Tony Oxley
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Tony Oxley (born 15 June 1938 in Sheffield, England) is a drummer active in free jazz and free improvisation.
He can be heard on John McLaughlin's Extrapolation from 1968. Extrapolation has been vaunted by the Penguin Guide to Jazz as one of greatest jazz albums ever produced in the UK. This is not least due to Oxley's exemplary, surgically precise drumming. He also collaborated briefly with Vangelis in the early 1970s.
In the 1980s he was invited to play with the American free pianist Cecil Taylor, with whom he still plays. With bassist William Parker, Taylor and Oxley became The Feel Trio, recordings of which can be found on [Free Music Production] (not to mention the mammoth 10-CD set recorded live in London in the early-millennium, Two T's For a Lovely T). His duo [FMP] CD with the German free pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, Digger's Harvest, is a treat.
Oxley's playing has been described (in the Penguin Guide to Jazz) as "a unique blend of lumpen momentum and detailed percussive colour" - a description that does some though not by any means complete justice to the sheer range, flexibility, sensitivity and power of his playing. However, many audiences of Oxley's drumming, particularly when playing in a conventional style, will agree that he is undoubtedly one finest drummers to emerge from the United Kingdom. His technique, whilst not as flamboyant in style as, say, Billy Cobham, is neverthless breathtaking. He is a true master of percussion not merely with a traditional drum kit but also with his own augmented electronic percussion kit.
His early conventional playing can be heard to good effect on his collaborations with Gordon Beck Experiments with Pops and Gyroscope. He also made a substantial contribution to John Surman's second album How Many Clouds Can You See?. He was house drummer at Ronnie Scott's club for some time and can be heard on Ronnie Scott's live album Ronnie Scott and the Band. His free playing is legendary, and along with a handful of other percussionists, such as Han Bennink, Frank Perry and John Stevens, Oxley is one of the true innovators of the free music scene. His first albums, released in the late 1960s on the CBS (Columbia) label, The Baptised Traveller and Four Compositions for Sextet, were brilliantly iconoclastic. His third album for RCA Ichnos is highly sought after as it has yet to be reissued. He has collaborated in the past with other free innovators such as Howard Riley and Derek Bailey to name but a few.
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