Bill Bruford’s Earthworks - Some Shiver, While He Cavorts (Sofia, Bulgaria, 30th October 1999)

This is Earthworks blowing off steam in Bulgaria at one of any number of gritty European Jazz Festivals that the band was regularly doing at the turn of the millennium. We have Patrick Clahar (tnr sax), Steve Hamilton (pno) and Mark Hodgson (bs); myself on tubs and I wrote the thing. I loved delivering the dynamics as the music gets unobtrusively quieter from 0’51” to its quietest point at around 1’01”, then reverses direction and gets back up to where it started from by the beginning of the tenor solo at 1’31”. The best dynamics are built into the composition such that you scarcely have to mark it. It’s obvious: it goes down to a whisper here. I’m also at my happiest here because the band at this point now has it down. I don’t have to think about the form or what comes next or whether my colleagues will remember – they know. We are interdependent and all we have to do is interact. Towards the end of Patrick’s tour-de-force solo, we’re all pretty much on the edge of our physical capabilities, with the possible exception of Steve, our supremely relaxed pianist. As I’ve said before, I don’t know how bass players do it. This was recorded some 25 years ago. This style of jazz, born of the acoustic Coltrane groups of the mid-60s, predates the arrival of hip-hop, electronica, and genre-bending combinations that inform contemporary sub-genres of 21st century jazz (all of which I love, incidentally). Its ‘business model’ (if you like) may be a bit dated, but back then it was a place to go if you wanted to generate music that could rival the heat and power of the best of the amplified rockers. A jazz group wailing at 300 . is still a mysterious organism, and one that I’ve always wanted to be in the middle of since I was a kid. So generating a few original pieces that people like Steve, Mark and Patrick could bring to life nightly was always going to be high on my Earthworks ‘to do’ list. Younger people who’d seldom - if ever - heard acoustic music close up and dangerous often reported to me about how visceral and muscular they found Earthworks, in full flight at some concert or club gig. Maybe we even made some jazz – or instrumental music- converts; you never know. If you like the video, hit the subscribe button, and I’ll see you next week, same time, same place. #billbruford #jazzdrummer #jazzdrumming