The Fringe es una de las genuinas bandas, tesoro vivo, de la escena de jazz de Boston. Formados originalmente en 1971 por el saxofonista George Garzone, The Fringe ha hecho brillar el jazz norteamericano en toda su expresión, con una carrera que supera con creces los 25 años sobre el escenario. Los tres músicos que componen la formación, George Garzone (saxo), John Lockwood (bajo) y Bob Gullotti (batería), son, asimismo, reconocidísimos músicos de estudio y han participado en diferentes grabaciones y formaciones con las mejores y más reconocidas estrellas del jazz mundial.

George Garzone, en sí mismo, está reconocido como uno de los saxofonistas de mayor calidad y expresividad musical del mundo y es, por derecho propio, una de las estrellas más rutilantes del espectro jazzístico mundial, ha acaparado críticas inmejorables y ya se encuentra entre los músios más reconocidos de este difícil y mágico estilo musical.

DISCOGRAPHY

• The Fringe, Ap-Gu-Ga Records (1978)
• Live! Ap-Gu-Ga Records (1980)
• Hey Open Up (with special guest Ran Blake), Ap-Gu-Ga Records (1982)
• The Raging Bulls, Ap-Gu-Ga Records (1986)
• Return of the Neanderthal Man, Northeastern Records (1989)
• It’s Time for the Fringe, Soul Note Records (1992)
• Live in Israel, Soul Note Records (1997)
• Live in Iseo, Soul Note Records (2002)
• The Fringe Live at the Zeitgeist (with special guest, Joe Lovano), Resolution Recordings (2005)

REVIEWS

The Fringe In New York (NYC)

Saxophonist George Garzone's led various editions of The Fringe, Boston's finest free ensemble, over 25 years. During that time he's remained true to his central mission: championing original compositions and searing improvisational works. There's nothing detached or commercial in the music of Garzone or The Fringe; they've retained their popularity on the East Coast despite being relegated to working the avant-garde circuit and seldom appearing in prestigious venues. The Fringe in New York not only represents their fourth release for the NYC label, it spotlights the trio working alongside special guest vibist Mike Mainieri, who doubled as producer. Mainieri's dabbled previously in both third stream and fusion, but his work throughout this session ventures into the same territory as that of more adventurous players like Walt Dickerson, Karl Berger and the youthful Bobby Hutcherson. His solos include slashing rhythms, present an array of tonal colors and fit right into the fireworks generated by Garzone, bassist John Lockwood and drummer Bob Gullotti. Garzone's splayed overdubbed alto on "Anthony Goes to Mardi Gras" ranks as a set highlight, but he's just as distinctive on soprano throughout "Tale of Two Cities" and tenor on "Ultra Tempo." As with many saxophonists who work outside the mainstream, there's long been the lingering myth that Garzone uses the avant-garde banner to mask technical deficiencies. That notion gets repeatedly disproved throughout the date. Garzone never plays out of tune, can play the blues with aplomb and occasionally even steps into the hard-bop or swing arena. Bassist John Lockwood gets things started in memorable fashion with an astonishing solo on "Tribute to 'Trane." He doesn't utilize strumming or flamenco tendencies as often as the late Jimmy Garrison, but he certainly plays with equal verve and assertiveness. Gullotti powers the trio with
resilience, moving from Afro-Latin to light swing to pile-driving beats with ease. Though no disc can match The Fringe's amazing concerts, this date nicely approximates their magical shows and sound. -Ron Wynn, Jazz Times, January/February Issue

Live in Israel (Soul Note)

