Break A Vase

After the album "Togetherness Music", British pianist and composer

Alexander Hawkins presents another musical panorama: An ensemble

in which his trio with bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen

Davis meets saxophonist and clarinetist Shabaka Hutchings, guitarist

Otto Fischer, and drummer Richard Olátúndé Baker. For anybody

who has followed Hawkins's work since his emergence on the British

improvised music scene in the mid 2000's this is a fresh band full of

familiar musicians with whom Hawkins has played in a wide variety of

formations. The new pieces "Break a Vase" presents emerge from

Hawkins' own imagination, but they also capture the thrust of energy

in collaborating with these outstanding musicians.

"Hawkins gives one of his most complete performances to date," writes

Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes. "Nothing is perhaps more majestic

than the title track, which comes from Derek Walcott's acceptance

speech for the Nobel Prize. 'Break a Vase, and the love that re -

assembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took it's

symmetry for granted when it was whole.' Enjoy then all these wily

bits and pieces that come together in the kind of daring, courageous

construction that is made to last."