Bill Dixon Vade Mecum 1994 Soul Note/ Milano
Bill Dixon - trumpet, flugelhorn
Barry Guy - doublebass
William Parker - doublebass
Tony Oxley - percussion
1. Moment - (4'24")
2. Anamorphosis - (12'28")
3. Viale Nino Bixio 20 - (9'16")
4. Pellucity - (9'04")
5. Vade Mecum - (15'51")
6. Twice Upon a Time - (13'12")
“ How motion hereby is sensed in the minutae of tones”
“implication dominates how rhythms and pulse function more for their coloristic value than as velocities in a metric framework. Sounds are juxtaposed to intervallic sense, one to another so that the focal point of any passage is its direction rather than a tonal center”
-Ben Young-
“A musicians is more than a person who plays an instrument. The musician is an engineer of sound and should utilize any and every aspect of sound in the production of music"
Musician/Composer Jimmy Stewart-
Musician/Composer Jimmy Stewart-
“every instrument encompasses an orchestra”
-Musician/Composer Bill Dixon –
All these comments summarize concepts that some musicians have been developing since the 60’s. Unlike many of the revivalist tendencies of today, the “jazz musician” (to use a common reference term which still has pejorative implications today) was formerly defined as someone who played the instrument like no one else.
Bill Dixon’s personal approach and mastery of the trumpet is rarely discussed in the United States. His brilliance and purity of sound is compelling. The sudden tutti entrance is a fitting first take. Here are beautiful phrases constructed of fourths and fifths embellished by warm scalar colorings, poignant changes in register, and a modality not unlike the work of Miles Davis and John Coltrane particularly in the way Mr. Dixon can reduce a musical event to one sound or a few slow notes contrasted with evocative silences and compressed phrases.
