BILL DIXON — Envoi (review)

BILL DIXON — Envoi album cover Live album · 2011 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Ricochet
I'm now discovering, with the feeling that he could soon become one of my favourites in free-jazz, someone no longer among us. There's no real guilty feeling in that, it might simply be the new affinity driving me crazy. I do actually remember a collaboration of his with Exploding Star Orchestra, back in 2008. Let's also not forget he was one of Cecil's conquistadors. But aside from that, there's nothing left for me to do but take a turn at all his own works, maybe even d'al fine a capo.

Envoi is the recording of Dixon's very last concert, played less than a month before passing away, at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Canada. There's an epilogue at the end of the two musical sets - which I mistrust for its intentional posthumous character - final thoughts adressed to the folks, spoken wearily and with heavy pausing: ”It is not so easy trying to attempt doing what you wanted to do ... in front of people who know what they would like for you to do ... so ... one does one's best, always .... and one hopes for the best ... always. I thank you”.

This sort of resolve with one's self and his art is not quite what I sense in the music as well. Not to be misunderstood, I don't think this is a tragic bop or a portent requiem, instead just incredibly affecting. Both opposite dimensions of this music are heartbreaking: either sore seething, in search of the tuned sound or the lively melody, either high, eclatant bursts. There's an extraordinary moment somewhere in the first section, where the brass would almost attempt Strauss' iconic hymn from Zarathustra, but tire after the first two notes of the grand arpeggio and then regress, break the wave into dissonances. Second section is even darker, beginning quite "barbaro", but shattering and diminishing bit by bit.

The band is the same from the less passionate and explorative Tapestries (Rob Mazurek, Taylor Ho Bynum, Warren Smith, among others), so Envoi also remains a genuine free-jazz concert, with powerful blasts and subtle rumbling.
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