Bari Player Josh Sinton's Solo Double Album To Be Released January 12

On January 12, 2024, Josh Sinton releases the next iteration of his evolutionary process on the baritone saxophone. A unified whole presented in two parts, Couloir & Book of Practitioners Vol. 2 is a double album that further articulates his philosophy that the only difference between musical interpretation and free-form improvisation is one of modality, not perception or artistic intent. 

Couloir is a series of fifteen short, distilled improvisations. “This is the first time I’ve decided to play without any pre-planning,” says Sinton. “It was a bit of a high-wire act for me in that I’m not sure the world needs yet another solo-saxophone-all-improvised album, but I couldn’t resist the challenge of ‘thinking out loud musically.’” 

The self-applied pressure pays off in the clarity of these small crystalline pieces. Whether it’s the gnomic expressions of “Rift” or the single brush strokes of “Abyss,” silence serves as a primary structuring element. “My ear just needs a moment to absorb what it’s just heard,” says Sinton. “A lot of improvised music sounds like there’s a real fear of silence, and I end up experiencing a lot of confusion and fatigue.”

Taking inspiration from the heterogeneity of Anthony Braxton as well as Charles Olson’s “open field” concept, Couloir marks another step in Sinton’s investigation of the limits of both the baritone saxophone as well as his imagination. He doesn’t shy away from explicitly tonal statements in “Arroyo” and “Seam,” infusing a personal feeling for blues with a distinctly vocal tinge. At the same time, his homegrown approach to gestural-textural forms is amply demonstrated in the whirring of “Scission” and slow-moving smears of “Defile.”

Book of Practitioners, Vol.2 is the second book of saxophone etudes composed by Steve Lacy in the early 1980s. Also known as Book ‘W,’ it shares similarities with its predecessor Book ‘H.’ Like the former, it comprises six separate etudes starting with the letter “W.” While each piece is structured in the same way – presentation of a short introduction followed by a series of  repeated phrase-gestures, a return to the introduction, an improvisation and a restatement of the gestures – the details are quite different. Whether it’s the lengthy phrases of “Waterline” or the hiccupping jumps that open “Wrinkles,” these are etudes that are considerably more difficult and involved. 

Recording these came as a surprise to Sinton: “After recording Book ‘H’ I had no plans for playing much less recording Volume 2. But I found myself fooling around with these pieces during my practice and I fell into them quite naturally. It was a nice change from Volume 1 which was a decades-long struggle.” 

Ease and naturalness are clearly audible in the results. The openness and gentleness of the phrasing and tempo make the angularity and repetitiveness of the material more inviting and less austere. Rather than sounding like a series of machine-stamped objects, these etudes sound like strings of chants (“Windfall”) or the mutterings of a Samuel Beckett character (“Willy-Nilly”). Further individualizing these renditions are improvisations that range from off-kilter funk (“Whoosh”) to the sound of stuck-CD-harmolodics (“Whoops”). These are pieces that sound as easily and intimately spun as the free-form improvisations of Couloir.

Just as a couloir, a steep, narrow gully on a mountainside, is formed by the natural and slow process of water dynamically moving across land, the music of Couloir & Book of Practitioners Vol. 2 is formed by the dynamic and inevitable etchings that experience carves into Sinton’s life The results are, as always with Sinton’s music, inimitable and sui generis.

 Josh Sinton has been heard with some of the leading voices of Brooklyn's creative music scene since arriving in 2004. Whether with the bands of Anthony Braxton, Nate Wooley or Darcy James Argue or his own groups Ideal Bread or Predicate Trio, Sinton's unique soundings on baritone saxophone, bass clarinet and alto flute have lent an air of urgency and immediacy to his own compositions as well many other colleagues. He is proud to count Tom Rainey, Samuel Newsome, Christopher Hoffman, Jonathan Finlayson and Ingrid Laubrock among his colleagues. In 2020 he was named “Rising Star” in the baritone saxophone category of Down Beat’s Critics Poll and has earned a place in the baritone saxophone category every year since 2014. https://joshsinton.com

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