Antifascist Freedom Music

Chicago native Frank Trompeter doesn’t look like it, but he is an elder maestro of the saxophone. If you squint your eyes a bit, he even looks like a young man. But Frank has played for over forty-five years, and if you’d like another measure, the two of us have been playing together for twenty. Frank is a dedicated musician, a master improvisor, and—for those who are interested in creative improvisation and free jazz—probably the best saxophonist you have never heard. I met Frank two decades ago when I was preparing to move to Springfield, Illinois, from New York City. I wanted to make sure there were some musicians out here with whom I could play the freedom music. Frank answered the call; we met in the summer of 2006, and we played then for the first time. We formed a trio with Kate Schwartz called End Times Trio. The trio recorded one live album (“Fracture Time” 2007) and played as often as possible in conjunction with our series hosting touring musicians, the Springfield Free Jazz and Creative Music Forum. Frank and I have played as a duo twice before in live performances, and the energy, interplay, and challenge of that music has always been deeply gratifying to me. I love saxophone and drums duos. Frank brings a rich melodic and sonic palate that enables us to go anywhere musically, from swinging and burning, to screaming and singing. Playing with Frank has been one of the great pleasures of my life, so I wanted to document our duo and share it with the world. For this particular studio session, Frank had been in the woodshed working on long tones, getting ready to blast off with me. But before coming to the studio, he got a stubborn cold/flu and was still feeling under the weather. He came to the studio with a different kind of fever, too, hot with anger about the political scene in the country. All of this—plus our twenty-year history—went into the music that day. I want you to hear this duo and wonder, “where have these guys been?” Yes, the living music lives and breathes often under the radar of what’s happening in the big city scenes… But we are out here, we are lifers of free music, and we will never stop.

--Richard Gilman-Opalsky