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Jungle, funk and 14th-century Arabic astronomers: piano virtuoso Pat Thomas on his journey through jazz
He started out playing a cardboard piano, but became a key figure in the improv scene. Now at 64, the musician is having a moment with his danceable quartet [Ahmed]
Thomas soon became a major figure in the improvised music scene, working with Lol Coxhill, Tony Oxley and Butch Morris, and throwing curveballs like his 1997 solo debut Remembering: New Jazz Jungle, a wild mix of Amen-break drum’n’bass, mutant funk and post-Webern atonality. Obsessively working over melodies, riffs, basslines and grooves, saxophonist Seymour Wright, double bassist Joel Grip and drummer Antonin Gerbal generate a thrilling tension between repetition and development, with Thomas’s thunderous clusters and angular vamps raising the music to an ecstatic pitch. Current projects include Black Top with vibraphonist Orphy Robinson, Shifa with saxophonist Rachel Musson and percussionist Mark Sanders, the piano trios Bley School and Ism, and the experimental supergroup X-Ray Hex Tet.
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