The terrible triumvirate from Boston has built its powerful, signature synergy by building modal collective improvisations of cohesion and grace. Bassist John Lockwood lays a red carpet (so silky you'd swear he were playing electric until he duets with his bow on "Our Fathers"); drummer Bob Gullotti and tenor saxophonist George Garzone is up and down, in and out, over and under his horn. The command and the groove are one. The Fringe's ship of the desert sails as smoothly over the sands of Eilat as easily as if it were plying the Red Sea on sheets of sonic glass. The bass-driven "Our Fathers" slides into slinky "On The Hump" (trimmed, as if for air play or CD length), Gullotti's mallets as orotund on toms as if on tympani, thence Gullotti snaps fat brushes into the flashing "Desert Time." "Response" shows flex-time, with sleek horn in the lead, Garzone varying tone, speed, and phrase with dashing drama. "Body and Soul" goes gentle and firm for all hands. The bass-rich mix emphasizes toms, E-string, and tenor's bottom, as the audience is mixed far away. The trio navigates no mysterious realms at the Red Sea Jazz Festival, but follows its charted waters with confidence and poise. What a ride! - Fred Bouchard, Jazz Times, March 1998 Issue

CD Review: The Fringe: Live at Zeitgeist
by Andrey Henkin, allaboutjazz.com

The final track on the new Fringe album is entitled “A Fringe Tribute to the New England Patriots.” The liner notes explain that The Fringe, born and raised in Boston, spent much of twenty years playing there at The Willow opposite Monday Night Football. Amusing no doubt but the Patriots, now winners of three of the last four Superbowls, are a good model to use when discussing The Fringe. The Patriots have been lauded for exemplifying the team mentality. There are no superstars and each player is committed to winning above personal glory. Sound familiar? Let’s call George Garzone the Tom Brady of jazz saxophone. He is never on any “best of” lists but boasts a musician’s rating (quality of playing divided by size of ego) higher than most. Drummer Bob Gulotti is The Fringe’s Tedy Bruschi, selfless but the indisputable spark plug of the team. And John Lockwood, amazingly enough not the original bassist, fully signed with the team’s concept long ago and is willing to play offense or defense as is needed. This is the band’s 8th album and, like the last two, is a live date. Anyone who has ever seen The Fringe in concert can attest to the fact that all their shows should be documented, so accomplished is the level of group interplay. Garzone is a well-respected educator and any Fringe show is mobbed by his students, all trying to absorb some of his magic (or else attendance is mandatory for a passing grade). What is remarkable, and apparent from this recording, is how The Fringe can make an audience sit in quiet rapture for one tune and then whoop and holler in a participatory fashion on the next. Interestingly enough, this reviewer was transferring the first two Fringe LPs to CDs for someone shortly before receiving this new disc. The band has not changed since 1978 (despite Lockwood replacing original bassist Richard Appleman). This is not a swipe however and doesn’t mean to imply that the trio has not been actively growing over the years. What it does point to however is that despite any outside projects, when the three come together, they are a team and have been working to develop that chemistry methodically and deliberately.

The album’s structure is typical of the group. A long burner opens the set (“From Here to There”) followed by a few shorter pieces (“Theme for Jake,” “Maybe So,” “Prelude to Tonight’s Prayer” and “Tonight’s Prayer”) before ending with more lengthy, high energy numbers. The third- and second-to-last tracks feature “another great Italian” (to borrow Frank Zappa’s phrase), saxophonist Joe Lovano. Despite Lovano’s concept albums of late, it is well known that he is at his best when cooking. The combination of Garzone and Lovano (tomato sauce anyone?) on two hardbop inspired tunes (“All Aboard” and “Try This”) test the limits of how much saxophone one poor brain can take. The meeting recalls the great sax battles of decades past but in a more good natured, postgame weenie roast kind of way.

The album/performance ends with the Patriots tribute (the show was recorded mid-way through the Patriots’ second superbowl season) and is well-received by the raucous audience, including a fun call-and-response section. Go team!

Lifers: David Caruso and the Fringe fanatics

I was going to begin this piece by saying that David Caruso is like a lot of Fringe fans. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. How many fans are there for Boston’s longest-standing avant-garde trio who have been faithfully following the band’s live shows — okay, with the occasional six-week or six-month lapse here or there — for nearly 30 years of the band’s 34-year existence? And how many of those fans have bankrolled the production of a Fringe CD? So, you see, in a lot of ways, Caruso isn’t all that typical. In others, he’s perfectly true to form.

