John Butcher, Marjolaine Charbin, Ute Kanngiesser, Eddie Prévost

The Art of Noticing is the second volume of Making a Journey to a Bright Nowhere, recorded at Cafe OTO in London on 16 July 2022. For this night Eddie Prévost brought the group heard on the Matchless album Sounds of Assembly. John Butcher played tenor and soprano saxophones, Ute Kanngiesser cello, and the French pianist Marjolaine Charbin joined them. Violinist Jennifer Allum was scheduled but could not play. The title echoes Prévost's own word for the kind of listening his workshop trains.

Prévost is on percussion: a bass drum laid flat as a table for small objects, tam-tams and cymbals struck, rubbed and bowed with soft beaters, mallets and bows. David Grundy, who attended, describes Charbin moving between the inside of the piano, with a few portable preparations, and the keyboard. There her swelling repeated figures give the group a shared architecture. Brian Olewnick hears a rare sense of narrative in the 26-minute first set, events leading to other events and later passages answering earlier ones. The 36-minute second set is busier on the surface and leans towards free jazz in its first third, with Butcher's fluttering soprano and Kanngiesser's skittering bow. Then Prévost's bowed metal draws everyone into slower, more probing playing. Stuart Broomer notes that a ratcheting sound or a high whistling tone might come from any of the four, and that the music has moved on before one can tell. He calls it a miracle of subtlety (The Free Jazz Collective, 2023).

Released by Matchless Recordings in 2023 on CD (MRCD 110), with notes by Prévost and an essay by David Grundy.