LondonJazz

CD REVIEW: Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic IX – Pannonica: Tribute to the Jazz Baroness

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 08:00:00 +0000

Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic IX – Pannonica: Tribute to the Jazz Baroness
(ACT 9889-2 – CD review by Mark McKergow)

The latest release in ACT’s "Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic" series offers a rare chance to hear some of the leading lights of modern European jazz let loose on some choice classic tunes at this performance honouring the 30th anniversary of the death of Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the ‘Jazz Baroness’. The results are tremendously entertaining and enjoyable.

London-born Pannonica ‘Nica’ de Koenigswarter (1913-1988) was a scion of the Rothschild dynasty who fell in love with jazz on hearing Thelonious Monk’s Round Midnight on a trip to New York in the early 1950s She turned her back on her native Europe and her glamorous lifestyle and become one of the great supporters of American jazz. What followed was an eventful and bohemian life. Charlie Parker breathed his last on her sofa in 1955. She befriended and supported many musicians including Horace Silver, Bud Powell and Sonny Rollins, and had a long-term relationship with Monk; she took responsibility when they were both charged with marijuana possession, and he lived with her for the last seven years of his life.

ACT label founder Siggi Loch clearly feels an affinity with Nica; he also had a Damascene conversation to jazz at a Sidney Bechet concert at the age of 15, and has taken this opportunity to assemble an all-star group led by pianist Iiro Rantala and a programme based around the many tunes dedicated to her, including Monk’s Pannonica. Horace Silver’s Nica’s Dream is taken at a good latin lick with energetic percussion interludes from Anton Eger. Rantala’s piano work shines here and throughout the album, sparkling, precise and thoroughly musical, taking care not to make any effort to impersonate Monk or anyone else.

The opening take on Round Midnight is led by New York singer Charenée Wade with fine style, Bernard Hanighen’s lyrics beautifully accompanied by the bowed double bass of Dan Berglund. Rantala, Berglund and Eger take the chance to have a trio run at Bud Powell’s Cecilia – ‘run’ being the operative word, as the tempo is getting on for twice that of Powell’s original recording In the hands of these musicians it all seems perfectly feasible and the result is a bouncing four and a half minutes of action – perhaps not quite as effortless as it sounds, judging from Rantala’s slightly relieved cry of “Yes!” at the end.

One of the great pleasures of this recording is the saxophone pairing of American Ernie Watts on tenor and German Angelika Niescier on alto, leading figures from two very different generations. Watts, who shared the stage with Monk back in the day, is not afraid to venture to the upper reaches of his instrument. By contract Niescier, winner of the Albert Mangelsdorff Award in 2017 and currently making waves with albums like NYC Five with Florian Weber (check it out!), spends quite a lot of time at the lower end of her horn. It is not straightforward for the listener (even a saxophonist like me) to distinguish exactly who is soloing, which brings an extra joy to tracks such as Monk’s Boliviar Blues (named after the Bolivar Hotel on Central Park West where Nica took up residence).

Watts leads off with a wailing bluesy solo, followed by Rantala who dials down the energy only to pick it up again with rippling runs and crunchy chords. Niescier brings a more angular approach and is soon pulling outrageous figures which surprise and delight, yet never quite loses contact with the blues framework - well worth hearing here and on her other recordings. Add in a Dan Berglund bass solo and a frantic finale of sax-swapping, double time hair-raising joint improvisation and this track is a ten-minute master class in how to make the most of a tune.

As the album winds up with a lively take on Sally Swisher’s Get It Straight, a vocal version of Straight No Chaser originally recorded by Carmen Macrae, we are reflecting on a terrific collection of music from a memorable evening, beautifully recorded, full of energy and a great way to remember Nica. Very well worth a listen.

LINK: Preview some of the tracks on the ACT website

REVIEW: Sarah Moule and the Simon Wallace Quartet at Lauderdale House

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

L-R: Dave Bitelli, Mick Hutton, Sarah Moule, Paul Robinson
Photo courtesy of Lauderdale House

Sarah Moule and the Simon Wallace Quartet
(Lauderdale House, Highgate. 6 June 2019. Review by Lauren Bush)

Vocalist Sarah Moule and pianist Simon Wallace are no strangers to Lauderdale House, and this time they returned with an excellent showcase of Duke Ellington songs and stories. It was an equal collection of classic favourites and uncovered jewels from the extensive library of songs that Ellington wrote or collaborated on. Dave Bitelli helped set the scene beautifully, switching between clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. Practically a ‘reed’ for every mood - it was a special touch that really brought the music to life.

The first set started off with Take Love Easy and carried on with the classic It Don’t Mean a Thing. The arrangements left just enough space for each instrument to have a blow but never overdid it, sticking to the traditions of Ellington’s time, a testimony to Wallace’s skill as arranger: everything fit the bill perfectly.

Take the ‘A’ Train and In My Solitude were among other notable moments in the first set as was Jump for Joy in which, Bitelli played a rich and beautifully phrased bass clarinet solo The medley of I Didn’t Know About You and A Lucky So-and-So, where everything fit nicely in the pocket and everyone had a go-around the solos - even had Paul Robinson on the drums accentuate the melody at all the right moments.

The second half brought even more nostalgia with Prelude to a Kiss done as a lovely waltz, followed later by In a Mellow Tone with all the original Jon Hendricks lyrics and vocalese punctuated with the masterful finale Nothin’ But the Blues. Mellow Tone was an especially nice moment for Wallace, Bitelli and Moule as they each took turns playing the parts of the original Lambert Hendricks and Ross version.

Moule had an ease about her when singing and chatting with the audience. The anecdotes that she shared were fun and meaningful and helped tie the collection of songs together. She shared moments of keen musicianship with her bandmates, growled and bent the bluesy notes at all the right moments and always touched the delicate intervals in Ellington’s music with perfection.

There were so many different colours and styles of music within the selection chosen and each instrument had a chance to shine, with swinging bass solos from Mick Hutton and cool hand-drumming features from Robinson. Wallace at the piano led the way and chipped in musically and historically in all the best ways.

Brian Blain’s music series at Lauderdale House has become a North London institution and never disappoints.

NEWS: Clark Tracey, Jacqui Dankworth in 2019 Birthday Honours

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 23:05:00 +0000

Jacqui Dankworth
Publicity Photo

Sebastian writes.

People who make a strong contribution to the jazz community/industry are included in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours. So, congratulations to :

OBE: David Jones of Serious. For services to Music and Culture
MBE: Jacqueline Caryl Dankworth Recording Artist, Actress and Singer. For services to Music
BEM: Clark Tracey Jazz Musician. For services to Music and the Promotion of Jazz
BEM: Jonathan Eno (of Hot House music - Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Staffordshire). For services to Jazz Music Education.

Also included in the list from music are, for example, pianist Joanna McGregor, singer/ bandleader Elvis Costello, Feargal Sharkey, and composers Anna Meredith and Jonathan Dove

REVIEW: Jazz Sous les Pommiers – The 38th Coutances Jazz Festival: Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:30:00 +0000

Cécile McLorin Salvant at Jazz Sous les Pommiers
Photo: Mathieu Dutot

Jazz Sous les Pommiers – The 38th Coutances Jazz Festival
(Coutances, France, 24 May – 1 June 2019. Review by Richard Lee)

This is Part Two of Richard Lee's extensive review.

I arrived at Théo Girard’s Trio et Orchestre Circulaire’s Pensée Rotatives knowing little and expecting less – I had missed that Girard’s collaborator is our very own Seb Rochford and they play bass and drums in the centre of the circular Magic Mirrors venue club with Antoine Berjaut on trumpet, and are surrounded by the audience and an outer ring of ten saxes and five more trumpets. The arrangements put me in mind of early Mike Gibbs: quite joyful and optimistic, punctuated with some jauntier, occasionally menacing motifs recalling Fables of Faubus or Weill. Over these, some very classy, sustained blowing took place. Girard is a tremendous composer and performer, a perfect foil for Rochford’s ever-inventive percussion. This Gallic Jazz in the Round also really allowed the audience to enjoy their work up close, not only playing but watching them direct things. For me, it was one of the highlights of the festival, celebrating what big bands can do beyond the “standards arrangements”. A little later, UK outfit Maisha played the same room. Led by Jake Long on drums, and featuring the impressive Shirley Tetteh on guitar, I didn’t catch who was fronting them on tenor but this was very much a clubbing set: not really my thing but displaying an undeniable energy. It was a bit bracing after attending a Jobim tribute from The SF Jazz Collective, an 8-piece comprising headliners like David Sanchez on tenor and Robin Eubanks on trombone. Somehow, this didn’t quite work for me, despite some superb playing (from Eubanks in particular) and a packed main hall clearly felt otherwise. Perhaps I had reached third-day burnout, being surrounded by “all this useless beauty”? Rewind to the first night of the festival.

