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short version:
Jack Wright is a saxophonist in the Philadelphia area, one of the originals of American free improvisation, and still actively touring. Now 81, he lived some diverse lives, as activist and academic, until settling into music full-time in 1979--free playing is all he's done since then. Now post-covid he is again touring in Europe (April 2023) and the US, where he is still the "Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation," as guitarist Davey Williams called him. He started out in the free jazz direction, but by the late 90's found that boring and conventional; shifting gears a few times he is now playing sounds that few have heard before. His playing consists of distorted pitches, precise timing, intrusive multiphonics, sudden changes of direction, obscene animalistic sounds, and occasional "real" notes. He partners mostly with Zach Darrup, Ben Bennett, Evan Lipson, and Ron Stabinsky, his most current groups being Wrest, Minimal Disturbance, Roughhousing, and Never. He published a book in 2017, The Free Musics, sold to most of the free players in the US and many in Europe. He just released a book of mostly political critique, drawing on his background, Shaky Ground. For the books go here; for sounds, etc. see Spring Garden Music.
expanded:
Described forty years ago as an "undergrounder by design," Jack Wright is a veteran saxophone improviser based mainly in Philadelphia and living in nearby 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 and still obscure. He is one of the few who have played this exclusively since then, one of the originals of the 80s era. He plays mostly on tour through the US and Europe in search of interesting partners and playing situations. Now at 80 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 sixteen years housing only improvisers and providing space for sessions. In the early 00s it was the space for the No Nets he oganized.
He has avoided 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 sound-oriented, mostly associated the underground known as electronic noise music. His main partners the past several years have been Zach Darrup, guitar,Ben Bennett, percussion, Evan Lipson, double bass, and Ron Stabinsky. keyboards, the personnel of Wrest, Minimal Disturbance, Roughhousing, and Never.
Jack is what used to be called a "musician's musician," yet unschooled in music, learning through interaction with partners and private discipline. He's said to have the widest vocabulary of any, and still expanding--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 for a second or two and "post-electronic saxophone" the next. His playing sums up his 40-plus years of improvising, from lyrical, Ornette-style free jazz at first, then hard-blasting and emotive, then the opposite of that--reduced, quiet playing around 2000. The past dozen years he's come back to more physically engaged playing, but with a phrasing and variable sound unique among sax players.
In 2017 he published, The Free Musics, which has sold around 900 copies, mainly to improvisers in the US through direct contact, and often on tour. In 2022 he published another book, Shaky Ground, which combines his self-questioning and life experiences with a historical analysis of the current situation, particularly the left today. His books are available from him, info at Spring Garden Editions.
A reviewer for the Washington Post said, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king."
See Spring Garden Music, for more information.
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 lessons; 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, 1973; taught
history at CCNY in NY and then Temple U. 1967-72. When he was fired
for lack of the Ph.D. he painted houses, worked on rehab construction
crews, and worked as a handyman, picking up skills in an improvised
fashion.
From '69 to '75 or so he was involved in left politics, organizing mainly on a community level, then joining a left study group. When that came to an end, after a time of self-searching, he picked up the horn again, and in '79 began improvising freely on the saxophone and piano.
At the time, people thought it was impossible to play without a structure, so partners for this music were few. He sought them out in NY and the East Coast, traveled to the West Coast in '82, then in '83 began two month tours in Europe, which continued until 1986.
In the US his East Coast partners were Toshi Makihara, Jim Meneses, William Parker, and Todd Whitman. In Europe he performed with Hannes Bauer, Joe Sachse, Wigald Boning, Lars Rudolph, Wittwulf Malik, the late Peter Hollinger, Bernhard Arndt, and Andreas (now Max) Stehle, with whom he toured in Germany, England, Switzerland and Italy. In 1984 he began touring the US, either as soloist, with the Chicago dancer Bob Eisen, guitarist Chris Cochrane and the Shakin Rays of Chattanooga, and with his European partners, Stehle, Roger Turner, Malik, and Rudolph.
In this period of the eighties his music would today be classified as 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."
With his only vinyl record to date, "Free Life, Singing," in 1983, he began a label, Spring Garden Music, which presents his own music and that of his partners.
In 1988 Wright moved to Boulder CO and began painting, revisited his private study of European literature and philosophy, and explored the psychology and spirituality he found in Boulder. In the nineties he began a journal, some of which is here; an early part of his journal was later included in Shaky Ground,. He was still practicing and playing regularly, and as a member of the local community of players he formed 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 where improv was most
resurgent, 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.
