SPECIAL TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR FILM / DVD VIDEO DIARY
On the road with
ELLERY ESKELIN w/ Andrea Parkins & Jim Black...the film!
On a last-minute whim while packing to go on the road, Ellery Eskelin decided to bring along his camcorder and a bagful of blank tapes. After three weeks on tour he came back with 25 hours of video from all across the European continent, including live performances, interviews, local color and a generous helping of road schtick. In the ensuing months Ellery put in countless late nights editing this bounty down to a one hour program.
Now you can join Ellery Eskelin, Andrea Parkins and Jim Black on their 2003 European tour with this homespun and engaging video tour diary. Travel with them in taxis, trains and vans and sit on stage with them as the band performs for audiences from Paris to Poland. Get an insiders' view of life on the road, complete with flashes of brilliance, boredom and silliness tempered with a general lack of sleep yet fueled by adrenaline and a love of performing.
The backbone of the program is a series of solo concerts done by Eskelin, Parkins & Black at the Festival Les 100 Ciels in Nancy, France, which are interspersed throughout the video. Also included are band performances from Germany, Poland and the U.K. as well as Paris appearances with guest vocalist Jessica Constable. Don't miss this look behind the scenes of one of today's most celebrated jazz/improv ensembles, now in its tenth year!
A Ramichellery Production / prime source DVD 3010
Technical specifications:
This DVD is a double sided disc, one side in NTSC format (north america) and the other side PAL format (europe). There are no region codes on this DVD, it will play in all equipment.
SEE THE TRAILER...
order the DVD now using pay pal...directly from this web site
April 30, 2005
"ImproEyes" Film Festival
The Other Space (Everyman Theater) Cheltenham UK
(part of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival)
Schedule:
David, Moffett and Ornette: The Ornette Coleman Trio, 1966 + Steve Lacy: Lift The Bandstand
On the Road with Ellery Eskelin, Andrea Parkins and Jim Black...the film!
Fred Frith / Step Across the Border
Jazz on a Summer's Day, Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue, Strange Fruit
It's a jazz thing, Harriet Tubman Live and 'Ascension', Walk Don't Walk
"...original and daring, full of charm."CitizenJazz.com (France)
DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE
March 2005
by Bill Shoemaker
Staying ahead of the curve for 10 years is a tough nut, but saxophonist Ellery Eskelin's trio with keyboardist Andrea Parkins and drummer Jim Black has done it. They have refined a post-jazz polyglot idiom stealthily driven by Eskelin's writing, which entails frequent head-on collisions of styles. Though they are improvisors with a subversive streak, they are also rigorous ensemble players; their ability to keep the music at the threshold of turbulence, without letting it unravel into a heap, is crucial to their ongoing vitality. Regular weeks-long tours like the one documented on their commemorative DVD, On the Road With, have kept their edge sharp, while seven trio CDs have made their sound familiar.
On Ten, Eskelin didn't merely think outside the anniversary box on some key counts; he chucked it. Guests Jessica Constable, Melvin Gibbs and Marc Ribot are sufficiently volatile improvisers, and Eskelin takes care in creating subgroups to avoid tired established-group formulae. Eskelin also dispensed with compositions in favor of free improvisation, an all but absent facet of the trio's prior work. Still, his composer chops are detectable in how he sequenced the album, which gives the proceedings a palpable arc, building from muffled intensity to red-lining rawness. Eskelin's post-production work is a big reason why the album holds up to repeated play.
Eskelin's editing is the sole reason why the DVD verite of On the Road With is watchable. He captures the chronic low-grade vertigo of touring - musicians in taxis; musicians in trains; musicians arriving at venues; musicians leaving venues - and how the mundane is endured with wiseacre humor. Still, the performances are the saving graces, particularly the nearly psychedelic sequence where Eskelin precisely pieces together a few performances of the same piece.