Moutain Factory Quintet (F) led by brothers Louis & François Moutain on drums and bass respectively, opened quietly with a delicious trumpet sound coming from Christophe Monniot’s alto played in unison with Manu Codija’s guitar, heralding an upbeat set of spiky fusion, recalling in various ways McLaughlin & Shorter, the latter specifically conjured in Wayne’s Melody. The brothers – who wrote and arranged everything else – gave a terrific display of restrained invention in their superbly rhythmic duetting. They were a good opening act for the evening’s main course: Joshua Redman (USA) with the Michel Reis/Marc Demuth/Paul Wiltgen Trio (Lux). I’ve seen Redman pair up with The Bad Plus and on that occasion felt both he and his trio were transformed by the pairing. The same magic is worked here. I’m unfamiliar with pianist Reis & drummer Wiltgen’s work but as composers of all numbers, they’ve put together an outstanding set. The ballad No Storm Lasts Forever was commandingly beautiful, reminding me a little of Langer/Costello’s Shipbuilding, with a classical tone: the lines throughout were symphonic, much more than hooks and riffs. They are also consummate players, Demuth’s bass so assuredly ringing out as well as being the pivot for Wiltgen’s rolling rhythms and Reis’ & Redman’s commanding melodies. I heard plenty of sure-footed reed work during the week, but Redman’s tone really is a thing of plangent beauty, right across the full-range of the tenor. He can of course do fireworks, but there were a few opportunities for that where he and the band simply spiralled up, while he rarely broke a sweat. And yes, he’s a serious intent musician, but he can be joyful and exuberant, echoing Rollins. Under the ever-inventive lighting of the packed Salle Marcel-Hélie turned blue, Redman’s muscular stature grew, reminding me of Dr Atomic in the film of Watchmen – a completely assured demi-god…

Cathedral de Coutances with Dave Liebman in
the nave and Andy Emler on the screens
Phone snap: Richard Lee

The other notable pairing of a US reedsman with a European compadre came about with Dave Liebman and Andy Emler, the latter ensconced in the organ loft of the Cathedral de Coutances. Rather than leave things to fate, as has been the way with many church or cathedral gigs, the distance to Liebman’s position in front of the altar was eased with four video screens, which cut between him playing fast, agile lines that pierced the stone acoustic, on soprano, tenor and penny whistle, and Emler’s organ keyboard, with a full and generous sound. Sometimes, he’d literally pull out (and then push back in) all the stops which on their own created a weird sound effect, not of this earth, and possibly not even the other place… His playing managed to conjure up both church and roadhouse; if not exactly God’s own Hammond then at least, on the hottest evening of the festival, this was by far the coolest place to be…

The following evenings each provided similarly magisterial experiences from the American mainstream tradition. The festival closed with the Foursight quartet featuring Renee Rosnes (pno), Jimmy Greene (tnr) & Payton Crossley (drms) and led by 82 year-old bass legend Ron Carter. A towering and confident figure at his bass, he took the band through standards and some lesser known tunes, while only claiming one extended solo, which he never grandstanded, but held the audience in most rapt attentiveness, thrumming a pedal, finding harmonics that genuinely surprised but never sounded “clever”. Rosnes is of course hugely experienced and respected, and it was a treat to hear her introducing a standard like My Funny Valentine so simply; but once she had remarkably Chopin’d the heck out of it, Greene (even taller and as imposing as Carter) made his complex post-bop take on the classic look and sound effortless. On the hottest night of the year so far, while the audience sweltered, this was the relaxed demeanour of New York cool suits and twin-set, note-perfect and not a tie undone. You might say they exemplified the art of classic quartet playing. However…

The previous night, Kenny Werner (pno), Peter Erskine (drms), Benjamin Koppel (alto) & Scott Colley brought their vast experience from Coltrane to Weather Report via Ives, to come together as The Art of the Quartet, and thus signalling their intention, that really is what we saw at work. It’s pointless to try and get the cigarette paper of difference between quartets of this calibre: Redman & Co were stellar, Foursight was the art of latter-day cool, and each of us would undoubtedly have our favourites. This foursome were pointedly presenting a collective lifetime’s experience and in their very name laying down a gauntlet to be judged on that. And it worked. A simply astonishing performance, illustrating how that fourway thing should best happen. As well as the five beautiful original numbers stretching over 90 minutes, they took Zawinul’s Directions to new heights, not least in Werner’s sizzling piano solos and comping. The speed of thought and interplay, the lightness of touch by Erskine & Colley, and Koppel’s sublime alto lines had a late night audience transfixed. They finished on a setting of William Walton’s Touch Her Soft Lips and Part composed for Olivier’s wartime Henry V. Possibly one of the most beautiful renditions of a formal tune, I’d compare this with Keith Jarrett’s Shenandoah, played with minimal but perfectly judged flourishes.

Théo Girard Trio and Orchestre Circulaire in the Magic Mirrors
Phone snap: Richard Lee

However, in the middle of all this, I was lucky enough to be close up to the remarkable Cécile McLorent Salvant and Sullivan Fortner, performing many songs from their latest album The Window along with other lesser-known standards and a couple of French numbers (I’m afraid I don’t have the set list). It’s been around for nine months and passed me by, so it was quite something to be introduced to it like this. My notes are scrawls of superlatives for, at every turn, this incredible duo continued to deliver pretty much perfect vocalising and piano playing. Fortner has a spiky, complex style which paradoxically feels like the easiest thing in the world. A rock-steady left hand, his right is endlessly skittish. Never showy, but permanently tantalising and surprising, it feels like a century of standards and blues is being referenced and refreshed… All of which might easily be said of Salvant. She is just so in command, a simplicity and directness also reflected in her appearance: a shaved head, almost invisible glasses these days, so you can see every nuance of her expression; and she appears in a superbly coutured ivory gown, simply, squarely cut of gorgeously textured plain cloth. Fortner’s loose plain shirt lends an air of the poet, but is clearly practical: he gets really hot, reaching for a towel between numbers, laying it over his head and slowly pulling it forward and down. She, by contrast, is almost Miss Frigidaire, merely glowing… but smiling, always smiling and intently watching his playing.

Between them, they really do perform each song, telling it musically while managing to create the intimacy of the club in the vast and relatively bleak Salle Marcel-Hélie. There’s no doubt that her ability to fix the audience with the sense that she’s singing to each and every one of them is an essential part of genuine star quality. But she also has the advantage of words that she clearly values, delivered with superb diction and a wonderful ease. Clearly so at one with Fortner’s playing, she doesn’t feel the need to scat in any way: they are entirely complementary: mutual accompaniment, mutual accomplishment. It’s as if he is dissecting each song’s structure, testing its value in terms of different styles from classical to blues, ragtime, showtime or Monkish post-bop, and trying it for size, passing it back to her for another chapter. All the songs are essays on love, its failure and the work to put it right, to hold on to it. She’s apparently been doing it in various ways for years but when she sings “I tried to keep our love going strong but no matter how I tried, something went wrong” acapella, sitting at the piano with Fortner, and finishing on “I will bury the ghost of our long lost love”, you could feel the hall hold its breath. They are nothing less than the true heirs to that wonderful pairing of Ella Fitzgerald and Ellis Larkins in the early '50s, and while they and many of the acts I’ve praised could be seen elsewhere on the circuit, this particular programme, on balance, was more than enough for me to recommend you consider booking for 2020.

* NB: There are too many gigs that I had to miss because of timings – Gwilym Simcock playing with baritone player Céline Bonacina, for instance. Hopefully, that might surface eventually but meanwhile, there are extracts from some of the concerts I’ve mentioned and a whole lot more here, courtesy France TV.

