#victo

Separated by three decades, two performances find Phillips expounding eloquently on his bull fiddle from different Canadian stages. Each concert is titled after the initial piece in its program with Ahoy! a new release and Camouflage a reissue of a 1989 Vancouver recital. Consistency in concept and execution is striking between them, with Phillips pulling liberally from his figurative toolbox to engage his instrument on all fronts from scroll to tailpiece. If there’s a difference, it’s in the relative polish and consonance of the earlier recording.  

Phillips shapes similar architectures for both settings, ranging through seven and six originals, respectively. Extended techniques expectedly abound, but they’re threaded around deeply satisfying bouts of less ornamental pizzicato and arco. “You There, On the Hill” makes stunning use of seesawing bow strokes that release gauzy overtones as vapor trails. Control of pitch and texture match deployment of dizzyingly fast dexterity at the improvisation’s midpoint, opening up into dolorous drones by the end.  

“A Quake’s A’ Coming!” offers a cascading maze of aggressively plucked and strummed tone clusters. Even at peak density of digital activity, every gesture and impact is audible as an independent entity, strung together in a pulsating chain that playfully mimics the seismic activity announced by the title. “Abate? Arise?” zeroes in on the tensile properties of percussed strings with Phillips slapping and scraping both body and fingerboard to create brittle, chugging patterns layered spatially by delay.  

Solo expression is integral to an improviser’s art whether through rehearsal or performance. Phillips’ specialist notoriety rests in part on both his obvious longevity and acumen at applying virtuosic classically canted tactics to improvised means. He was a pioneer and remains a provocateur in plying his instrument in extended settings sans accompaniment. These two dates abundantly demonstrate why and how that distinction continues to hold.