Byard Lancaster - Exactement

Defining free jazz is obviously a waste of time. No other idiom within jazz has created as much negative fervor – alright, maybe bop. But while bop become the standard bearer of the genre, free jazz has continued to live out on the fringes of society. It attracts big names occasionally and is obviously a pretty good way to release whatever seems to be floating around inside of you, but by definition, it’s not meant to be all that palatable.

Hailing from the south, Byard Lancaster came to jazz partially as a result of a junkie living across the street from him as a child. The man would sit for good chunks of time just blowing and that – understandably – intrigued the young Lancaster. He eventually asked his parents for a sax after beginning lessons on the piano and his wish was granted.

Throughout school, Lancaster played in the band and as he came of college age Berklee was the place that he would study. Playing alongside other free jazz luminaries like Dave Burrell, the saxophonist found a number of like minded players. And upon graduation a number of them moved to New York. The time that they arrived was well suited to their creative endeavors. And players as different as Elvin Jones and Archie Shepp took time to jam with the new comers. A great deal must have been learned simply through osmosis, but each lesson learned most certainly stuck with Lancaster during these formative years.

Being most closely associated with the saxophone, the songs represented within Exactement find Lancaster picking up and playing virtually everything he was able to lay his hands on. Flute, alto and soprano sax as well as piano are all worked deftly over the eight tracks here. And even if you have some sort of preconceived notion as to what free jazz is, here it tends to mean free improvisation as opposed to simply a noisy racket and some caterwauling solos.

The first two tracks “Sweet Evil Miss Kisiang” and “Virginia” find Lancaster playing piano and flute alone on each respective song. At points on each, but more so on the earlier track, Lancaster does burst into some deluges of sound, but mostly, these are tasteful improvisations. And of course it is possible to make a racket on the flute, but that’s not what occurs here. In fact, these solos are rooted pretty deeply in bop, Lancaster simply doesn’t have any accompaniment.

On another pair of tracks, “Prima Mr. AA” and “Keno Exactement”, Lancaster is joined by percussionist Keno Speller. The addition of hand drumming doesn’t drastically affect the sound, or approach of the sax, it simply makes the track seem a bit fuller. The latter song, though, sports one of the more dense solos.

In the end, the outing does certainly portray the talents of the multi-instrumentalist. But hunting this down will most likely prove a difficult task. Most of Lancaster’s catalog is in rather scant availability, but this disc, released in 1974 by Palm Records, should prove especially difficult to find. Have you ever heard of Palm…only in passing.