*Incidentally, accommodation is relatively limited and while there’s plenty in the surrounding district, the wonderful ambience of the town square packed with pop-up food wagons, bars and late night events really does encourage one to find accommodation within falling distance – so do think about making arrangements for 2020 soon!

LINK: Jazz Sous Les Pommiers

DRAWINGS: Joe McPhee with Black Top and Paal Nilssen-Love at Cafe Oto

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:29:00 +0000

Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet at Cafe Oto, 2019
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

Joe McPhee with Black Top and Paal Nilssen-Love
(Cafe Oto, 8 May 2019. Words and drawings by Geoff Winston)

When pioneering jazz multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee took up residency at Cafe Oto in May, he played a lively first-time gig with Black Top (Pat Thomas and Orphy Robinson on keyboards and electronics, bolstered by drummer, Paal Nilssen-Love, with whom he’d gigged the previous evening. Before launching in to the main event McPhee thanked the audience and Cafe Oto for supporting this kind of music, ‘which we need more than ever’, and wearing his AC/DC t-shirt hollered, ‘Let’s rock!’ with a cheeky smile on his face.

Paal Nilssen-Love at Cafe Oto, 2019
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

Rock, they certainly did, in a uniquely idiosyncratic way, mixing up jazz with electronics and broadly-rendered improvisation. McPhee evoked the spirits of Albert Ayler in his looser, raw statements and Coltrane when in robust flow on tenor sax, and with high compression intensity gave the pocket trumpet the feel of a small gun, a powerful weapon to confront at your peril!

In some live sketches I tried to capture some of the feel of his intense engagement with each instrument and his heart-on-the-sleeve expressive commitment to which he always remains true.

Thomas and Robinson threw in swerving electronics, corralling ear-bending contrasts of high frequency screeches and humming bass lines tempered with piano runs and dabs of calypso and steel drums homage, while Nilssen-Love demonstrated his versatility as he went with the flow, holding back in contemplative sequences or constructing layered beats to flesh out the improvisational momentum which gave this grouping its powerfully questioning, and occasionally quizzical, musical voice.

Joe McPhee on tenor sax at Cafe Oto, 2019
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

NEWS: Soft Machine Announced as Headliners for four-day 2019 Lowestoft Jazz Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 10:42:00 +0000

Soft Machine
Publicity Photo

Bob Blizzard writes:

Following the success of last year’s inaugural festival, The Lowestoft Jazz Weekend returns for 2019, extended to four days, from 12 Sep - 15 Sep 2019.

Headline band will be Soft Machine (13 Sep), fresh from their recent 50th anniversary world tour. There will be a great opportunity to see legendary singer, Elaine Delmar performing with the Barry Green Quartet, featuring guitar ace, Jim Mullen (14 Sep).

The festival will kick off with the Chris Ingham Quartet, including star bassist, Geoff Gascoyne, playing ‘The Jazz of Dudley Moore (12 Sep). It will close with a blast from The Eddie Seales Big Band.

Local favourites, Jazz Unlimited, Gill Alexander Quartet and Pangaea return to complete the line-up.

The theme this year is variety. This line up has something for everyone. Lowestoft is a great place to spend a weekend and special accommodation deals are available from the Hotel Hatfield, one of the festival sponsors.’

Bob Blizzard, former MP for Lowestoft and founder of the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, is the promoter of the Lowestoft Jazz Weekend

LINK: Lowestoft Jazz Weekend website

REVIEW: Joel Ross – Kingmaker album launch at the Jazz Standard, NY

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 09:20:00 +0000

Joel Ross
Publicity photo by Lauren Desberg/Blue Note

Joel Ross – Kingmaker album launch
Jazz Standard, NY. 6 June 2019. Review by Dan Bergsagel

The Jazz Standard announcer has announced, and we wait for Joel Ross and 'Good Vibes'. And we wait. Someone comes on stage, but they are alone, and they are holding sticks, not mallets. It is Jeremy Dutton who straddles a stool and starts to play: building focused drums – toms racing the bass drum, hi-hat as an independent thing occasionally snapping away. By the time the rest of the band slouch on, the crowd are simultaneously mesmerised, and worried that he's already run out of beats before they even get started.

It's an unconventional start, but one which suits the musical approach Joel Ross is bringing to the world with his debut record as a front-man: KingMaker, out on Blue Note. Ross is about the group, and is as happy to leave his vibraphone and lean on the plush red back wall of the stage watching the others as he is improvising alone front-of-stage. Everyone gets ample time to do their thing.

Ross has said that, for him, it's a challenge to get expression out of these cold bars. And the way that comes across is through striking with clarity, and twitchy, accurate pedalling. Ross is a two mallets guy, not four. But he slips neatly between leading the group with ringing melody, to where he seems so comfortable, following in behind the piano or alto, bringing grooves and rhythmic accents to the fore. Once fancies that the tutelage of former Blue Note stablemate vibes great Stefon Harris, and hints of Bobby Hutcherson, might be coming through, but Ross seems confident enough to pick his own path. He sits within the group more like Jim Hart, a vibes player who is just as assured and convincing behind a drum kit.

Good Vibes thrives on the interplay between Ross' vibes and Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, whether they're trading solos, or storming through a head in unison before one or other drops in to ghost. While the dialogue between alto and vibes is the most well developed, often driving Wilkins to moments of spiritual intensity, Ross also punctuates the classical, slurred runs of Jeremy Corren on the grand piano, with clean contrasting incisions.

The release of a Blue Note album comes as a sign that things should be taken seriously, and Ross has accordingly been treated to national press coverage, with a remarkably informative interview on NPR teasing out some motivations. Ross has said the new music scene isn't just about chops, its about expression, "Not so much the what, it's the why". It is interesting how this echoes threads in the current music scene in London, where tags of jazz or fusion or afrobeat are being consciously discarded, but it is also tangible in the way Ross plays. Like a marionette twitching, jumping, accurate with focused arm movements but a loose body. This visual, of the act of playing, is what is lost on the record; the indecision, the visible thought process and bar selection. At times hovering, shaking and halting, in a live show you see his many nearly notes as well as hearing the realised ones. Ross is a Schrödinger's cat of a musician –constantly capable of many sounds, the act of observation seeming to force him to choose a quantum musical state. When he chooses it seems to drag the mallet down with a magnetic certainty, and stick the head to the bar.

The Good Vibes set feels like it's still being formed. Unlike the slick record, the stage craft is in progress: mumbled band introductions, the opening long pause, haphazardly running pieces together leaving an audience wanting to applaud but straining to figure out when to do it. While this might unsettle the crowd, it doesn't seem to affect Ross and co. Ross grins, bounces around while Kanoa Mendenhall on bass continues to anchor the group, whilst trying to restrain giggles. You might also expect them to plumb the depths of KingMaker in putting together the set, but it seems that Good Vibes are more interested in new pieces, giving a relatively small amount of time over to any album playback.

Brought up in stature as a side man for others – notably playing with McCraven and Francies - Ross' approach is as a leader who is still very much part of the team. And he's using his platform to boost up his peers; it certainly feel like there's more talent to find in Good Vibes than just vibes: Wilkins is developing a bold signature alto sound which is certainly worth following, and Dutton really is a delight with deft percussion touches and rhythms continuing far beyond his eye-catching solo start.

So finally, what have we got? First and foremost in Ross we have an empathetic composer and egalitarian band leader, who is perhaps a drummer and pianist second. “I have a love-hate relationship with the vibraphone", Ross reports. The piano can be most powerful when it's treated as the percussion instrument it is – drums their most evocative when the tonal qualities are brought forward. Despite any avowed reluctance which Ross may declare about being a vibraphonist, it feels nonetheless that he has managed to strike the magic balance of rhythm and melody, deftly toggling between lead and support on an instrument that can be sometimes awkwardly caught in between.

Joel Ross' Good Vibes will be at Pizza Express Dean Street on 10-11 July BOOKINGS

CD REVIEW: Jim Blomfield Trio – Strange Beauty (Every Way OK)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 13:41:00 +0000

Jim Blomfield Trio – Strange Beauty (Every Way OK)
(Pig Records PIG009 CD Review by Jon Turney)

Bristol-based pianist Jim Blomfield, widely admired in his home city, isn’t as well-known elsewhere as he deserves. Jazz players typically build an audience through relentless touring. But, as the notes to his second piano trio release relate, Blomfield fits his musical explorations of jazz, classical, electronica and sound design alongside family life with two autistic sons. That’s probably not compatible with life on the road.

