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let's start with the shortest
Jack Wright responds to the word "musician" and "saxophonist" (among others) and is mild-mannered in most social situations, doesn't kill most animals, and obeys most road signs. He improvises, sometimes astutely, sometimes foolishly, but never with the intent to make something called "music." Whatever it is, more sounds come out of his horn than you are likely to have heard.
more information, if desired
Jack Wright is an American saxophonist (Philadelphia area) and free improviser who disdains association with existing scenes and is not to be compared with any other saxophonist. At 76, he is still unmarketable, and finds in that a freedom he enjoys rather than regrets. One of the few originals of American free improvisation in the 80s, he was then touring the countryside with blow-your-brains-out free jazz. By the late 90's he found that boring, repetitive, and too acceptable. Wright has shifted quite a few gears and is now in top form, not hesitating to disappoint audiences looking for the art-crowd comfort zone. He holds to the old spirit of adventure: each instant of playing is fresh, twisting all he has done into new gestalts. His vocabulary keeps expanding and he uses it all, one long Joycean sentence (with strange ellipses), whether playing alone or with partners. He wrote THE book on free improv, The Free Musics, a philosophy of music and a historical-sociological study that puts the mass of players at the center of the story.
A bit more conventional:
Described twenty years ago as an "undergrounder by design," Jack Wright is a veteran saxophone improviser based mainly in Philadelphia. He has played mostly on tour through the US and Europe since the early 80s in search of interesting partners and playing situations. Now at 76 he is still the "Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation," as the late guitarist Davey Williams called him in the 80s, on the road as much as ever. He continues to inspire players outside music-school careerdom, playing sessions with visiting and resident players old and new. His partners over the years are mostly unknown to the music press, and too numerous to mention. He's said to have the widest vocabulary of any saxophonist, including leaping pitches, punchy, precise timing, sharp and intrusive multiphonics, surprising gaps of silence, and obscene animalistic sounds. He has had a book published, Jan. 2017, The Free Musics, which is becoming very popular among improvisers. A reviewer for the Washington Post said, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king". But for a true assessment listen to the music he and his partners create: Spring Garden Music, for sounds and writings.
still more info
Described twenty-five years ago as an "undergrounder by design," Jack Wright is a veteran saxophone improviser based mainly in Philadelphia but living in Easton PA. In 1979, after an academic career teaching at Temple University (European History) and activist politics, he returned to the instrument of his youth. Almost immediately he discovered free improv, virtually unknown at the time; he is one of the few who have played this exclusively since then. He plays mostly on tour through the US and Europe in search of interesting partners and playing situations. Now at 76 he is still the "Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation," as the late guitarist Davey Williams called him back in the 80s, continuing to inspire musicians, playing and organizing sessions and gigs with visiting and resident players old and new. His Spring Garden Music House has been around since 1977, for the past twelve years housing only improvisers and providing space for sessions.
He has been able to avoid the standard career aimed at visibility and prestige, seeing it as a hindrance to musical growth. The partners he's preferred over the years have also been mostly unknown to the music press, and too numerous to list here. His current focus is with the ever-changing underground scene, of whom he finds the most promising to be his partners Zach Darrup, guitar, Evan Lipson, double bass, Ben Bennett, percussion, Matt Tomlinson, bass guitar, Ron Stabinsky, piano, and Patrick Crossland, trombone.
Jack is a "musician's
musician" yet unschooled in music, developing through interaction
with partners and his version of private discipline. He's said to have
the widest vocabulary of any, an expert at leaping pitches, punchy,
precise timing, the entire range of volume, intrusive and sculptured
multiphonics, vocalizations, and obscene animalistic sounds. You'll
hear the most conventional jazz sound one minute and "post-electronic
saxophone" the next. His playing sums up his 40 years of improvising,
from lyrical, Ornette-style free jazz at first to the hard-blasting
version, very reduced, quiet playing around 2000. In the past ten years
he's come back to more physically engaged playing, but with a phrasing
and space unique among sax players.
In Jan. 2017 his book was published, The
Free Musics, and has become very popular among improvisers. He has
been writing since the 80s, seeking to comprehend not just the beauty
of this unsettling music but its implications for the music world and
the social order. Consistently promoting free playing as the ground
zero of music, he has been open to playing with anyone who asks.
