Iron Into The Wind – Alexander Hawkins

Piano International (May, 2019)
Alexander Hawkins is an improvising pianist whose main allegiance is to jazz, but whose playing includes a remarkable range of references from modernist composition to free improvisation. This is his second solo piano album, following Song Singular (Babel) in 2014. It features a programme of original compositions in which Hawkins plays – he says – ‘fewer notes than before, but better chosen’. He was in similar post-Bill Evans lyrical mode at last year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, but the pieces here are more challenging – more abrasive, less lyrical or straightforwardly swinging.

From the delicate filigree of ‘Tough Like Imagination’ to what sleeve-note writer Richard Williams calls the ‘two-handed avant- gospel …