John Butcher (born 1954) is an English tenor and soprano saxophone player.'' The Attic'', September 2, 2016
Conversations - John Butcher and Matthew Shipp, By Bogdan Scoromide / Riccarda Kato / Victor Stutz
/ref>

Career

In the 1970s he taught himself to play saxophone. While studying physics at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institut ...

, he met Chris Burn, and the two began playing

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...

together. In the 1980s he gave up the study of quarks to perform in a quartet with Burn. He belonged to a trio with Phil Durrant and John Russell and the band News from the Shed with

Paul Lovens Paul Lovens (born 6 June 1949) is a German musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw, and cymbals. He has performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. He was born in Aachen, Germany. In the early ...

and

Radu Malfatti Radu Malfatti is an Austrian trombone and harmonica player, and composer. He was born in Innsbruck, in the province of Tyrol, on December 16, 1943. Malfatti is associated with the style of music known as reductionism and has been described as "a ...

. His debut album, ''Fonetiks'', was released in 1984. A few years later he started the label Acta.

Discography

As leader

* ''Fonetiks'' with Chris Burn (Bead, 1985) * ''Conceits'' with Durrant/Russell (Acta, 1987) * ''News from the Shed'' with Durrant/Lovens/Malfatti/Russell (Acta, 1989) * ''13 Friendly Numbers'' (Acta, 1992) * ''Concert Moves'' with Durrant/Russell (Random Acoustics, 1995) * ''Respiritus'' with Vanessa Mackness (Incus, 1995) * ''London & Cologne Solos'' (Rastascan, 1996) * ''Trio Playing'' with Derek Bailey (Incus, 1997) * ''Secret Measures'' with Phil Durrant (Wobbly Rail, 1998) * ''Two Concerts'' with Minton/Hirt, (FMP, 1998) * ''12 Milagritos'' with Gino Robair (Spool, 1998) * ''The Scenic Route'' with Phil Durrant & John Russell (Emanem, 1999) * ''Light's View'' with Georg Graewe (Nuscope, 1999) * ''Requests and Antisongs'' with Phil Durrant (Erstwhile, 2000) * ''Music On Seven Occasions'' (Meniscus, 2000) * ''Points, Snags and Windings'' with Dylan van der Schyff (Meniscus, 2001) * ''Vortices and Angels'' (Emanem, 2001) * ''Intentions'' with Phil Durrant (Nuscope, 2001) * ''Thermal'' with Moor/Lehn (Unsounds, 2001) * ''Fixations: Solo Saxophone Improvisations 1997–2000'' (Emanem, 2001) * ''The First Two Gigs'' with Chris Burn (Emanem, 2001) * ''The Contest of Pleasures'' (Potlatch, 2001) * ''Shooters and Bowlers'' with Gerry Hemingway (Red Toucan, 2001) * ''Tincture'' with Lonberg-Holm/Zerang (Musica Genera, 2001) * ''Apples of Gomorrah'' with Phil Minton (GROB, 2002) * ''Guerrilla Mosaics'' (482 Music 2002) * ''Equation'' (Spool, 2002) * ''Invisible Ear'' (Fringes, 2003) * ''Optic'' (Emanem, 2003) * ''Clearings'' (Art.CappuccinoNet, 2004) * ''New Oakland Burr'' with Gino Robair (Rastascan, 2004) * ''Cavern with Nightlife'' (Weight of Wax, 2004) * ''Interworks'' with Eddie Prevost (Matchless, 2005) * ''Concentric'' with Paal Nilssen-Love (Clean Feed, 2006) * ''The Big Misunderstanding Between Hertz and MegaHertz'' with Christof Kurzmann (Potlatch, 2006) * ''The Geometry of Sentiment'' (Emanem, 2007) * ''The Contest of Plesures: Tempestuous'' (Another Timbre, 2007) * ''Resonant Spaces'' (Confront, 2008) * ''New Langton Arts 2000'' (Limited Sedition, 2008) * ''Buffalo Pearl'' with Gerry Hemingway (Auricle, 2008) * ''Way Out Northwest'' with Muller/Van der Schyff (Drip Audio, 2008) * ''Somethingtobesaid'' (Weight of Wax, 2009) * ''Carliol'' with Rhodri Davies (Ftarri, 2010) * ''Under the Roof'' with Claudia Ulla Binder (Nuscope, 2010) * ''Empire'' with RED Trio (NoBusiness, 2011) * ''Dusted Machinery'' with Toshimaru Nakamura (Monotype, 2011) * ''Apophenia'' with Gino Robair (Rastascan, 2011) * ''Daylight'' with Mark Sanders (Emanem, 2012) * ''Bell Trove Spools'' (Northern Spy, 2012) * ''At Oto'' with Matthew Shipp (Fataka, 2012) * ''Winter Gardens'' (Kukuruku, 2013) * ''Plume'' (Unsounds, 2013) * ''Common Objects: Live in Modern Tower'' (Mikroton, 2013) * ''Extra'' (Fataka, 2013) * ''Tarab Cuts'' (Out of the Machine, 2014) * ''Bottle Breaking Heart Leap'' (Alt.Vinyl 2015) * ''Live at White Cube'' (Vinyl Factory/White Cube 2015) * ''Experiments with a Leaf'' with Andy Moor (Unsounds, 2015) * ''Fjordgata'' (Confront 2015) * ''Nigemizu'' (Uchimizu, 2015) * ''Tangle'' (Fataka, 2016) * ''So Beautiful It Starts to Rain'' with Stale Liavik Solberg (Clean Feed, 2016) * ''Raw'' with Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin (Leo, 2016) * RED Trio & John Butcher, ''Summer Skyshift'' (Clean Feed, 2016) * ''Last Dream of the Morning'' (

