FRANCOIS TUSQUES PREPARED PIANO FRENCH LP JOHN CAGE-NWW

	€		55
	$		64

FRANCOIS TUSQUES

 LE PIANO PREPARE LP

Le Chant du Monde 1977

Excellent album of imaginative experimentation from french free jazz icon Francois Tusques. The prepared piano going far beyond John Cage...

Some info on the release:  Very rare original issue, released in France back in 1977, on the Chant du Monde label. Francois Tusques creates some unique musical environments preparing a piano in every possible way you can imagine!!

Here's a little Gem, a fascinating demonstration record of sorts, of the possibilities of prepared piano, as played by Tusques, some of it is a little on the light cheesy side, the first track seems to be a pastiche of a couple of different pieces by Granados. And it certainly bears little resemblance to his work of 10, years earlier with such Stalwarts of the nascent French free jazz scene as Barney Wilen, Beb Guerin, Bernard Vitet, Michel Portal and Francois jeanneau, - or later as virtually the house pianist for BYG...It is none the less an enjoyable listen, texturally varied rather beautiful, and not with out distinctively 'free' passages, something for collectors to cherish since its long out of print and quite rare.

Tusques quickly took to jazz—his worldliness certainly offering exposure to sounds that he would not have heard otherwise during the War—and counts among his early favorites Bud Powell and Rene Urtreger, not to mention subsequent affinities for Cecil Taylor ("but I am not a technical pianist... says Tusques), Mal Waldron, Thelonius Monk and Jaki Byard. At the start of the 60s, there was a significant scene of American expatriate improvisers in Paris—Bud, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Clarke, and traditionalists like Bechet—and a handful of young French players ready and willing to sit in, like saxophonist Barney Wilen and bassist Pierre Michelot. Certainly, as in England and elsewhere in Europe, French jazz of this nascent period was almost entirely beholden to the American post-bop model, and quite a few players who could stand alongside their American peers and run the changes.

Nevertheless, there was also a coterie of French improvisers for whom American-derived bebop was not the end, if even the means. Composer, arranger and sometime pianist Jef Gilson (who eventually began the famed Palm Records) was one of the ringleaders of the Parisian new jazz scene, mentoring young players like trumpeter Bernard Vitet, tenor man Jean-Louis Chautemps, drummer Charles Saudrais, bassist Beb Guerin and other soon-to-be leading lights. Tusques, though, was the only pianist at the time in Paris willing to extend those steps into the demanding compositional sound-world of 'free jazz,' and those who saw a continuous upward- and outward-mobility with this music looked to Tusques as a fulcrum. By 1965, Vitet, Chautemps, Saudrais, and Portal (then primarily a classical clarinetist) had asked Tusques to compose a number of loose springboard-pieces to work on as a group, which led to the recording of Free Jazz for poet Marcel Moloudji's tiny Moloudji label. In company with German vibraphonist-reedman Gunter Hampel's Heartplants (Saba, 1965) and trumpeter Manfred Schoof's Voices (CBS, 1966), Free Jazz is among the very earliest documents of a wholly European improvised music, one which springs more greatly from regional influences than those from across the Atlantic. Free Jazz was followed in 1967 by Le Nouveau Jazz (Moloudji), which joined Tusques with Wilen in the saxophonist's first recorded entrée into free playing (he would continue somewhat in this vein over the next several years), backed by Guerin and itinerant Italian drummer Aldo Romano, a fixture in Steve Lacy and Don Cherry's ensembles of the period. Both Moloudji recordings are among the rarest documents of European jazz and were limited to a pressing of only 200 copies apiece—nevertheless, it was Tusques' wherewithal that led to the first recorded examples of avant-garde French jazz.

A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers.

The prepared piano is interpreted by some musicologists as an aleatoric technique (although many composers, such as John Cage, often indicated precise measurements for placement of preparations), which was pioneered primarily by the aforementioned composer John Cage. However this is an oversimplification of the technique's desired results. Richard Bunger wrote a book The Well Prepared Piano in which he explains how Cage prepared his pianos and even which pianos are suitable, because of the deviation of string lengths within different types of brands. Bunger also clarifies why the preparations were done in such ways, in other words, what sound it causes per adaption (harmonics obtained, timbrel effects, etc.). The timbre of the instrument changes dramatically when preparations are introduced. Much of the technique is related to the harmonic positions of the strings. For instance a preparation on 1/2 of the string length causes a different sound than on 1/3. Cage was aware of this and made use of this knowledge. In other words, the preparations don't cause a random sound as often assumed. Parenthetically, many modern scores refer to a previously recorded sound, or include recordings that allow a pianist to imitate a desired sound on their instrument (see "Haiku," by Montague, or "My Closing Remarks," by Learn). 

Condition: Cover lies in excellent condition, looks very clean and has only minimal age wear. While the vinyl looks to have quite a few "hairline" marks and plays with a light amount of crackle, thus very good+ condition.

Tracklist

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