A reviewer for the Washington Post said, "In the rarefied, underground
world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is
king." But for your own assessment listen to the music he and his
partners create: Spring Garden Music, for sounds
and writings.
And finally the official version, the resume:
JACK WRIGHT
Alto, soprano,
tenor saxophones; piano
Born Pittsburgh PA in 1942 and grew up around Philadelphia and Chicago.
He began playing saxophone in 1952, with private instruction; also singing
in groups large and small through 1964, including a blue grass trio
(playing washtub bass), which recorded an album, "Undertaking Bluegrass."
After this he ceased playing music. He attended Lafayette College in
Easton PA, where he studied European history and literature and graduated
1964; Johns Hopkins University, MA in European history, 1972; taught
history at CCNY in NY and then Temple U. 1967-72. When he was fired
for lack of proper credentials he began working non-professionally as
a house painter and handyman, picking up skills in an improvised fashion.
In this period he was involved in left politics, organizing mainly on
a community level, and when that collapsed he picked up the horn again.
In the late seventies he returned to music in earnest, and very soon
began playing freely on the saxophone and piano. Partners for this music
then were sparse; he sought them out in NY and the East Coast, traveled
to the West Coast, then in 1983 began extensive tours in Europe, which
continued until 1986. In the US his partners were Toshi Makihara, Jim
Meneses, William Parker, Todd Whitman; in Europe he performed with Hannes
Bauer, Joe Sachse, Wigald Boning, Lars Rudolph, Wittwulf Malik, Peter
Hollinger, Bernhard Arndt, and Andreas Stehle, touring Germany, England,
Switzerland and Italy. In 1984 he began touring the US, either as soloist
or with his European partners, Roger Turner, Malik, and Rudolph, and
an American dancer from Chicago, Bob Eisen. In this period of the eighties
his music would today be considered free jazz, very full and expressive.
He was known for playing in places that had never been exposed to free
improvisation, and encouraging young players everywhere, such that guitarist
Davey Williams titled him the “Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation."
In 1988 he moved to Boulder CO and got involved in painting and writing,
continuing his private study of European literature and philosophy.
Yet he was still practicing and playing regularly, as a member of the
local community of players (The Front Range Improvisers Orchestra, FRIO),
and continued touring the US. In the late nineties there was a resurgence
of interest in non-idiomatic free improvisation in the US, especially
coming from Boston, but increasingly throughout the country. In 2000
Wright did an extensive tour of the West Coast with Boston soprano saxophonist
Bhob Rainey, and recorded with him in three different groups. His music
became often sound-oriented, using space, texture, and sustained tones,
but always with a characteristic energy and lyrical musicality. He moved
back to the East Coast in 2003 to be closer to his playing partners
and to Europe, and now lives in Easton PA. He has worked to strengthen
the free improv scene in Philadelphia by turning his former home there
on Spring Garden St. into a residence for such players, where he goes
regularly for sessions.
He has presented his music at most of the improv festivals in the US:
four years at High
Zero in Baltimore, several years at the Seattle
Improv Festival, the SFALT and the Outsound
New Music Summit Festivals in the Bay Area, California, the Autumn
Uprising in Boston, and the Improvised and Otherwise Festival in Brooklyn.
In 2005 he performed at the Museum of Modern Art in NY in a mini-festival,
Relay, involving 13 American and European players. In Nov. 2007 he performed
with Andrew Drury at the N.O. (not only) Jazz Festival in Zagreb Croatia,
and in Sept. 2008 with Olivier Toulemonde and Agnes Palier, as well
as Lebanese and Italian musicians, at the ContemporaneaMente Festival
in Lodi Italy.
Since 2000 he has renewed his label, Spring Garden Music, which presents his own music and that of his partners and are listed here.