Relative Pitch Relative pitch is the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note and identifying the interval between those two notes. For example, if the note ''Do'' and ''Fa'' is played on a piano, a per ...

, 2017) * ''The Catastrophe of Minimalism'' with Damon Smith, Weasel Walter (Balance Point, 2017) * ''Immediate Landscapes'' with Akio Suzuki (Ftarri, 2017) * ''How Does This Happen?'' (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2018) * ''Blasphemious Fragments'' with Minton/Robair (Rastascan, 2019) * ''Fictional Souvenirs'' with Thomas/Solberg ( Astral Spirits/Monofonus 2019) * ''At the Hill of James Magee'' with Joe McPhee (Trost, 2019) * ''Drunk on Dreams'' with Rhodri Davies (Cejero, 2019) * ''Old Paradise Airs'' with Steve Beresford (Iluso, 2020) * ''On Being Observed'' (Weight of Wax, 2020)

As sideman

Polwechsel Polwechsel is a musical group founded in Vienna, Austria in 1993. Their music has mostly straddled a line between contemporary music and free improvisation, and is characterized by quiet volume, sustained drones, and slowly developing structures ...

, ''Polwechsel 3'' (Durian, 2001) *

, ''Polwechsel 2'' (hat ART 1999) *

''Wrapped Islands'' (Erstwhile, 2002) *

, ''Archives of the North'' (hatOLOGY, 2006) *

, ''Field'' (hatOLOGY, 2009) With others * AMM, ''Trinity'' (Matchless, 2008) * AMM, ''Sounding Music'' (Matchless, 2010) *

Anemone ''Anemone'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers. They are native to the temperate and subtropical regions of all continents except Australia, New Zealand an ...

, ''A Wing Dissolved in Light'' (NoBusiness, 2017) * Derek Bailey, ''Visitors Book'' (Incus, 2002) * Derek Bailey, ''Scrutables'' (Weight of Wax, 2011) * Burkhard Beins, ''Membrane'' (Confront, 2014) *

Steve Beresford Steve Beresford (born 6 March 1950) is a British musician who graduated from the University of York He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, suc ...

