Eddie Prévost Trio

The Blackbird's Whistle documents the Eddie Prévost Trio, the jazz-rooted group led by the AMM drummer. With him are Tom Chant on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet and John Edwards on double bass. Next to AMM, Prévost has long run his own jazz-oriented bands and a weekly improvisation workshop in London, and this record belongs to that side of his work. The format is the pianoless saxophone trio, and the music is collective free improvisation in five long pieces.

The session was recorded at Gateway Studios in Kingston on 17 October 2003. The pieces run between eleven and sixteen minutes under titles such as a bridge thrown over an abyss, gripped by anguish and a conversation without head or tail?, and the title piece closes the disc. Edwards, a regular partner of saxophonists such as John Butcher, had already played with Prévost in the quintet Conditions on A Bright Nowhere. Chant alternates the tenor with the darker bass clarinet across the session. The same three musicians met again on All Change (MRCD 92), which the label lists as a companion to this disc.

Published by Matchless Recordings as MRCD 56, a CD with cover artwork by Milo Waterfield.