He published The Free Musics in Jan. 2017, which has become qutie popular among improvisers. Wright was interviewed by Cadence Magazine, which is located here: Cadence Magazine July 2017, p. 55-73
He continues to seek out new partners; in 2002 and every year since he has returned to Europe to that end (list of tours). Those partners living in Europe with whom he has been playing most consistently the past decade are Pascal Battus, Paris; Alberto Braida, piano, Milan; Sebastian Cirotteau, tpt, Toulouse France; Phil Durrant, computer, violin, London; Michael Griener, drums, Berlin; Joel Gripp, double bass, Paris; Grundik Kasyansky, electronics, London; Hans Kocher, bass cl., Switzerland; Urs Leimgruber, saxes, Lucerne Switz; Andrea Neumann, inside piano, Berlin; Agnes Palier, voice, Rambouillet France; Adam Eve Risser, Paris; Stephan Rives, soprano sax, Beirut Lebanon; Sharif Sehnaoui, guitar, Beirut; Christine Abdelnour Sehnaoui, sax, Paris; Fabrizio Spera, drums, Rome; Olivier Toulemonde, percussion, France; Guillaume Viltard, bass, Lyons, France; and Sabine Vogel, flute, Berlin, Christopher Williams, double bass, Berlin. He has been especially active in bringing European, especially French musicians to tour in the US.
His major tours of the past fifteen years, in retrograde order,have been in North America unless otherwise mentioned:
with Roughhousing
in Europe, March 2019; with Evan Lipson in Europe, Nov. 2018; with Roughhousing
in Canada and US, Sept. 2018;with Roughhousing on West Coast, April
2018; with Zach
Darrup in Europe (Sept. 2017);Roughhousing
(fall 2016, spring 2017);
Bob Marsh (April 2016);, Zach Darrup (Nov. 2015), Wrest
(June 2014, Sept. 2014, April 2013, Sept. 2012); Europe with various
partners (Oct. 2011); the West Coast ( Fall 2010), with Bob Marsh (two
US tours 2010 and 2011); with Pascal Battus
on the east coast (2010); Europe (March 2010); the Northwest (Feb. 2010);
with Fabrizio Spera and Albert Braida on the east coast (2009); a
trio of Guillaume Viltard, bassist, and Grundik Kasyansky, electronics
in France, the Netherlands and Belgium; with Michael Johnsen, midwest;
with Fabrizio Spera and Gust Burns in the Northwest; with Andrea Neumann
and Stephane Rives on the East Coast (the Snowball Tour, 2008, joining
also with 11 other musicians); with Andrew Drury in the Balkans; with
French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani
(From Between) in the US twice, France, and Japan, 2003-2007; with Agnes
Palier and Olivier Toulemonde in Europe and the US East Coast; with
Carol Genetti, vocalist, and Jon Mueller, perc. (NomTom) in France and
the US; with Pittsburgh electronicist Michael Johnsen and Sebastien
Cirotteau of Toulouse, in Europe and the US; with Ben Wright, bassist,
in the US; with Doneda and Nakatani in Japan, France and the US (30
performances); and a cross-country tour with Michael Griener percussion
and Sabine Vogel flute of Berlin (2004); US tours with Reuben Radding
and with Phil Durrant (2003).
Wright has partners in most major cities of the US, with whom he plays
on his tours, over sixty US musicians with whom he is developing music.
Among those of the past five years are: Alban Bailly, guitar, accordion,
Bay Area CA; John Bennett, poet, Columbus OH; Ben Bennett, percussion,
Philadelphia; Gust Burns, piano, Seattle WA; Edmond Cho, guitar, Easton
PA; Patrick Crossland, trombone; Zachary Darrup, guitar and objects,
Phila.; Andrew Drury, percussion, Brooklyn NY; Michael Evans, percussion,
Brooklyn NY; Carol Genetti, voice, Chicago; Jacob Heule, percussion,
San Francisco; Joel Kromer, electronics, Bethlehem PA; Evan Lipson,
bass, Chattanooga; Toshi Makihara, dr, Phila.; Bob Marsh, guitar, voice,
violin, Richmond CA; Joe Moffett, tpt, NY; Joe Morris, guitar, New Haven
CT; Johan Nystrom, drums, now living in Sweden: Andrea Pensado, electronics,
Salem MA.; Reuben Radding, bass, NYC; Ron Stabinsky, piano, Wikesbarre
PA; James Strong, invented string instrument, Narberth PA; ; Matt Tomlinson,
bass guitar, Phila. PA; Chris Welcome, guitar, NY; Walter Wright, electronics,
Lowelll MA; Ben Wright, bass, Taos NM
