Friday, June 08, 2007

NEXT WEEK IN THE VOICE

Free at Last
Avant-jazz titans the David S. Ware Quartet triumphantly disband—sort of

"I didn't disband the group," says saxophonist David S. Ware by phone from his home in Plainfield, N.J. "We came off tour in Europe two months ago." There's been some confusion of late, see, because a recent live album, Renunciation (AUM Fidelity), documents last year's final U.S. performance by the David S. Ware Quartet, one of the longest-running groups in New York free jazz. He says the group will reconvene for European festivals or one-offs if the money's right, but his bandmates seem comfortable with the idea of moving on to the next step in their individual musical journeys. And as far as American audiences are concerned, the David S. Ware Quartet is no more, period.

Ware claims not to see what the big deal is. "We don't work in America anyway," he says. "I coulda said that a long time ago. We almost never work in America—America's such a superficial place, full of superficial people. It doesn't even matter."

But to some of us, it does. [Read the rest here.]

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