It’s no bar to great studio work, though, and here he weaves autobiographical elements into the music – the creak of a playground swing, a boy’s non-verbal exclamations – to create a set of pieces with impressive range and depth, and real emotional force.

It’s not a concept album, but the mood is often informed by Blomfield’s decades-long immersion in the “chaotic, fascinating, unfathomable, messy, isolating, disturbing” world of autism, which nonetheless yields moments of “strange beauty”. Several pieces convey a feeling of achieving calm against the odds that anyone will relate to.

That’s an important aspect of the recording’s success. The music has outgrown its origins, as it needs to, and works fine without any knowledge of the background. The elements that extend it beyond the classic piano trio – field recordings, beats, synthesised sounds – are used sparingly. Blomfield and his bass player and studio wizard co-producer Roshan ‘Tosh’ Wijetunge find just the right touch for each piece. All the compositions are by the pianist except for an achingly beautiful slow arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Intermezzo.

That’s one highlight in a very varied set. Others include the anthemic ballad Every Way OK, which gathers power as it goes, and the long, aptly titled Mellow Drama which moves from delicate keyboard rumination through more extrovert flourishes to rocking interludes and back to a more conventional jazz piano solo exploration.

Once again, light touches of field recording enhance the piece. Along with the others, and the CD overall, it combines disparate elements into an emotionally satisfying whole, testament to Blomfield’s skill as a composer as well as a player. Like the session leader, Wijetunge on bass and the versatile Mark Whitlam, the busy Bristol drummer seen of late in Iain Ballamy’s quartet, are open to a whole range of contemporary influences. Their contributions complement his nicely, whether the mood is gently melancholic, as on the vignette Stillness in the Sadness, emphatically upbeat, like Lung Rebellion, or a nicely judged mix of the two on the closing Buddha in the Barcode. Together, they have developed into one of our most rewarding contemporary piano trios, as this recording amply demonstrates.

Jon Turney writes about jazz, and other things, from Bristol. jonturney.co.uk. Twitter: @jonWturney

REVIEW: Jazz Sous les Pommiers – The 38th Coutances Jazz Festival: Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:12:00 +0000

Jazz on the streets at Coutances
Phone snap: Richard Lee

Jazz Sous les Pommiers – The 38th Coutances Jazz Festival
(Coutances, France, 24 May – 1 June 2019. Review by Richard Lee)

This is Part One of Richard Lee's extensive review.

“Convivial”. That word kept coming to mind. At every turn, this festival presented warmly inviting experiences, be it the full and fairly eclectic range of musicians or the very friendly, welcoming ambience of the town, its residents and visitors. Anyone familiar with Cheltenham would feel at home here, perhaps even more so with its inclusive demographic and the frankly excellent food and drink on offer. Sadly, no actual apple trees were sat under during the making of this review, though I have to admit, le cidre from the area was excellent.

I managed to enjoy four out of the festival’s seven-day programme, gig-hopping the 15 or so venues corralled into use for around 60 acts. Half of these were French, the rest more or less split equally between US, UK/Europe and Africa. In addition, there’s a full programme of amateur and community bands and workshops livening up public places around the town square and cathedral gardens that feels welcomed and integrated rather than a reluctant concession. The director Denis Le Bas and his team run a relaxed, highly efficient ship, and clearly, after 37 years, the town seems pleased to have this asset which brings in a wide demographic and tourist euros.

Best of all, it’s a pleasure to hear the quality of French musicianship, even if for me, the programme got off to a slow start. My first gig was a fairly lightweight set by Sarah Lenka (F). Dubbing it as Women’s Legacy and her as “la petite souer de Bessie Smith” didn’t auger well and the fairly samey selection of blues and ballads only managed to highlight Ms Lenka’s affinity with Dido rather than Gardot, let alone the doyenne of the blues. The waving of lit mobiles in any audience for any purpose is always a step too far for me… But what became quickly evident was how well served she was by a really solid quartet and in particular, how interesting the current crop of drummers are: Raphaël Chassin was the first of many in the week who drew attention.

One of the busiest performers was Anna Paceo, a really accomplished French thresher (as I’ve seen various drummers described this week…) who was in residence at the festival. Her Rewind set with American & Palestinian colleagues was a hard-driving hip-hop-inflected late-night set for a dancing crowd, featuring in the fringe-like Magic Mirrors venue, but she really came into her own on the final day with her Latin-fusion-based Alegria quartet, demonstrating her prowess at the kit. Guitar driven and hugely optimistic in tone, this was a packed show in the main theatre, and a hit with everyone.

Tbe Géraud Portal Sextet at Coutances
Phone snap: Richard Lee

One of the town’s conventional caves-based clubs hosted late night sets for listeners rather than dancers. The Géraud Portal Sextet (from France, Italy & Israel) offered Let My Children Hear Mingus with a very good recreation of some of the classic tunes, relying on Portal’s own bass, Luigi Grasso’s enthusiastic baritone and César Poirier’s alto. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting is probably one of the hardest Mingus tunes to deliver authentically, but they made a good fist of it. The Impérial Quartet also featured a pair of multi-saxophonists, with Gerald Chevillon expertly wielding a bass sax, as well as tenor & soprano, duelling & duetting with Damien Sabatier’s baritone, alto and soprano. The bass sax is all too often a novelty feature but here, using its full range, we enjoyed a pretty thrilling self-penned set which, with their fine drum & bass section, often conjured Soweto street music and other international styles with a jazz edge.

There’s quite an emphasis on world music at the festival, perhaps more than at UK festivals. I took the opportunity to catch Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares something I’ve long wanted to do. Hugely glad I did, because if the traditional costume and some of the vocal formalities aren’t your thing (me neither) I can heartily recommend the playing of the accompanying six-piece instrumental ensemble led by a beat-boxer, which was a bit of a revelation. Similarly, I found myself full of admiration for the dexterity of oud player Rabih Abou Khalil and his ensemble, which included Gavino Murgia’s likeable sax and voice: it simply isn’t my go-to choice. Sophie Alour is a fine tenor player whose band Exils is culled from Egypt & Libya, as well as Belgium & France and I found the oud playing of Mohamed Abozékry more exciting within a conventional jazz context. North African sounds abound, especially when Alour turns to the soprano. She also has one of these energetic drummers in Donald Kontomanou, who, like Anna Paceo in her Rewind set, lives up to the other French term, batterie…

I was intrigued to find out what Festen’s Inside Stanley Kubrick project was all about, not having considered the auteur particularly jazz-inflected. In the event, Damien Fleau’s tenor, conjuring for me the brashness of Pete Wareham’s Acoustic Ladyland, was great fun, though the Barry Lyndon got a little too relentlessly Nyman’s Contract, and I’d be pushed to say which other piece worked with which film, though the Also Sprach Zarathustra tribute was quite obvious, quite the opposite of Deodato’s mid-'70s take and wasn’t quite worthy of an “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that right now” punchline – but it got a good laugh.

A concert of Trois Pianos was set for the final afternoon and proved to be a test. Spain’s Marco Mezquida played a fulsome wall of sound, more symphonic than syncopated; Kevin Hays from the US teamed up with the Swiss Grégoire Maret’s mouth organ for some standards and blues conjuring the feel of modernists like Metheny, Meldhau and Scofield. It was good to hear something less Adler, more Adderley. Finally, a standard piano trio led Yaron Herman from Israel demonstrated their prowess – considerable in that they were joined by a depping bass in Matt Brewer - though I must admit I craved some stronger themes. But I’m running ahead to the end of the festival, so to return to the beginning…

Read Part Two tomorrow.

PREVIEW: The Many Voices of Eve – London Vocal Project and The Printmakers (Kings Place, 16 June)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 10:32:00 +0000

London Vocal Project
Photo: Karen Hatch

The Many Voices of Eve is a much-welcomed collaboration between The London Vocal Project and The Printmakers, and will comprise a concert at Kings Place on 16 June, with a preceding 'pop-up' gig and a workshop. LVP's musical director Pete Churchill explains all:

The meeting:

When, after the success of our Miles Ahead and 10th Anniversary concerts, the good people at Kings Place asked to meet The London Vocal Project and to discuss some ideas about what the next project might be, we all decided we would love to collaborate with The Printmakers. In reality, such is the nature of the U.K. Jazz scene that past musical endeavours have resulted in us both collaborating in all but name (our Mirrors album had involved most of The Printmakers) and it seemed like a natural and long overdue pairing.

