Andy Sheppard
Movements in colour

andisceppard - right now - listens to Andy Sheppard.

Andy Sheppard, if you didn't know, is a (white. Ps: thanks!) English saxophonist. A few years - not too many - older than me. He falls in love, as a little one, with Coltrane. And decides to learn this instrument. To give it a try.

He plays with many. He plays with Gil Evans (which is to say, excuse me if that's not enough). He plays with Carla Bley (a legend. For many reasons. Because, due to a series of unspecified events, her Tropical Appetits ended up in the home of a young andisceppard (the lowercase one). And it was his first jazz record. For Escalator Over The Hill, which is a mess, and a masterpiece. And one day maybe I'll write about it). He plays with Paolo Fresu (who is a wonderful person. A golden boy, I might say, if it weren't for the fact that I believe he's more or less my age, and the term boy would seem boastful. I've seen him, a couple of times, in concert. And if it weren't for that little voice (but andi, do you always complain?) that tells me yes, okay, nice, but... wait, in which Miles album have I already heard this? If it weren't for that little voice, I would only say of Fresu the good he deserves. For Night and The City, for example. For Things, with Uri Caine. For his book, which I never finished reading, but which is beautiful. For many things).

Andy lives in the world. In my world. We are not in the seventies. It's not a time for sad, reckless stories, it's no longer the time for the earth's scream, the violence of free. It's no longer time for revolutions.

Or maybe it still is. But age, status, birth, place him, place us elsewhere. Those who stand by the window. Those who don't stand in the square. Because Andy is white (have I written it yet thanks?) English, cultured, well-off. His reality is no longer that of Coltrane, that of Miles. That of those thousand stories, which I've told you, which I might still tell you. Of those who stood in the square. No, it's not.

However - for intelligence, for sensitivity - he is not even of those who, in the face of a revolution, stand on the other side. He is of those who do not deny. But do not regret. He is of those who - more than anything - try to understand.

Here, Andy Sheppard is like that. He is not Coltrane, he is not Hodges. Certainly not Coleman. He can't be. It wasn't given to him to be.

Yet he is something. Something difficult to put into words. Warmth, perhaps. It's never one of those fusion things, that you hear once and say nice, and already think of changing the record. Attention, perhaps. Or grace, perhaps. And certainly the desire to listen. Together. Like an older brother, just a bit older. Who remembers, but isn't nostalgic. Who doesn't live in the past, but doesn't forget it.

Something like that, today, listens to andisceppard, the lowercase one.

Andy Sheppard, Movements in colour