Whenever I travel by rail into London Victoria, just before Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, the newly commodified Battersea Power Station and The Thames, I usually find myself looking over to the housing block on my right that Alan Tomlinson and his partner Liz have lived in for as long as I've known them. I'm not sure whether Alan is a dog or cat man but I do know that he likes trains, as evidenced by the front cover photo on his first solo recording (Still Outside, Bead Records 1981) where he is portrayed playing under a railway bridge near the old London Musicians Collective building in Camden.
The theatrical and (pleasingly vulgar Northern rather than Southern ironic) humour is often mentioned in regards to Alan's work, neglecting his long term engagement with "serious" music, his performance of pieces by Xenakis, Berio, Vinko Globokar amongst others and his regular playing with chamber music ensembles to this day. Lest we forget, the aforementioned LP included two inserts of Alan's own transcriptions of parts from the improvisations using specific notations to indicate his extended techniques.
Definitely not recorded under a railway bridge, these pieces remind me of the beautiful acoustics of the much missed Red Rose Theatre in Finsbury Park, home to many a wonderful gig in the many years it was extant. The clarity of sound gives some idea of the kinetic, rapid, whirling sound produced by Alan in person, bouncing the sound off the walls & floor.
Long awaited, by me for one, these recordings from a period of time about halfway between the Bead LP and the present day, place Alan in the fine lineage of improvised trombone solos by Albert Mangelsdorff, Paul Rutherford, George Lewis, Gunter Christmann and others. Thanks must go to scatterArchive for bringing these sounds from DAT tapes under my bed to the world at large.
[Tim Fletcher]
credits
released January 26, 2024
recorded by Tim Fletcher at the Red Rose, Finsbury Park, London
01 March 2006 [01 and 04]
15 April 2007 [02 and 03]
17 July 2007 [05]
DAT transfers by Ewan Stefani
mastered by Olaf Rupp
edits and titles by Alan Tomlinson
supported by 15 fans who also own “at the Red Rose”
This tribute really manages to capture Coltrane's spirit. The improvisations on Coltrane's compositions are all excellent and so is the opener track which is inspired by Coltrane's work but not one of his compositions. Absolutely worth listening! Florian Janyszek