BALTIMORE MAGAZINE
October 2005, p. 56
John Lewis
A few months ago, Baltimore native Ellery Eskelin returned to his hometown for a pair of sold-out shows at An Die Musik Live! An acclaimed saxophonist on the free jazz/improv scene, Eskelin tours relentlessly, and a recent DVD ON THE ROAD WITH (Prime Source), offers an intimate peek at a musician working the fringes of contemporary jazz. The hour-long video documents Eskelin's 2003 European tour, a trek that took him and his bandmates (drummer Jim Black and keyboardist Andrea Parkins) through the U.K., France, Germany, and Poland. It captures the highs and lows of being on the road, from the rush of electrifying concerts to the boredom of grueling train journeys. Through it all, the group's fierce commitment to it's music never waivers, and Eskelin's devotion borders on the heroic. Despite playing difficult music, often under trying circumstances, he exudes a dignity that richly underscores his passionate playing.
CODA MAGAZINE
March/April 2005
by Laurence Svirchev
The DVD On the Road with... is a self produced companion piece to Ten. It's a diary l-like portrait of Eskelin's trio 2003 tour of Europe: clips of rehearsals, train stations, wondering about the next meal, and backstage tomfoolery. It's most complete music sequences are individual improvisations by Eskelin, Black, and Parkins (her solo is required viewing. The way she builds layers of music from her sampling equipment is extraordinary and demonstrates why she is one of the great synthesists). Overall it's a wild ride composed of off-kilter angles, reflections from mirrors, and bouncing unsteadiness, a charming visual reflection of Eskelin's idiosyncratic musical view of the world. Potential buyers need to know that the music's sound quality is not high fidelity. Formatting is in both NTSC and PAL, a nice touch that allows North Americans the ability to enjoy the DVD along with the rest of the world (see Eskelin's website for ordering).
All About Jazz New York / November 2004
On the Road With Ellery Eskelin
(Prime Source)
by Sean Fitzell
What is life like on the road? Music enthusiasts often wonder. As part of the 10-year anniversary celebration of his trio, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin offers a glimpse of touring on his new DVD On the Road With. Eskelin personally culled the hour-long program from more than 25 hours of footage from the spring 2003 European tour with partners Andrea Parkins (accordion, sampler, piano) and Jim Black (drums).
Filmed on the fly, mostly by the band and audience members, what it lacks in production values, it makes up for with all-access intimacy, catching the group's
backstage banter, sleep-deprived giddiness and travel malaise. These sequences are juxtaposed with powerful performance clips, whose highlights include the final climax of "43 RPM", the Black's-eye view of a sound check, an "It's A Samba" montage from across the continent and close-ups of extended solo performances by each member of the group. In adhering to the short runtime, the musical
performances are often edited; because it is homemade, the edits can be jarring at times - whetting the appetite, but cutting out just as things start cooking. Intentional or not, the musical segments' brevity likely mirrors the band's perceptions of touring - performing is the brief highlight between hustling to a waiting transport and the attendant downtime. The DVD includes moments when subjects are either self-conscious of or completely oblivious to the camera's presence and sprinkles in surprises and local flavors to give a sense of the delight, boredom and spontaneous lunacy of life on the road.
All About Jazz Los Angeles / October 2004
On the Road With Ellery Eskelin w/Andrea Parkins & Jim Black
by Derek Taylor
Eskelin packed along a camcorder on the bandıs 2003 European Tour. On a whim he taped segments of the itinerary, amassing twenty-five hours of film during the cross-continent journey. In the months following the bandıs stateside return he whittled the footage down to an hour-long distillation. Sound and lighting quality varies depending upon the scene under scrutiny. Born out of necessity, the single camera approach lends to the feeling of being an invisible observer, an eavesdropping insect. In the opening scene the POV stays stationary and affords only a narrow field of vision. Ellery sits at a table conversing with a French presenter about the structure of an impending concert. The details of their dialogue end up strangely mirroring the layout of the DVD as a whole. Another short segment later in the program seamlessly intercuts snippets of the same tune from performances at several different venues to create a clever teleportation effect.
