Evan Parker & September Winds

Evan Parker & September Winds


  Peter A. Schmid bass + contrabass clarinets, contrabass saxophone, taragot
  Evan Parker soprano, tenor & contrabass saxophones
  Hans Anliker trombone
  Jürg Solothurnmann alto & soprano saxophones
  Reto Senn clarinet & bass clarinets, taragot


Photo: Caroline Forbes

Instant compositions
5 wind instruments & space...


The quintet September Winds - a collaboration of four Swiss with the internationally reknowned Evan Parker (London) - exists since 2000 and so far has presented 3 CD productions that gained a lot of international acclaim.

The initial event was the double CD September Winds (Creative Works Records CWR 1038/39) which was recorded in an empty subterranean drinking water reservoir at Zürichberg in Zürich in September 2000. The singular acoustics, the mighty but irregular reverb and the atmosphere of the tomblike place was a special inspiration for the 5 improvisers. In fact, the echo functioned almost like an additional member.

September Wind in Cluj

On the self-explanatory Almost One Hour it is impossible to distinguish individual contributions, as over time they become a flock of twittering birds, rumling subterranean demons, an angelic choir

Art Lange, Chicago

This is an amazing feat of actual musical sensitivity

The Wire, London

During the September tour 2002, one concert was recorded and broadcasted by the Culture Channel DRS2 of the Swiss National Radio in the Protestant Church of Erlenbach at the Lake of Zürich.
It was also released by the London-based Leo Records: Evan Parker & September Winds - Alder Brook (LR CD 379)
Photo: Caroline Forbes

September Winds is able to present an interesting program on concert and theatre stages without problems but particularly likes to explore the resonant capacities and quirks of great hollow spaces and large buildings. If possible the highly reverberant space is used to expand the music with echoes in both space and time. In order to exploit the uniqueness of aparticular space the ensemble makes up a special choregraphy. This consists of schemes when and how th musicians move and change places often evoking a multi-stereophony. The music heard here is sometimes slow, often deeply reflective. Though its members number only five, the group plays orchestral music, and surely that's a result of the collective sense of completeness, of the indigenous form latent in its members different voices and visions.

from the CD liner notes by Stuart Broomer

September Wind



In fact, one of the most impressive things about this (…) is that the pieces are improvised rather than composed. The finesse of the post-tonal harmonic deployment, often spun out in limpid strands of linear counterpoint, would seem to belie spontaneous creation. Whether it is due to the performers' prior experience as an ensemble or consummate listening/interactive skills, group improvisation doesn't get much better than this….. Alder Brook actualizes the concept, combining jazz and concert music with compelling results.

Christian Carey, Splendid Magazine.com USA


Photo: Caroline Forbes

Until now September Winds has appeared in churches, museums, theatres, expositional and industrial halls, covered inner courtyards of buildings with several stories and even in the thermal bath of Vals (Grisons, Switzerland).
After the concert tour of autumn of 2004, the quintet recorded their third CD Evan Parker & September Winds - Short Stories (LR CD 428) It represents a radical contrast to the former recordings, as much for the relatively dry sound of a recording studio in Winterthur as the determined brevity of the pieces. The task was to improvise coherent but very short events.

What is concentrated here is time, which further highlights the quintet's exceptional sense of form

Stuart Broomer

September Wind Poster

In Mai 2005 September Winds toured Romania including concerts within the New Music Week in Bucharest and the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu.





...spontaneous expeditions
soundcscapes unheard...

Evan Parker Peter A. Schmid The Ensemble at P.A. Schmids Website

Photo: Caroline Forbes


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