, ''Fish of the Week'' (Scatter, 1996) * Steve Beresford, ''I Shall Become a Bat'' (Qbico, 2004) *

Paul Dunmall Paul Dunmall (born 6 May 1953) is a British jazz musician who plays tenor and soprano saxophone, as well as the baritone and the more exotic saxello and the Northumbrian smallpipes. He has played with Keith Tippett and Barry Guy. In the ea ...

, ''Hit and Run'' (FMP, 2001) *

Fred Frith Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...

, ''The Natural Order'' (Northern Spy, 2014) *

Keiji Haino Keiji Haino ( ''Haino Keiji''; born May 3, 1952) is a Japanese musician and singer-songwriter whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise music, percussion, psychedelic music, minimalism and drone music. He has been active since the ...

, John Butcher, ''Light Never Bright Enough'' (Otoroku, 2017) *

Gerry Hemingway Gerry Hemingway (born March 23, 1955) is an American drummer and composer. Hemingway was a member of the Anthony Braxton quartet from 1983 to 1994. He has also performed with Ernst Reijseger, Anthony Davis, Earl Howard, Leo Smith, George E ...

, ''Songs'' (Between the Lines/EFA, 2002) *

Kev Hopper Kev Hopper (born 1961) is an English bass guitarist. Life and career Hopper is probably best known as the bass guitarist with Stump, an Anglo/Irish indie/experimental/rock group formed in London in 1983. Stump released two albums, the self rel ...

, ''Spoombung'' (Thoofa, 1998) * Okkyung Lee, ''Cheol-Kkot-Sae'' (Tzadik, 2018) *

, ''Ohrkiste'' (ITM, 1992) *

Phil Minton Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook' ...

, ''Mouthfull of Ecstasy'' (Victo, 1996) * Phil Minton, ''Slur'' (Emanem, 2007) * Claudia Molitor, ''Decay'' (NMC, 2019) *

Gino Robair Gino Robair is an American composer, improvisor, drummer, percussionist, and magazine editor. In his own music work (as a soloist and in improvisation ensembles), he plays prepared/modified percussion, analog synthesizer, ebow and prepared pi ...

, ''Buddy Systems'' (Meniscus, 1998) *

Spontaneous Music Ensemble Spontaneous may refer to: * Spontaneous abortion * Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis * Spontaneous combustion * Spontaneous declaration * Spontaneous emission * Spontaneous fission * Spontaneous generation * Spontaneous human combustion * Sponta ...

, ''A New Distance'' (Acta, 1995) *

David Sylvian David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt, 23 February 1958) is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly ...

, ''

Died in the Wool – Manafon Variations ''Died in the Wool – Manafon Variations'' is a remix album by English singer and musician David Sylvian, released in May 2011 by Sylvian's independent label Samadhi Sound. The album features six songs from Sylvian's 2009 album ''Manafon'', w ...

'' (Samadhisound, 2011) *

Fred Van Hove Fred Van Hove (19 February 1937 – 13 January 2022) was a Belgian jazz musician and a pioneer of European free jazz. He was a pianist, accordionist, church organist, and carillonist, an improviser and a composer. In the 1960s and 1970s he perf ...

, ''Suite for B...City'' (FMP, 1997) *

Otomo Yoshihide is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist. He mainly plays guitar, turntables, and electronics. He first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked i ...

, ''Quintet & Sextet'' (Otoroku, 2013)

References

External links

John Butcher's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Butcher, John Northern Spy Records artists Free improvisation English experimental musicians Electroacoustic improvisation 1954 births Living people English jazz saxophonists British male saxophonists Alumni of the University of Surrey Emanem Records artists 21st-century saxophonists 21st-century British male musicians British male jazz musicians Spontaneous Music Ensemble members Incus Records artists