"It was 1977 or ’78," Caruso tells me over the phone, on the road for his job as a corporate-software consultant, "and there was an all-night jazz event at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street." Caruso had heard of the Fringe, "but other than that they were playing some pretty free jazz, I really didn’t know that much about them." He had been brought up in Maynard, in a house with a heavy collection of big-band swing — Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw. His taste in rock ran to classics like Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers. But around the time of his initiation into the Fringe, Caruso describes himself as "into a heavy Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp thing." The Coltrane tended to be "the later-period stuff, not necessarily Ascension, but Interstellar Space, beyond-Crescent kind of stuff. So the whole notion of exploration gassed me." Still in his early 20s, a UMass-Amherst dropout working a factory job, Caruso discovered that "music didn’t have to have this formal structure, you could just kind of uncork the thing and let it go."

You could also argue that the sax-bass-drums trio the Fringe have always played with structure — bop progressions, Tranish arpeggios (those "sheets of sound"), riffbased bluesy numbers. A walking bass against dotted rhythms on the ride cymbal was a regular feature of those ’70s Fringe gigs, which took place every Monday night for the better part of a decade at the old Michael’s Pub on Gainsborough Street. The band had their own book of original material, and they would also regularly pop out a "standard" like Archie Shepp’s riffing, bluesy "Keep Your Heart Right." It didn’t matter that those "walks" were often like frenetic runs (and still are), or that the music could explode with ear-piercing harmonic bowing from bassist Rich Appleman or extended passages of multiphonic shrieks from saxophonist George Garzone. When a friend of mine who is another long-time Fringe fan recently checked into the Albert Ayler box, remembering the late-’60s revolutionary as rather forbidding, his first thought was, "It sounds like George Garzone."

The venues have changed several times since then — Monday nights at the Lizard Lounge for five years, and for the past year or so at Zeitgeist Gallery (a place drummer Bob Gullotti especially likes because, with no liquor license, it’s an all-ages hang). And Boston MVP bassist John Lockwood has been with the band since the mid ’80s. These days, they don’t announce tunes, and everything is spontaneously improvised. Occasionally, a phrase from a standard will sneak into the set or, as on a recent Monday night, what I could swear were a couple of choruses of Fields & McHugh’s "Exactly like You." And Garzone occasionally finds his way into some familiar ballad changes. But the band’s unpredictability — along with their daunting mastery — is intact. Caruso said that a few years ago he resolved to get the first two Fringe albums — which had never been reissued — converted to CD. By chance, in October 2003, after a night at the BSO (where he is a season subscriber), he headed to a neighborhood bar to catch the end of the fateful seventh game of the Red Sox–Yankees series. There was Garzone, and Caruso, who’d lost touch with the band since they’d decamped from the Lizard, made his proposal. "George said, ‘Listen, I don’t know if you’ve seen the band lately, but we’ve been playing as well as we ever have. . . . Why don’t you record us as we are right now?’ "

So Caruso contacted the veteran engineer Toby Mountain, who set up for two nights in November 2003, one of which included Joe Lovano sitting in as special guest. Live at Zeitgeist (Resolution Recordings) is prime Fringe: gentle, ferocious, boppish, free, with one of their improvised Coltrane-like devotionals, "Tonight’s Prayer," a highspirited chase between Lovano and Garzone on a couple of tracks, and their now standard, horribly titled, "A Fringe Tribute to the New England Patriots," a genuine stadium-cheer riff tune with a stop-time for the audience to chime in "Football!" After that night at Emmanuel Church, Caruso estimates that he spent the "next 32 weeks straight at Michael’s on Monday night." That was typical — the conversion experience, the almost religious devotion, which you can still find among the 25 or so folks, most of them in their 20s, who make those late-Monday-night trips to Zeitgeist.- Jon Garelick, Boston Phoenix, March 18-25, 2005