Solo performances from a gig in Nancy, France intersperse with a handful of ensemble episodes and plenty of downtime interludes. Eskelinıs solo segment pans in mid-sprint. Sans signature porkpie hat a sheen of sweat beads across his brow under the hot stage lights. His phrasing is feathery and nimble, but the overall impact feels somewhat compromised by the tampered context. He appears visibly fatigued by its end. Parkinsı plays both her sampler/keyboard/lap-top set-up and accordion, even a bit of piano. At one point the camcorder zooms in on close-up shots of her squeezebox, its sparkle-coated keys glinting in the bright club lighting. Elsewhere Black has a brief opportunity to demonstrate his collection of disassembled music box innards before his band mates interrupt his show-and-tell. The bandıs humor is a plus too. Black waxes dryly philosophic on the simultaneous constancy and mutability of reality on tour. Later he and Parkins engage in a bout of mathematical theorizing on the expanding dimensions of her posterior.
Touring is especially important in creative improvised music for numerous reasons. The widely held belief that itıs a form of expression is best experienced in person, at the occasion of creation is probably foremost among them. Other reasons involve the severe paucity of funding for promotion and the musicıs already marginalized status when stacked against the so-called mainstream. Eskelin seems cannily aware of these realities and continually takes them in stride. The tour preserved by his prescient camcorder is clearly a grass roots affair. Local presenters beat the bushes for the funding and amenities for the trio through grant writing, fundraising and whatever means necessary. The venues are all small clubs, probably familiar to those of Eskelinıs peers fortunate enough to fly across the pond for gigs. No frills, but thatıs a big part o the charm. This DVD set succeeds as both entertainment package and archival document mostly because of the idiosyncratic elements of Eskelinıs editing which manage to encapsulate so much of the touring experience.
All About Jazz.com
On the Road with Ellery Eskelin w/ Andrea Parkins & Jim Black
Prime Source DVD 3010
By Jerry D'Souza
When Ellery Eskelin was about to embark on his Spring Tour 2003 of Europe with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black, he took along his camcorder and a whole lot of blank tapes. That was an inspired decision.
The DVD captures life on the road and this is where the emphasis is, rather than on the music. This is not a concert film, nor is it a documentary in the accepted sense of the term. It is a document of the concert trail that began at the Festival Les 100 Ciels in Nancy, France and moved through Paris where they performed at the Duc Des Lombards, a club that has a large picture of John Coltrane on the right side of the entrance, and from there on to Katowice, Poland, Germany and England. And life on the bus can be fun particularly with Blackhe certainly has a great sense of humor! He has a wry philosophy, his tongue firmly planted in cheek, even when he is yanking Parkins' chain. There is an unexpectedly delightful moment when Bob Marley comes on the soundtrack singing "One Love."
While music is served, it comes in short bursts rather than in whole performances. The only extensive focus is given to the solo performances of Eskelin, Parkins and Black, and they are riveting, at the festival in Nancy. Among the tunes played on tour are "Half a Chance," "Kicks" and "It's a Samba."
The DVD runs approximately one hour (it is full frame and has both the NTSC and PAL versions), whittled down from the 25 hours of footage shot. In coming down to the crux, the viewer gets an interesting and informative view of what transpired during that time. There is Eskelin, discussing the time that the trio has on stage in Nancy and deciding how the performance would transpire and the time that each would get to solo. There is singer Jessica Constable, who adds her name to the playbill which mentions just the three principals, but she does it with a sense of fun. And there are all the people they met on their journey who helped. And even if it was "slapped together late at night by Ellery Eskelin," this is an intimate and vivid portrait.
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2004 was the band's Ten Year Anniversary...many events took place including US, Canadian and European performances...plus the release of a special commemorative recording titled "TEN" with special guests Jessica Constable (voice), Marc Ribot (guitar) and Melvin Gibbs (electric bass) on hatOLOGY records. In 2006 the band recorded a double CD entitled "Quiet Music" with with special guests Jessica Constable (voice) and Philippe Gelda (additional keyboards). For full details please see the: prime source website
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Fnac Montparnasse
DISK UNION
GiGi Distribution
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