Comprovisation

The portmanteau title of this incisively played and very clearly recorded sequence reflects Thomas's dual interest in complex avant-garde music and free improvisation, and in the places where the extremes meet. Finnissy's Jazz, for instance, is both a spectacular notational extravagance and something close to freewheeling jazz. Paul Obermayer's Coil is a less extreme instance of such complexity, and a most invigorating one, seeming to end with the atonal equivalent of a thumping cadence (but not quite doing so). --Paul Driver THE SUNDAY TIMES

At first it is frustrating that, despite telling us that these pieces are a mixture of the fully notated and the partly improvised, Philip Thomas doesn't expand his sleevenotes to tell us which are which. But it emerges on listening that this is partly the point. The very word, comprovisation, no longer acknowledges a division between the two. From compositions by improvisers like Mick Beck and Chris Burn, to compositions informed by improvisation, like Finnissy's Jazz, to compositions that vehemently resist improvisation against all expectations, like Cage's Variations II, Thomas has found several interesting points between the two poles. Paul Obermayer, best known as a laptop improviser with FURT and Bark!, was a good place to start the debate with his (presumably intricately notated) coil. Fans of Obermayer's work with Richard Barrett will know what to expect here: music compressed like raw carbon into diamond shards. This makes a gritty start to the CD to which it doesn't really return. In the next piece Burn brings a more obviously improvisatory feel through the frequent returns to collections of related gestures, which feel jazzy in their loose rhythms and the wide, swinging movements they demand of the pianist; this sort of playing is more characteristic of the rest of the disc. The Finnissy is perhaps more intellectually stimulated - it jazz-es rather than is jazz-y - but it still retains that impression of delicate flexibility that characterises much of his piano music. Its wide registral spacing nods towards Jelly Roll and boogie woogie; and its sudden shifts of character - as though structured around 16-bar verses - recall a wider jazz idiom. Mick Beck calls for balls of various weights and sizes, which are bounced around the inside of the piano and occasionally out onto the studio floor, and Simon Fell takes a final, different approach to the issue of accident versus control, basing his Inventions on improvisations on Bach, and coming up with the some of the most emotionally involving music of this CD. Although the musical quality is sometimes uneven, Thomas's concept in this recording - and the series of concerts from which it sprang - remains as valid as ever, and continues to engage many of the most interesting voices in British music. Comprovising without compromise. --Tim Rutherford-Johnson NEW NOTES

CD solo debut for avant garde king: adventurous pianist Philip Thomas continues to enjoy himself exploring new pianistic boundaries and has just released his first solo CD..... Given the who's who of composers in his huge repertoire, few of them conventional, he is one of the UK's leading avant garde, a term rarely used now - it's either new, progressive or experimental music, pianists. A lot of Philip's success in performing much of the material he does is down to his utter belief in it and enthusiasm in exploring it, allied to rock-solid piano-playing technique. All this somehow manages to transmit itself on his new solo CD, Comprovisation (broadly, a term for notated music with elements of improvisation), the title of his last Sheffield concerts in 2005. Pieces by Paul Obermayer, Chris Burn and John Cage - Variations II, an exercise in timing - can be appreciated on a dispassionate cerebral level. For those wanting something a little more tangible, the standout pieces are Michael Finnissy's densely virtuosic Jazz and Simon H. Fell's Thirteen New Inventions, rather clever and skilful homage to Bach, commissioned and premiered by Philip at Persistence Works in December 2002. --Bernard Lee SHEFFIELD TELEGRAPH

A recital of solo piano compositions 'reflecting upon' improvisation, from New Music specialist Philip Thomas. The disc includes five first published recordings (all except Cage); three of the pieces (Burn, Beck & Fell) were commissioned and premiered by Philip in 2005. Highly recommended.