The theme:

We were then asked to decide what the title of such a concert might be – what we might like to celebrate. It seemed obvious to us that, with The Printmakers being led by Nikki Iles and Norma Winstone and with the current soprano and alto sections of LVP (not to mention numerous ‘alumni’) representing the best of the emerging and established jazz artists in this country, we had much to celebrate!

Norma Winstone and Nikki Iles
Publicity picture

And so the theme of the concert was decided: The Many Voices of Eve, a celebration of the deep and lasting contribution of women to this music that we all dedicate so much of our lives to. And it made sense to schedule it as an extension of the fantastic Venus Unwrapped festival that is currently happening at Kings Place.

We felt that it was important to have new music in the concert – to celebrate the collaboration – and so we commissioned two pieces from Nikki Iles which will be premiered on 16 June. The first is a stunning setting of an incredible poem by Edna St.Vincent Millay called What Lips my Lips have Kissed... and the second is an original tune of Nikki’s with new words by Norma called Moontide.

Building on this we have added three settings of Stevie Smith poems (one of the greatest of our 20th century female poets) selected from our Mirrors album with Norma and Kenny Wheeler. By adding to this an arrangement of Westerly, another Nikki Iles/Norma Winstone collaboration – with a lyric inspired by an Annie Proulx short story – it became clear that the evening was as much a celebration of women in literature as women in jazz!

Pre-concert ‘pop-up’ gig:

Many members of LVP are steeped in the music of the great singer/songwriters and it seemed a shame not to celebrate this as well. To this end we devised a short accapella session in the atrium at the bottom of the escalator (great acoustic) before the concert. One of our basses, Brendan Dowse, has been hard at work and we will be premiering five of his newly-minted arrangements of classic songs by Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper & Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks. Add to this a couple already in our repertoire by Carole King and Beth Nielsen Chapman and those who are sensible enough to get there by 7pm will be in for a treat!

The workshop:

If you decide to make a whole afternoon and evening of it then you should definitely sign up for the workshop that is happening at 2pm in Hall Two. LVP have a very special way of working – their approach to rehearsing informs their sound and influences their blend. This workshop is a chance to become part of that for a while. Furthermore, participation here is sure to add to your appreciation of the concerts that follow... come and be part of the LVP experience!

The concert:

On Sunday 16 June, 8pm at Kings Place in Hall One, a long-awaited collaboration between these two significant ensembles is to take place and it promises to be a memorable meeting indeed.

LINKS: Booking for the concert

Booking for the workshop

NEWS: Ronnie’s 60th concert line-up announced (30 October, tickets on sale Friday)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 23:01:00 +0000

Peter Bacon reports:

Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club turns 60 on 30 October 2019 and the line-up planned for its big birthday bash would be hard-pressed to squeeze into the Frith Street club. So, instead, the more accommodating Royal Albert Hall will be doing just that for Kurt Elling, Liane Carroll, Guy Barker, Courtney Pine, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Van Morrison, Imelda May, Ian Shaw, Pee Wee Ellis, Madeline Bell, Natalie Williams, the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra led by Pete Long, and the Ronnie Scott’s All Stars led by James Pearson.

That press release in full (nearly):

On 30th October 1959, Ronnie Scott and Pete King opened the doors of their first club on Gerrard Street as a place for music lovers to experience the intoxicating world of Jazz. Fast forward 60 years, and Ronnie Scott’s has become a Jazz institution; playing host to some of the biggest names to have ever graced the stage – from Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Dee Dee Bridgewater, to contemporary artists including Jamie Cullum, Jeff Beck and Christian Scott.

To celebrate the club’s landmark birthday, Ronnie Scott’s is opening a bigger set of doors for one night only; putting on a once in a lifetime gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall on their official 60th birthday, Wednesday 30th October 2019 in aid of the Ronnie Scott’s Charitable Foundation.

The line-up for this unmissable event represents the ‘who’s who’ of the Jazz world, as befits the club that has been the pinnacle of the British Jazz scene for 60 years. Tickets go on sale on Friday 7th June at 10am with the following performers revealed so far:

Van Morrison, two-time Grammy award-winning songwriter, instrumentalist and producer
Imelda May, popular Irish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
Madeline Bell, iconic American jazz and soul vocalist
Kurt Elling, 14-time winner of the Downbeat Critics Poll and celebrated American jazz vocalist
Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, the man behind the smash hits ‘Yeh, Yeh’ and ‘Get Away’
Pee Wee Ellis, American saxophonist and composer and the architect behind James Brown’s unique sound
Courtney Pine, British jazz giant and founder of band The Jazz Warriors
Ian Shaw, renowned jazz vocalist and campaigner
Natalie Williams, critically acclaimed recording artist
Liane Carroll, acclaimed pianist and vocalist
Guy Barker, jazz trumpeter and composer
Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra led by Pete Long
Ronnie Scott’s All Stars led by James Pearson

The story of the club’s illustrious history will be told throughout the evening, interwoven with the narrative of the night’s set...

Managing Director of Ronnie Scott’s, Simon Cooke, said: “We are transporting the club, for one night only, into the slightly larger Royal Albert Hall but have every intention of recreating the unique atmosphere we have here in Frith Street. It’s wonderful that so many artists have asked to appear at the show and is indicative of the affection and importance the club holds in London and across the world.’’

Co-owner of Ronnie Scott’s, Sally Greene OBE, said: "I am so proud to be a part of both Ronnie Scott's amazing history and its bright future. Over the past 60 years Ronnie's has welcomed many incredible artists; from legends of Jazz to lesser known rising stars. I look forward to this British institution bringing the wonders of Jazz to the heart of Soho for another 60 years. Our birthday at the Royal Albert Hall will be a unique evening showcasing our love of Jazz on a grand scale to our long-standing patrons and future generations of music lovers."

Artistic Director of the Royal Albert Hall, Lucy Noble, said: “We’re thrilled to announce this all-star celebration of Ronnie Scott’s, a name synonymous with sensational Jazz music. The Hall has a proud history of hosting the giants of the genre – from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Billie Holiday to the stars of 2019 – and this meeting of two of Britain’s great musical institutions should add up to an incredible night.”

The ‘A Night at Ronnie Scott’s’ gala concert represents the stunning culmination of birthday celebrations taking place throughout 2019 for the club; marking an iconic year for one of London’s most cherished venues.

LINK: Tickets can be bought here from Friday at 10.30am.

FEATURE: GMF Tuscany 2019 Course and Festival with the Scott Hamilton / Champian Fulton Quartet (28-31 Aug.)

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 11:59:00 +0000

Certaldo Alto
Publicity photo from certaldo-info.com

GMF Tuscany 2019 with the Scott Hamilton / Champian Fulton Quartet will be an intimate jazz festival and course in a magical and historic location. It will take place at the end of August this year. Stephen Keogh (*) writes:

There is a tiny, beautiful hill town in Tuscany called Certaldo Alto. It has attracted artists and musicians for hundreds of years, dating right back to the 14th century, when poet and writer Giovanni Boccaccio lived and died there. You can visit his house which is now a museum.

Physically not much has changed since back then. It has a castle, a palace of justice, now used as performance spaces and for art exhibitions, two churches, several small piazzas and a collection of medieval town houses and palaces, all beautifully arranged along one main street, the Via Giovanni Boccaccio. Artists, sculptors, writers and musicians live and work there all year around. Of course you could say that in Tuscany there are many towns that fit the same description. But Certaldo Alto has a special atmosphere. The kind of atmosphere that makes people want to paint it, write about it and compose songs about it, as did the great jazz guitarist Louis Stewart, and also the wonderful vocalist/composer Rene Marie. Both songs are recorded and appear on albums. Louis Stewart's Angel Eyes featuring Peter King, and Rene Marie's Grammy nominated album The Sound of Red.

If you visit the town you'll know why, and like almost all who do visit you will want to return. It's a combination of the beauty of it, the good food and wine; Chianti starts at its borders, the relaxed pace and that the inhabitants sit out on chairs in the street chatting, and everyone's front door is open.

