that Guy is still exploring (and exploding) the untapped potential of a formidable ensemble.
Arguably the most powerful piece in what Barry is calling the 'third ear' of the LJCO, „Double Trouble" is, in its totality, a shattering experience. This is emotive language, but the impact of the performance makes it difficult to be dispassionate about it. The title refers to the original setting, a double 'concerto' for pianists Howard Riley and Alex Schlippenbach, each working within the confines of the LJCO and Globe Unity Orchestra respectively. Given the ineluctable power of this 'singular' reading of the work, it's difficult to imagine the soundstorm which must have been created by the two orchestras together. There are moments here - when, for example, the full band embraces around the furors being created by the trio of Guy, Evan Parker and Paul Lytton - which sounds as fierce as the music gets. This is dangerous territory to work in, ferociously difficult to sustain, equally difficult to police: when certain groups of players take off within the body of the composition, there must be a great temptation to let them ride out the storm, taking the music and the orchestra to who-knows-where. But shutting down the energy at the wrong moment can reduce an extended composition to little more than a series of blows, bouncing uncomfortably from episode to episode.
Guy's achievment is to grant „Double Trouble" a sense of cohesion even as it careers along what is sometimes a hair-rising course. Howard Riley is the first pillar of strength to emerge: his two-fisted solo part sounds almost as if there were two players at the keyboard, but his solo statement has the iron sense of structure which the piece as a whole attempts to utilise. From that point, the composition develops through a series of instrumental combinations punctuated by brief, flashing collective statements - the groupings determined by what Barry refers to as a «statistical weight dispersal». So the jittery flamboyance of Phil Wachsmann is threaded into a dialogue with the full orchestra, alongside Guy's droning undertow, while the Parker-Guy-Lytton trio emerges from that passage with its own irresistible momentum; and the trails followed by Pete McPhail and Steve Wick later in the piece function against the sparest of backgrounds.
Simply as some kind of visceral listening experience, „Double Trouble" more than passes muster, which should satisfy those who approach improvisations as an opportunity for some kind of intellectual head-bang (an heretical notion, perhaps, although that response may be more prevalent than some would like to suppose). But repeated listening to this recording reveals the gravitational pulls of Guy's writing in relation to the players. Only the most careful listening will expose the intricacies of Barry's scoring - in particular for the reed section, which is obliged to execute what sounds like impromptu blasts of chaos early in the composition. In fact they have been scored in byzantine detail. Central to the continuum of the music is a concern which follows Riley's mighty interlude has an harmonious, Bley-like melancholy, and the final gathering and coda for the brass has the quality of a symphonic recapitulation - albeit in a somewhat unconventional form!
All of which may surprise those who expect the LJCO to perform in either excessively academic mode or as messengers of an apocalyptic orchestral blow-out, the beauty of «Double Trouble» is its essential harmony - between soloists and orchestra; between Guy's writing and the scope for personal freedom; between improvisers of different 'generations', from the experience of Paul Rutherford and Marc Charig to the relative-newcomer insights of Pete McPhail and Simon Picard; between, perhaps, fine order and glorious disorder.
Every performance the LJCO gives opens the resources of this harmony a little further. „Double Trouble", as it was heard in Zurich, may have been no more than another stopover in a journey that has taken 20 years and counting, but it's good to have it here, as both a souvenir and a bracing, impassioned performance which one will frequently return to. And still the LJCO is an ensemble that works too seldom, with only a comparatively small band of followers to pay attention. May „Double Trouble" open a few more ears and doors to this great ensemble.
Richard Cook, editor of the «Wire», Liner notes
