Drummer, composer, bandleader and tireless improviser Bobby Previte is known for his voluminous contributions to New York’s legendary downtown experimental music scene – an immensely fertile period in the 1980s that saw the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass breaking new ground with John Zorn, Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time and many more.
Now with nearly four decades under his belt as a creative force behind the drumkit, Previte has assembled a dream team of experimental musicians from the jazz, indie rock and classical worlds to create 'Terminals', a luminous project consisting of five concertos for percussion ensemble and soloists, each inspired by the schematic-like terminal maps that Previte has noticed in airports around the world.
The eternally adventurous So Percussion performs throughout, as Nels Cline (Wilco), Zeena Parkins, Greg Osby and John Medeski (MMW) take turns in the forefront to deliver an electrifying part-composed, part-improvised opus that stretches over two vinyl pieces.
In the liner notes to the LP, which is pressed in a deluxe double-gatefold package, Previte breaks down the influences that inspired the project. “Terminals is a collision between, and a celebration of, two worlds. In clichéd terms: the precise, unflappable, ‘classical’ percussion ensemble meets the wild, uncontrollable, ‘jazz’ master improviser in the forum best suited to such a meeting, the Concerto – a schizophrenic word whose etymology is much debated but in Italian means to ‘join together,’ while in Latin means to ‘contend.’ These two worlds happily co-exist in my mind. This is the country in which I live.”
