“[S]ome people think improvised music is something I'm always defending. In actual fact I'd rather not have to defend it or anything else.”
—Tony Oxley, Sound International, July 1978
A few days ago, news came through that the great drummer Tony Oxley died. To call him drummer is a vast understatement, a creative artist, Oxley worked with a custom-designed kit that incorporated gongs, bells, cymbals, hi-hats, and a number of specially tuned drums.
Oxley’s history is well-documented, starting1 with his early years as part of the British vanguard, alongside Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Kenny Wheeler. In the 1980s, Oxley co-led the collaborative Quartet, with saxophonist Gerd Dudek, pianist Rob van den Broeck, and bassist Ali Haurand. And later, he became one of Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor’s most important collaborators. With Dixon, Oxley recorded the seminal 1990s Soul Note albums Vade Mecum I & II and Papyrus I & II. With William Parker, Oxley rounded out Taylor’s Feel Trio, and Oxley and Taylor also performed for decades in a duo (first documented on the iconic Leaf Palm Hand). All throughout, he continued to develop new musical concepts combining acoustic instruments and experimental electronics.
What he did for listeners and burgeoning drummers like myself, Oxley represented a certain kind of freedom. Several musicians are described like painters or visual artists, and in part because Oxley was a visual artist, his music really does have a painterly quality to it. Shades of colors represented by his careful, specific tuning of each drum. The combination of metal and earthen sounds play like multimedia. Even the albums I’ve listened to most sound new in different light.
Just last month, Martin Archer’s Discus Music released Oxley’s The New World, a collection of pieces recorded in 2022. Archer’s been instrumental in keeping Oxley in print, from remastering the classic February Papers to releasing an unheard duet with Cecil Taylor and a collection of previously unreleased recordings from 1974–2016.
The album is bittersweet now, a month later. The promise of a new musical language, designed in response to his hearing loss, offers much to ruminate on and imagine. Its presence in the world, a capstone to a beautiful legacy.
It feels like anything I personally say about Oxley would seem hyperbolic, an overstatement’s overstatement. And maybe that’s true. Oxley is and always will be a very important part of my personal history, learning to both listen and hear.
A few years ago, Hank Shteamer put together a Tony Oxley mixtape, a fantastic introduction, if you are new to Oxley’s sound-world.
Ted Panken re-shared an interview he did with Tony Oxley from 2001.
This BBC Radio 3 interview from 1997 is currently only available from the Wayback Machine.
If you subscribe, you might have gotten a clunky typographical error here, which I missed before sending.