On Sound On Stone (DISCUS MUSIC DISCUS 143CD), Julie Tippetts gives us an update on the original Couple In Spirit album she made with partner Keith Tippett in 1988 – well, not exactly. They’d been talking about doing it during 2019, and though they’d booked the studio for a 2020 date, Keith was already in a poor state of health by then and he died in June 2020, before the recording could begin.
This isn’t the place for me to eulogise the great man and his pioneering work in jazz, free jazz and jazz rock, but he was a true original without whom English music is much poorer. For this record, Julie hit on the idea of making use of earlier recordings of Keith Tippett’s piano playing, including a number of unreleased 1979 recordings made in the Netherlands (most of which ended up on the Unlonely Raindancer album), and some other undated recordings possibly from around 1995-96, and also live recordings from Bologna made in 1991. Julie Tippetts added her voice, plus zither, music boxes and percussion on top of these tapes, in a series of 2022 recordings. Yes, some of these are songs, with lyrics – or at least they are extemporised forms of song, in which she may be free-associating with the lyrics and coming up with these idealised images of compassion, care, hope, and freedom. She’s also devising melodic and tuneful figures sitting against Keith’s rather more abstract and open-ended improvisations, producing a strong and interesting tension
The abiding mood is sad, though; unsurprisingly so. The notes do allude to how painful it must have been for Julie Tippetts to produce this extremely personal and heartfelt music. It’s to her credit that she achieves this without descending into maudlin emotions or sentimentality. (03/02/2023)