MATT DAVIS / PHIL DURRANT / MARK WASTELL

(confront collectors series ccs 24)

 

Matt Davis : trumpet

Phil Durrant : violin

Mark Wastell : violoncello

 

Recorded by Tim Fletcher at St. Michael's and All Angels church, Chiswick, London, August 2000.

 

Re-issue of one of the earliest Confront releases, originally available in an edition of 50 in 2001.

 

The All Angels concert series ran between 1999 and 2001. Co-curated by Rhodri Davies and myself, we wanted to find an environment that was acoustically articulate enough to present our own quickly developing style of music. Rhodri found the perfectly beautiful Norman Shaw designed church, close to his then home, in Chiswick, West London. Once our base was established, there was a swift upward trajectory in our confidence to push forward with our own material.

 

All Angels enabled us to experiment with new combinations and groupings of musicians of our own choosing - some of which remain active to this day; The Sealed Knot, CRANC and Rhodri's duo with John Butcher all made their debut concerts within it's thick stone walls.

 

One such grouping was the trio represented on this recording; it's debut concert. I'd first met Matt Davis as long ago as 1996, at a London Musicians Collective workshop led by Eddie Prevost, and we'd subsequently played together in numerous formations. Phil Durrant and I had been playing together as a duo, in Assumed Possibilities (with Chris Burn and Rhodri) and the Chris Burn Ensemble, since 1997/8.

 

Matt was visiting from an extended stay as an english teacher in Barcelona (to where he soon returned) and I decided to stage a welcome home concert to help persuade him to stay in London (it didn't work!). Phil was an obviously compatible choice.

 

The music we played that night clearly stated something new in our individual and shared vocabularies and includes that very special ingredient, that unidentifiable, exhilarating feeling of wonder at creating something beyond your known capabilities.

 

Although the trio wasn't exactly over-subscribed with offers, this concert was the springboard for further explorations together and it definitely felt like a working outfit, notably a shared London concert with visiting Japanese musicians Taku Unami, Masafumi Ezaki and Masahiko Okura, followed by a series of rehearsals in the basement of Sound 323 record shop which oversaw our transformation from acoustic to electronic instruments and which led to an offer from Jon Abbey and the eventual recording sessions that resulted in our release 'open' for Erstwhile Records. (Mark Wastell)