Back in the late 60s, I was probably as interested in contemporary composed music as in advanced styles of jazz, and had heard of Howard Riley as a practitioner of both. In my second year at Durham University I was secretary of the DU Jazz Club and of the DU New Music Society and I invited Howard to bring his trio (with Barry Guy and Alan Jackson) to play. Howard remembers the gig but didn't recall that I was behind it, as he obviously didn't know who I was at the time.
In the mid-70s Howard began to appear at the LMC. He had a trio with Barry Guy and Phil Wachsmann (whose 1977 record will soon be reissued on Emanem) and it came about that he did a gig at the LMC with Chamberpot. I had little further contact with him, except as an audience, until last year, when I met him at Goldsmiths. He teaches there, and I was rehearsing in the next room with Ensemble rrrrrrr..... That chance encounter made me think how much I'd enjoy working with him. A band began to compose itself in my mind.
Larry and I first met through the old LMC and by the late 70s had formed a quintet, Mama Lapato, which in many ways was as much of a departure from what I was doing with groups like Chamberpot and the London Bass Trio as the present quartet is from, say, Quatuor Accorde. When I thought of including Larry in this present quartet I didn't realise that he and Howard had often collaborated, both in the Tony Oxley quintet and in the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, before Larry went on to win a modicum of fame and fortune with Working Week.
I discussed with Howard a short-list of percussionists whose playing I admired, and Mark was his recommendation, because they had worked together, in Howard's quartet with Elton Dean. He is without doubt the busiest of us all at the moment, and we're very lucky to have him in the group. This quartet was my first working experience with Mark, although I have since played with him also in other contexts.
FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON represents only the fourth meeting of the quartet (three London gigs preceded it, two of them at the Vortex). I personally feel this group is everything I could have hoped it would be, times about ten.
TONY WREN (2001)
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