Review: Peter Knight and Trevor Watts at the Purcell Room, October 14th 2008

"Anyone know this combination?" asked violinist Peter Knight - a pint of beer in one hand and a bottle of cough mixture in the other - as he took to the stage for the second half of his Purcell Room concert with saxophonist Trevor Watts.

The folk club banter and the glass of ale clashed with the formality of the South Bank venue, but it said something about the duo's approach to making music, both men have played to much larger audiences than the 150 or so attending this gig - Knight as fiddler with folk-rock stalwarts Steeleye Span, Watts at various festivals around the world. But there's a personal quality to the music they play together that's involving and intimate; an experience to be shared rather than simply witnessed.

Knight and Watts are in touch with a wide world of music. Their opening improvisation (Seagull) was built around a repeated figure plucked on the violin strings. It had a distinctly West African feel and the vibrant tone and flow of Watts's alto made that impression still more distinct.

Later pieces alluded to Indian, Celtic, Indonesian and Middle Eastern musical practices, as well as to post-bebop jazz and rock. But these multiple rhythmic, melodic and harmonic points of reference have been internalised to a point where they are integral to the improvisatory language that these two fine musicians continue to evolve in dialogue. Their broad musical scope forms a perspective on playing rather than a bag of tricks.

Watts's credentials as an improvisor are firmly established, but Knight is a revelation in this partnership. His deft and intricate pizzicato patterning, harmonically adventurous bowing and occasional use of an electric violin for other timbres provided imaginative settings and a rich creative foil for Watts's lyrical alto and soprano lines. The coupling of violin and sax is a bold one, a highwire act requiring adaptability and a balanced sense of give and take. There's no room for either player to cruise. Watts occasionally moved from horn to hand-drum, but these interludes seemed incidental to the real drama.

Each piece they played grew from a firm melodic Base or rhytmic idea. In the course of nearly two hours there were occasional passages that drifted, mild miscalculations and moments of fraying - that's all part of an improvised music. Far more often there were inspired exchanges, passages of agile intertwining and the unpredictable magic of music that can carry you outside of yourself. During the second half the duo galvanised the weary folk song 'Shenandoah', using it as Albert Ayler used his own simple themes, finding new accents, unexpected coloration and texture, so that potentially banal material crackled with life and tension. The crisp acoustics of the Purcell Room served them well throughout.

Unpretentious and unconstrained by stylistic prejudice, Watts and Knight form a singular combination and in the course of this performance they showed how potent that can be.


Julian Cowley

The Wire