You might be having a coffee one morning at the Bar Boccaccio and realise you are standing next to the legendary saxophonist Scott Hamilton.

Or you might be staying at the hotel Albergo Il Castello, and discover it is owned and run by a great jazz drummer called Alfred Kramer (below on drums with Scott Hamilton).

There are many arts events and festivals happening in Certaldo thoughout the year that include theatre, music, painting, sculpture literature and more.

Global Music Foundation has been staging music courses and festivals in Certaldo since 2005, as well as art and photography exhibitions.

After a short break of three years we return to produce GMF Tuscany ‘19 with Scott Hamilton & Champian Fulton, August 28 - 31, 2019. There are daily workshops and sessions with Scott Hamilton & Champian Fulton Quartet, and concerts each night plus jam sessions in the Cellar Bar at Il Castello. We are going to keep it small in numbers because we want it to be quality time at all the events.

If you would like to come as a student/participant or just to enjoy this magical place and attend the concerts each night, click the link below which will take you to the Global Music Foundation website where there is information about the event and how to reserve. To repeat, we can only take a limited number of people so don't leave it for long to get in touch if you think you would like to come. GMF Tuscany '19.

Certalsdo Alto
Photo credit: Vignaccia76 /Creative Commons

(*) Irish-born, Spanish-based drummer Stephen Keogh is Director of the Global Music Foundation - FULL BIOGRAPHY)

LINKS:
- More details of the Certaldo Alto 2019 course
- BOOKINGS (for both course participants and listeners)

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP: Primavera Sound 2019 in Barcelona (Sons of Kemet XL, The Comet Is Coming, The Necks, Terry Riley & Gyan Riley)

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 21:27:00 +0000

Sons of Kemet XL
Photo credit: Christian Bertrand

Primavera Sound 2019
(30 May-1 June, Barcelona. Festival Round-Up by AJ Dehany)

Primavera Sound festival is as sprawling and eclectic as ever in its 19th edition, with over 20 stages, with 200,000 attendees over three days, and an inclusive spirit. As the festival’s ethos moves into a more urban contemporary direction, reflecting a zeitgeist more strongly associated with urban pop’s influences including R&B, hip-hop, and Latin, you see fewer of the guitar bands you associate with British festivals, with a range of pop and hiphop acts of seriously impressive cachet including Erykah Badu, Solange, Janelle Monae, Cardi B, Carly Rae Jepsen, Robyn and FKA Twigs.

The festival is distinguished for being an early riser with regard to the Key Change initiative to bring about gender parity in music by 2022. This can be variously interpreted and in this case means the billing is at least 50% female and non-binary while on stage male musicians still tend to predominate. Furthermore, in the case of jazz, the music was represented by only three or four groups made up entirely of men – and two of these groups led by Shabaka Hutchings!

We started out in the Rockdelux Auditori venue within the distinctive blue building of the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. The Necks are the well-liked, freely improvising Australian trio, constantly touring but visiting Barcelona for the first time. Their atmospheric playing is a model of restraint and pacing, though familiar now. Terry Riley and Gyan Riley have also been plying their trade as a duo with regular-seeming London gigs in Oval Space. In a succession of guitar-and-synthscapes they jam a homely organic watery psychedelia vamping on scale-like exercises. The changes of feel are regular enough that you don’t get chance here to go into those hallucinogenic reveries associated with minimalism. At points it all feels sweetly twee.

Terry Riley
Photo credit: Dani Canto

While Terry Riley is a figure associated with the musical counterculture of the 1960s, Shabaka Hutchings is much more a figure of the contemporary urban spirit identifying with the direction of Primavera Sound. He has diverse associations, having trained at the Guildhall and a BBC Radio 3 New Generation artist and associated with the clarinet before the tenor sax predominated. He has links with Jazz Re:freshed, Total Refreshment Centre, Steam Down: the London hubs of the nu jazz and the music that freely forms itself out of grime, Caribbean, African, jazz, hiphop, and electronic influences. This is the vital contemporary form of younger jazz expression in the digimodern.

The Comet Is Coming is King Shabaka’s cosmic dance trio with Danalogue and Betamax (which we recently reviewed in Brighton ). At a mid-evening slot around half-one in the morning in a cabaret marquee, a new venue that seemed to be struggling with the demands of the electronically effected saxophone and drums, Shabaka periodically winced as his in-ear monitors overloaded. Stress seemed to drive them on to an impassioned performance that represented them well and fitted in with the festival’s ethos of serious committed music that you can still dance your ass off to.

Sons of Kemet XL were even better received next day in a bright sunshine slot on the Ray Ban stage, an open air amphitheatre that seems to suit every conceivable music. The band was expanded from the core of Shabaka’s tenor and Theon Cross’s tuba with two drummers, to a formation with four drummers: Tom Skinner, Eddie Hick, Max Hallett, Jon Scott. The XL format seemed to free up Shabaka’s playing more than usual. This music is not about the bluesy note bending style of modern jazz influenced by the mid-century Americans, it’s centred on a core discipline of rhythmic propulsion, so it was great to hear Shabaka let rip a couple of times in rarely heard solos demonstrating his considerable chops as a jazz player.

Your Queen Is A Reptile was the Jazz FM Awards Album of the year 2019 and a snippet was featured recently in the epochal Beyoncé Homecoming documentary, giving the music unprecedented exposure. The sense of urban crossover continued with an exciting surprise guest as poet and rapper Joshua Idehen came on for My Queen Is Ada Eastman, (written for Hutchings’s Barbadian great-grandmother). Wearing a Good Immigrant jumper (referencing the essay collection edited by Nikesh Shukla, where 21 British writers of colour discuss race and immigration in the UK), he rapped intensely about migrant experience, outlining the state of this watershed point in our history as nations snagged on the past: “We know your future!” Jazz was always and will always be political. Deal with it. The vital and exciting confluence of musical, rhythmic and political concerns of Sons of Kemet’s musical diaspora, while associated with London, felt very much part of an international social view.

But Shabaka is a man who thinks even bigger than that. At the only break in a continuously energetic one-hour set, he asked us to dig this: "If you take one thing away from this concert it's that we want you to meditate daily and teach your kids to meditate. And while you’re meditating, think about what’s around you and how you can see it differently.” It’s the same sort of motivation for Primavera Sound seizing the initiative to set an example for other festivals with its championing of gender parity as “the New Normal” and its firm line on LGBTQI+ safe space (“Nobody is Normal”) plus its forward-thinking approach to respecting history while remaining cautious about nostalgia, championing the urban-facing music of now, and making a unifying social statement for troubled and insular times.

AJ Dehany is based in London. Website: ajdehany.co.uk

NEWS: Veronika Morscher wins inaugural Jazzfest-Bonn-Förderpreis 2019

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 10:05:00 +0000

Veronika Morscher (centre) receiving the award from Bonn Mayor
Ashok Sridharan (right) with Festival Director Peter Materna
Photo credit: Heike Fischer/ JazzFest Bonn

Sebastian writes:

The 2019 Bonn Jazz Festival, in its tenth year, has just ended. On its closing day, it awarded an inaugural Förderpreis (literally sponsorship prize) to the Austrian-born singer Veronika Morscher.
Morscher directs the Cologne-based four-woman "neo a capella" group Of Cabbages And Kings. She founded the group in 2015, after studies in Boston, Vienna and Cologne. They won second place in the Burghausen Young Jazz Award in 2018, and their first album Neon was released by Klaeng last year.

The prize consists of a one-off award of EUR1,500 to go towards production costs, plus a bursary of EUR500/month for three months.

The press release state: "Jazzfest Bonn is awarding this prize for the first time this year. This award will be awarded annually to a particularly talented young artist in the field of creative jazz music. In Germany there is a multitude of well-trained young jazz musicians with a strong work ethic and personal skills, but performance opportunities are nonetheless scarce. Jazzfest Bonn is pleased to support this project."

