Drummer/composer Edward Ware and saxophonist Jeff Henderson have been collaborating since 1995 – performing in Aotearoa - New Zealand and New York City, where Ware has been based for the last 25 years. After many gigs, concerts, and spontaneous recordings - iiii Records is excited to present the first ever album of these close musical compatriots.
During a visit to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2022, Ware and Henderson spent an evening recording with local double bass player Eamon Edmundsen-Wells.
The resulting music is hugely energetic and engaging - melding Ware’s compositional, melodic rhythms with Henderson’s wild sonics and Edmundsen-Wells’ supple elasticity. A three ingredient sopa which transcends the sum of its parts –‘A Fury in the Mind’ is a unique meeting of strong artistic personalities.
Music which questions, examines and challenges itself in the moment.
'A Fury in the Mind'
"Improvisation is not composition" - this is the kind of deliberately provocative, and possibly tongue in cheek remark, I've been hearing from Jeff for years now, (we've been making music on and off one way or another since the '90's) and Jeff's approach to sound is every bit as exploratory and engaging.
Jeff Henderson is the extraordinary musician playing saxophones on this recording along with the equally compelling Eamon Edmundsen-Wells on acoustic bass and myself on drums.
So if improvisation is not composition, what is it? In the same way as Socrates can famously assert that "..the unexamined life is not worth living..." without ever perhaps expecting to define exactly what that 'life' is, then we can freely examine the materials of music without having to consciously engage with any pre-conditions of composition, or follow any particular rules that dictate aesthetic value - in short, we remain open to the unexpected.
This music is elemental, organic and evolutionary.
It is adaptable to circumstance and arises from it.
It is present tense immediate in its creation.
And perhaps the best we can hope for as artists and conduits for its creation, is that your engagement with it, as the listener, will draw you deeply into your own experience of what it is to listen attentively to the unfolding of musical life.
Edward Ware
New York, Oct. 2022
credits
released February 17, 2023
Jeff Henderson - alto, baritone saxophones
Eamon Edmundsen-Wells - double bass
Edward Ware- drums
recorded at the Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa - New Zealand on 11 April 2022
Mixed and mastered by Jeff Henderson
Cover composite image by EW & JH utilising images by Marek Piwnicki and Maximalfocus