Wright 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, a festival in the Bay Area, 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. He performed as a
soloist at the 2006 Irtijal Festival in Beirut; he and percussionist
Andrew Drury performed at the 2007 N.O. (not only) Jazz Festival in
Zagreb Croatia; and in 2008 in a trio with Olivier Toulemonde and Agnes
Palier at the ContemporaneaMente Festival
in Lodi Italy.
In 2017 he published, The Free Musics, which has sold around 900 copies, mainly to improvisers in the US through direct contact, and often on tour. Wright was interviewed by Cadence Magazine, ( p. 55-73) for that book. Then in 2022 he published another book, Shaky Ground, which combines his self-questioning and life experiences with a historical analysis of the current situation, particularly the left today. More information and availability of the books is at Spring Garden Editions. A collection of his writing on music, from the eighties to the present is here.
A reviewer for the Washington Post said, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king."
Beginning in 2002 and until recent years Wright's Europe tours aimed to find new partners. Those with whom he was playing most consistently are Christine Abdelnour, sax, Paris; Pascal Battus, Paris; Alberto Braida, piano, Milan; Sebastian Cirotteau, tpt, Toulouse France; Phil Durrant, computer, violin, London; Michael Griener, drums, Berlin; Grundik Kasyansky, electronics, London; Hans Kocher, bass cl., Switzerland; Urs Leimgruber, saxes, Lucerne Switz; Andrea Neumann, inside piano, Berlin; Agnes Palier, voice, Rambouillet France; Eve Risser, Paris; Stephan Rives, soprano sax, Beirut Lebanon; Sharif Sehnaoui, guitar, Beirut; Fabrizio Spera, drums, Rome; Olivier Toulemonde, percussion, France; Guillaume Viltard, bass, Lyons; Sabine Vogel, flute, Berlin, and Christopher Williams, double bass, Berlin.
In this period h e frequently organized tours with Europeans in the US--Battus, Braida, Durrant, Griener, Neumann, Palier, Spera, and Vogel.
His major tours of the past two decades in Europe are here, and in North America are below, in retrograde order:
Wrest
in the Southeast, July 2022; a mostly solo tour in NM and CO, Feb. 2020;
Minimal
Disturbance, Jan. 2020; solo and collaborations in Midwest, Dec.
2019; Never
in Midwest, Sept. 2019; Roughhousing in Canada and US, Sept. 2018; Roughhousing
on West Coast, April 2018; Roughhousing
in the Midwest, spring
2017;with Bob
Marsh in the Midwest, April 2016; with Zach
Darrup, Nov. 2015, Wrest in Midwest and
Southeast, June 2014, Sept. 2014, April 2013, Sept. 2012; with various
partners in the West Coast, Fall 2010; with Bob Marsh, 2010 and 2011;
with Pascal Battus on the East Coast, 2010; the Northwest, Feb. 2010;
with Fabrizio Spera and Albert Braida on the East Coast, 2009; 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
French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani
(From Between) in the US twice, France, and Japan, 2003-2007 (30 performances);
with Agnes Palier and Olivier Toulemonde on the 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; a cross-country tour with Michael Griener and Sabine Vogel of Berlin,
2004; and US tours with Reuben Radding and with Phil Durrant of London,
2003.
In recent years Wright's tours and most sessions have been with the
musicians of Wrest, Roughhousing, Never, and Minimal Disturbance. Before
then he had partners in most major cities of the US, over sixty US musicians,
with whom he still plays when the chance arises. Among those of the
past fifteen years, and including those of his present groups, are:
Alban Bailly, guitar and cello, Phila.; John Bennett, poet, Columbus OH; Ben Bennett, percussion, Phila.; Tyler (TJ) Borden, cello; Gust Burns, piano, Seattle WA; Edmond Cho, guitar, Easton PA; Patrick Crossland, trombone; Zach Darrup, guitar and objects, Phila.; Andrew Drury, percussion, Brooklyn NY; the late Michael Evans, percussion, Brooklyn NY; Carol Genetti, voice, Chicago; Jacob Heule, percussion, San Francisco; Joel Kromer, electronics, Bethlehem PA; Evan Lipson, double bass, Knoxville; Toshi Makihara, drums, Phila.; Bob Marsh, cello, voice, violin, Pueblo, CO; Joe Morris, guitar, New Haven CT; Johan Nystrom, drums, whereabouts unknown: Andrea Pensado, electronics, Salem MA.; Reuben Radding, bass, NYC; Ron Stabinsky, piano, Port Carbon, 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