Jury members were Anja Buchmann, Ralf Dombrowski and Sebastian Scotney

LINK: Of Cabbages and Kings website
JazzFest Bonn

PREVIEW: LoLanders dates in UK and Netherlands (7-27 June)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 06:13:00 +0000

Oene van Geel
Publicity picture

The Dutch/Scots collaboration LoLanders plays a series of dates in the UK and the Netherlands this month. Rob Adams reports:

Formed by Dutch violist Oene van Geel and Scottish saxophonist-piper-whistle player Fraser Fifield, the group played their first concert at Celtic Connections in Glasgow in January, by which time interest had already been piqued among promoters on both sides of the North Sea.

“It’s been really gratifying to know that the first gig wasn’t going to be the only one, as can often be the case with these sorts of collaborations,” says van Geel. “Although some of us had worked together in the past, we went into rehearsals for the Glasgow gig having never played together as a band before and the music came together really well. In fact, it felt like a group from the start, both in terms of the sound we made and the way everyone got along.”

Van Geel had previously invited Fifield to guest – very successfully, as it turned out - with the jazz-world-raga trio Nordanians in Amsterdam and there was another link in that LoLanders’ guitarist, Graeme Stephen, who also has a longstanding working relationship with Fifield, had composed for and played and recorded with van Geel’s string quartet, Zapp4.

“I also have a long partnership with the bass guitarist in LoLanders, Mark Haanstra,” says van Geel. “So, there was an obvious familiarity between some of the players but the way our two percussionists, Hardeep Deerhe on tablas and Udo Demandt very quickly formed a strong understanding really illustrates how compatible the group as a whole has turned out to be.”

The Celtic Connections gig was a great success – The Herald’s Keith Bruce enthused about the group’s strong grooves and the quality of its compositions and musicianship – and further dates, including Glasgow Jazz Festival and the Bimhuis in Amsterdam quickly came in for the new band.

With Fifield concentrating on pipes and whistles, there’s a strong folk music element in the music but as van Geel points out, there are also chamber music qualities as well as there being a lot of room for improvisation.

“This is a band – and music – that really comes alive in the moment,” says the violist, whose wordless vocals add to the world music vibe that the two percussionists drum up. “We’re really looking forward to taking it out on the road and developing the music and the group identity further.”

LoLanders was the first collaborative result of the Jazz Promotion Network’s Going Dutch project. Since then, Going Dutch has helped to facilitate another successful collaboration, Both Sides of Africa, which features Amsterdam-based Ladino singer, pianist and trombonist Nani-Noam Vazana and Manchester-based cellist Abel Selaocoe and made its first public performance at Manchester Jazz Festival last month.

“Without wishing to get into the political situation between the UK and the EU, these artistic meetings of minds are the sort of thing that should be encouraged,” says van Geel. “I’m pleased that we were given the chance to create LoLanders and I hope there’ll be more opportunities for similar projects in the future.”

Rob Adams is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh and helps publicise Going Dutch.

LoLanders play: The Pop Up in Durham on Friday 7 June 2019; Nijmegen Music Meeting on Saturday 8 June; The Lescar, Sheffield 19 June; Zeffirelli's, Ambleside 20 June; Blue Arrow, Glasgow 21 June; Bridge Hotel, Newcastle 23 June; Widcombe Social Club, Bath 24 June; Bimhuis, Amsterdam 26 June; and InJazz, Rotterdam 27 June.

REVIEW: Tower of Power at the Royal Albert Hall

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 17:21:00 +0000

Tower of Power at the Royal Albert Hall
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

Tower of Power 50th Anniversary tour
(Royal Albert Hall, 30 May 2019; Review and drawings by Geoff Winston)

“The actual Tower of Power Anniversary date is Aug. 13, 1968. Back then our band was called The Motowns … It’s been 50 years of great times, great songwriting, and a wonderful friendship.” Emilio Castillo, Tower of Power’s bandleader recalled the first meeting with Stephen ‘Doc’ Kupka at the Alameda County Fair a few weeks earlier, when the Doc advised that their outfit ‘needed some bottom’, and his baritone sax has given ToP that vital dimension ever since! Tower of Power are touring extensively to celebrate 50 years of their impressive musicianship and staying power with several long-serving band members who’ve lost not an iota of their edge and inspirationally tight musical awareness.

They brought their 90 minute set to the Royal Albert Hall to a devoted audience of baby boomers and a whole crowd of youngsters, too, and their firebrand vocalist, Marcus Scott pumped them up to embrace them all with the sizzling Tower of Power family ethos.

The 10-piece powered through familiar mainstays with embedded calls and responses to and from the on-side audience - What is Hip?, Only So Much Oil in the Ground, You Ought To Be Havin’ Fun, You’re Still A Young Man, So Very Hard to Go, Diggin’ on James Brown (who, btw, was a great fan of ToP) - mixed with songs from their first album in five years, just released, Soul Side of Town, penned primarily by Doc, a strong soul/r & b slant mixing it with typically tough funk and a softer, romantic ballad streak.

Scott really worked the audience, diving in, connecting with individuals, and above all, impressing with his extraordinary vocal range and deep Memphis soul roots. Powerful solos were dropped in from all sections of the stage, with each of the band making their mark.

Tower of Power's Roger Smith and Sal Cacchiolo at the RAH
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

One reservation, having seen the band on several occasions in a variety of venues (including Dingwalls!), was the sound quality in the Albert Hall. Acoustic quality is always hit and miss at this venue and, for me, in the arena area, the boomy, aircraft hangar acoustics knocked back some of the finer detail at the heart of ToP’s incredible, synchronised section work and arrangements.

In intimate settings such as their recent Tiny Desk session they shine, as they did, unreservedly, at Ronnie’s in 2012 (reviewed here) and with a decent sound mix they can blow apart larger venues, as witnessed at Shepherd’s Bush in the same year (review) and the Roundhouse in 2017 (review).

Notwithstanding, the quality of their playing and their navigation of super-tight arrangements is – after an amazing 50 years, where they’ve been through lean periods and hard times as well as being able to ride the wave – as fresh as ever, maybe even fresher today, a testament to dedication, perseverance, great talent and inspiration.

Tower of Power
Emilio Castillo – bandleader, second tenor saxophone, vocals
Marcus Scott – lead vocalist
Adolfo Acosta – trumpet
Sal Cracchiolo – trumpet
Tom Politzer – lead tenor saxophone
Stephen ‘Doc’ Kupka – baritone saxophone
Roger Smith – keyboards
Jerry Cortez – guitar
Marc van Wageningen – bass
David Garibaldi – drums

Tower of Power at the RAH
Drawing by Geoff Winston. © 2019. All Rights Reserved

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP: Schaffhauser Jazz Festival 2019 (Part 3, Samuel Blaser/Roman Nowka/ Christy Doran)

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 11:14:00 +0000

Christy Doran’s Sound Fountain

Schaffhauser Jazz Festival
(Kulturzentrum Kammgarn, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. 23-4 May 2019. Round-Up by Alison Bentley)

This the third and final part of Alison Bentley's report on Schaffhauser Jazz Festival 2019

Samuel Blaser "Early in the Mornin'"(24 May); Roman Nowka Solo (23 May); Christy Doran’s Sound Fountain (23 May)

“What would jazz be without the blues?” asks the Festival website, and three bands brought their own distinctive take on the tradition. Trombonist Samuel Blaser’s Early in the Mornin' quartet featured music from their 2018 album, where traditional tunes, such as Black Betty and Lonesome Road Blues are given freer treatment, along with Blaser’s own compositions. They opened freely, with piano, (Russ Lossing) tumbling bass (Masa Kamaguchi), and amazingly full-toned drumming (Gerry Hemingway), and from Blaser’s first note you could hear the blues at the core of his tone. Blue notes were drawled, chirped and chattered as the tempo increased in dizzyingly complex writing. The pieces seem to glide into each other. One had chorale-like piano, and a languorous trombone solo, as if waking from a dream state over walking bass. Lossing switched back and forth between piano and Fender Rhodes as notes trickled through the heavy swing, drawing brilliantly on blues and free jazz, as he began a phrase on one instrument and finished it on the other. Time doubled, Afro Latin, and the way the quartet responded to each other’s rhythms was breathtaking. Kamaguchi seemed to be pulling notes from his bass strings along with the rootsy wah-wah trombone. The atmosphere made me think of a very modern version of Ellington’s Harlem Suite, imagining walking around a city of the future, hearing the blues in different places.

