Take the compact and its beautiful cardboard packaging and you have a masterpiece in your hand. A subtle dialogue of sharp saxophones: the sopranino for J-J Duerinckx and the soprano and alto for Adrian Northover. Musically, we are in the wake of the great discoverers - solo saxophone explorers, like Steve Lacy, Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker or Michel Doneda, at a level of quality and precision that leaves you amazed. Thirteen duo improvisations or instant compositions based on intense mutual listening, an innate sense of collective construction and great sensitivity. The intrinsic musical sum of Hearoglyphics is ultimately comparable to opuses recorded by Steve Lacy and Evan Parker as a duet (Chirps / SAJ) or the same with Lol Coxhill (Three Blokes / FMP). At the start these two remarkable virtuosos, Belgian (Duerinckx) and Briton (Northover), did not have such an individual - personal and striking musical imprint as their aforementioned elders who created this movement of free improvisation and who trained them (JJD and AN) to express themselves as they do today, striving to push the boundaries of the “improvised” saxophone. But their joint effort is a real success. Indeed, over the pieces recorded in one go at the Red Shed Studio on April 8, 2019, we surprise ourselves to see a universe scrolling - maze of secret intervals, complex harmonies, constantly reinvented patterns, timbres à la both elegiac, volatile, acidic, diaphanous or saturated… Their voices intersect, complement each other or escape from too obvious resolutions. An accomplishment and a headlong rush in search of utopia. We discover a rare empathic connivance. It is called playing together as do the best violins, viola and cello who unite their voices to mutually enrich their respective playing and personal approach. The contrast can emerge gradually and plunge back into the interlocking - tiling where the work of each is embedded in the deepest of that of the other. Their impressive maturity envisions and reconsiders many elements, materials and points of view of musical work, whether it is the sound material of the distended, compressed or triturated column of air (harmonics, quintoys, phantom notes), or of the arrangement of frequencies in curves, spirals, interlacing by ear or by the grace of harmonic science (decades of intense daily work). The accuracy and precision of their breaths / fingerings / notes has only become a tool in the service of a vision that they share beyond the common, prodigious and essential to get a precise idea of ​​where the quest can lead. a Steve Lacy, an Evan Parker, a Lol Coxhill or a Roscoe Mitchell when it comes to dialogue until the end. These exceptional artists are appreciated for their unique and inimitable personal inventiveness. But a large part of their art also lies in the extreme quality in the collective commitment to intense dialogue where the smallest detail counts and where listening to others must be absolute. And it is in this perspective of collective construction and the complementary and inseparable uniqueness of individual voices in instantaneous creation that these two improvising saxophonists excel in a very sharp, unique and intimate way. An ideal that is difficult to achieve. Each piece finds an unpredictable continuation in one of the following pieces, the dialogue being created both in the moment and in the time that passes from one piece to another. A veritable panorama of sound and musical possibilities is established patiently and inexorably. Adrian Northover is part of this vibrant British scene: Steve Noble, John Edwards, Pat Thomas, Adam Bohman, Marcio Mattos, Sue Lynch… and has acquired a musical background from jazz, Indian music, alternative rock and research. sonorous, excelling indifferently on soprano and viola by making the characteristics of the two instruments coincide, which he inscribes in the same trajectory. Indeed, the soprano aces refuse to play the viola and the great violists depreciate themselves on the soprano. At home, it's green cabbage and cabbage green. There is in him a real coherence between what should be two distinctive "styles" as the two instruments are so different. As for Jean-Jacques Duerinckx, he became an expert on the sopranino saxophone, a difficult (even off-putting) instrument which never convinced me except in the hands and fingers of Anthony Braxton (of which JJ studied Composition 113 for soprano sax) or Michel Doneda, Lol Coxhill or Stefan Keune. J. J. has become a fanatic of dialogue with blowers who share his vision: clarinetists Tom Jackson and Jacques Foschia, saxophonists Michel Doneda, Adrian Northover and Franz Van Isacker. He could have published an album with Jackson or Foschia as a duo or a trio with Jackson and Northover. But it was the duet with Adrian that had the scoop. The intensity of the intimate. So follow the guide. All the knowledgeable people to whom I have played this magnificent album tell me their enthusiasm, their excitement and how convinced they were, to their surprise. Here we hear two artists improvising like the five fingers of the hand and rarely.
Jean - Michel Van Schouwburg
orynx-improvandsounds.blogspot.com/2020/09/jean-jacques-duerinckx-adrian-northover.html

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London – Brussels , Brussels – London.
Adrian and myself first met in Brussels via the improvisers network facilitated by Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Thanks to have made this possible JM
JJ Duerinckx