On Jeffrey Morgan's initiative - the man from Seattle had recently settled in Cologne - a saxophone quartet was formed in 1993 that did not use the usual licks and patterns, but was committed to the production of sounds under the condition of the free association of free wind musicians. They acted musically, talked later - this also as an indication of the subtle irony of the eponymous title: after all, William Bonney was none other than Billy The Kid, who became famous under his working name.

Certainly, a lot was demanded of the audience's auditory canals, but no less of their own musical production. Freely improvised saxophone quartets do not only know beautiful melodies over repetitive beats: how many such combinations have always bored us?  The challenge was not only to develop the saxophone's own sounds, but also to combine the diverse playing practices and attitudes of the other players into an expressive whole.

Keune, Zoepf, Morgan and Speicher did not shy away from any risk, often coming precariously close to the limit of falling off, without ever losing the desire to cross it.  Safe paths were unknown to the quartet, even though each of them knew how to contribute their personal and tested ingredients.

No wonder that the quartet remained an underground secret tip, shunned by jazz-savvy people ("where is the form here?" ...) and regarded with a sniff of disapproval by the acrobats of the ping-pong style as not always satisfactory.

It came as it had to come: 2007 was the end of this kind of instrumental conspiracy. What a pity!

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"The whole range of possible avant-garde post-free-jazz sounds brought together in tight, imaginative and often surprising improvisations by their correspondences and their overlappings. In a very selective choice among numerous recordings of concerts and rehearsals, the musicians wanted to publish the pieces or extracts among the most significant through interaction and consistency, spontaneous ingenuity and sense of timing, etc… If the saxophone is the favorite instrument of improvisation and free jazz, it should be noted that a saxophone quartet is a rare commodity that is completely different from the ordinary. What The Laws of William Boney brilliantly demonstrates." Jean-Michel van Schouwburg, Orynx