Free Jazz Quartet

Premonitions is the first album by the Free Jazz Quartet, a British group with trombonist Paul Rutherford, reed player Harrison Smith and cellist Tony Moore. Eddie Prévost of AMM plays the jazz kit. The four first met in 1988, and this concert from the following summer remained their only release until Memories for the Future, a 1992 Bristol set issued much later, also on Matchless. It holds nine collective improvisations, from the two minutes of Graffito to the thirteen and a half of Roman Geese, and the playing lives up to the group's name.

The concert took place at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford on 6 July 1989 and was recorded by Keith Rowe. Rutherford plays trombone, Smith tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet, Moore cello and Prévost drums. The cello in place of a double bass changes the balance of the group, and the music relies on shifting harmonic and dynamic relations more than on individual soloists. In Roman Geese Moore plays pizzicato in a wide space opened by horns and drums, with only Prévost answering him. In Red Flags and Graffito the two horns form a more conventional front line. Reviewing the second album in Paris Transatlantic in 2010, Michael Rosenstein recalled "demonstratively conversational, polyphonic improvisations driven by Prévost's gregarious drumming". He also noted Smith's past work with Mike Osborne, Kenny Wheeler and Chris McGregor.

Released on CD by Matchless Recordings in 1989, catalogue MR 18 (MRCD18 on the label's site), with front cover artwork by Ray Povey.