Roman Nowka’s solo guitar drew on Hendrix and John Lee Hooker. He opened with jazz-rock blues, playing bass lines, melodies and improvised lines all together. He’s recorded tributes to Ellington and Monk, and moved into ragtime pieces with Monkish glee, weighted with reverb and quirky whole tone scales. The audience loved his infectious tunes, strong grooves and deadpan humour- at times, he seemed to be looking for a phrase, stopping to look at the guitar, as if he may or may not find it. He broke up the mood, deliberately stopping the audience from getting too involved. But then the next piece would be powerfully emotive, with outbursts of Hendrix distortion.

Guitarist Christy Doran was born in Ireland, and grew up in Lucerne. His 1970s jazz-rock band OM was very influential across Europe, and his Sound Fountain trio oozed molten jazz and rock. A punk-edged driving groove had contrastingly delicate drumming from Lukas Mantel, and an emotive guitar solo, drawing on blues and free jazz in a very original way. All three members have written for the band, Aftertaste being by bassist Franco Fontanarrosa. Delicate guitar tones and bells burst into agitated funk, spiky slap bass played cross-rhythms beyond human comprehension. Doran’s solo notes were free and bluesy – a little Marc Ribot, a little Derek Bailey. Another piece had a spacey intro breaking into a John McLaughlin-esque taut groove with superb, almost New Orleans-style drumming. Doran’s solo dug deep into the blues. The opening discords to Purple Haze seemed to have influenced another tune (Doran has recorded a Hendrix album); grungy bass and lightning cymbals delved into a dark back beat and free electronic pulse, bringing the blues to a new place.

REVIEW: Chris Laurence Quartet at Lauderdale House

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Bacon) — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 09:41:00 +0000

Chris Laurence at Lauderdale House
Photo credit: Andrew Laurence

Chris Laurence Quartet
(Lauderdale House, 30 May 2019. Review by Lauren Bush)

The gathering of regular attendees at Lauderdale House in North London may or may not know just how lucky they are to have access to such a gaggle of great musicians in their little local museum and bassist Chris Laurence’s quartet was no exception to the stream of talent that crosses the threshold there.

Featured in his quartet were Martin France on drums, John Parricelli on guitar, and Frank Ricotti on the vibraphone. It’s clear they’ve all been friends for years having played in many different configurations as sidemen and session musicians, and they would have all stumbled into the same bands at one point or another, working with the likes of Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, John Taylor, etc. Having Laurence come and lead his friends playing some of their favourite songs was a real treat for all.

Frank Ricotti, Chris Laurence, Martin France and John Parricelli
Photo credit: Andrew Laurence

The setlist for the night was a collaboration as well, as Laurence announced each one with a different mood, a collection of tunes they’d either played together through the years or brought from their respective other bands to try, as with Little Jump by Lars Danielsson, Mixing by Airto Moreira and even a tune by Parricelli. Kenny Wheeler’s compositions filled most of the rest of the night and rightly so; a throwback for these guys, having all played with him through the years, the familiarity of relationships and the music were felt throughout the room and they were obviously having a ball. Many of the tunes had odd meters, which Laurence was kind enough to share with the audience, noting that some people find it hard to tap their toe to a tune that floats between 9/8 and 6/8 time!

Each piece allowed for each musician to improvise but the routine did not feel repetitious. As an audience member, it felt as though we’d been let into the studio during a top notch recording and we’d all been witness to the joy and exhilaration that these masters share.

LINK: Jazz In The House at Lauderdale House

REVIEW: Tim Garland, Federica Michisanti, Hermine Deurloo, Nani Noam Vazana /Abel Selaocoe at the 2019 Manchester Jazz Festival

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 30 May 2019 13:30:00 +0000

L-R: Jason Rebello, Tim Garland, Yuri Goloubev
Manchester, 2019
Photo credit: Abby Hilton/mjf

In our second round-up report from the 2019 Manchester Jazz Festival, Rob Adams writes about Tim Garland’s Weather Walker Trio, Federica Michisanti Trioness, Hermine Deurloo, Nani Noam Vazana /Abel Selaocoe and Sanem Kalfa/George Dumitriu

When he began planning his 2019 programme, Manchester Jazz Festival’s artistic director, Steve Mead thought that his Celebrating Europe strand might be a valedictory salute.

Instead, with Brexit still dominating the news, his selections, including Italian bass player-composer Giulia Valle’s trio and the remarkable French vocalist and electronics artist Leïla Martial’s group, offered a reminder, to those of a pro-EU stance, of just some of the reasons for staying “in”.

Tim Garland’s Weather Walker Trio

Over the festival’s final three days, there were reminders, too, of the UK jazz scene’s quality, with vibraphonist Orphy Robinson paying an initially faithful and in the end exuberantly adventurous tribute to Blue Note mallets master Bobby Hutcherson, Elliot Galvin artfully remodelling the piano trio template, and saxophonist Tim Garland’s Weather Walker Trio giving a Sunday afternoon masterclass.

Garland’s group – with the marvellous Jason Rebello on piano and the utterly superb Yuri Goloubev on bass – is rooted in the folk music-influenced, pastoral atmosphere of the album from which it takes its name. Yet there is much heat and harder-edged soloing present also, especially when Garland works up a groove on tenor and Rebello brings out his biggest shots.

Federica Michisanti Trioness

Another bass player with Italian connections, Federica Michisanti led a trio of the same instrumentation as Garland’s in a lunchtime session at St Ann’s Church the following day and created music that was, by turns, beautifully logical and quietly questing. An initially ominous slow march, stated confidently by Michisanti and the deeply resourceful pianist Simone Maggio, acquired light and airy soulfulness with Marcello Allulli’s arrival on tenor, and the threesome hit a particularly enjoyable stride with some playful Monk-styled bop.

Sanem Kalfa & George Dumitriu

At the heart of the Celebrating Europe programme there was, each day, an introduction to musicians from or based in the Netherlands, courtesy of the Jazz Promotion Network’s project with Dutch Performing Arts support, Going Dutch (*).

Vocalist Sanem Kalfa and guitarist-violist George Dumitriu brought together their respective Turkish and Romanian roots and their adopted English in a set that was subtly enhanced by electronics and was striking for Kalfa’s apparent ability to reach everyone in the audience individually. Her songs spoke of love, sadness, joy, anguish and humour while Dumitriu’s empathy on both guitar and viola captured each of these emotions aptly and concisely.

Hermine Deurloo

Chromatic harmonica virtuoso Hermine Deurloo drew on songwriters including Paul Simon and Jacques Brel and her mentor, pianist Misha Mengelberg, as well as playing her own attractively crafted compositions in a Sunday lunchtime set that danced, swung and moved the listener with her from-the-heart, blue note-rich playing.

Simon’s Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover shuffled brilliantly, offering Deurloo’s rhythm section – actually the superb pianist Rembrandt Frerichs’ regular trio with bassist Tony Overwater and drummer Vinsent Planjer – the opportunity to both accompany with warmth, depth and energy and improvise with superb, spontaneous invention.

The influence of Toots Thielemans is, perhaps inevitably, noticeable in Deurloo’s harmonica style but she has also developed her own language, with occasional hints of her background as a saxophonist, which makes her soloing genuinely investigative and always, but always, highly musical.

Abel Selaocoe
Photo Credit: David McLenachan/mjf

Nani Noam Vazana with Abel Selaocoe: Both Sides of Africa

Almost wrapping up the festival – and it would have been an ideal choice had it been in the closing slot – was a song cycle that brought together adopted Mancunian, cellist Abel Selaocoe and the Amsterdam-based singer, pianist and trombonist Nani Noam Vazana.

Featuring songs and stories from Selaocoe’s South African upbringing and Vazana’s Sephardic background, Both Sides of Africa was a very personal and enrichening presentation that traced the Sephardim’s connections to Morocco and told of Selaocoe’s experiences learning an essentially European instrument in a Soweto township.

He manages to make the cello sound, fingerstyle, as naturally African as it is a bowed vehicle for Bach sarabandes and despite the two musicians representing opposite ends of the African continent and quite different cultures, with guitar and charango from Jorge Bravo and Ayoze de Alejandro’s percussion, their music gelled with a strong, unified sense of purpose.

Folk wisdom, passionate Ladino songs, township chanting, almost choirboy-like singing, pain, sadness and myriad other emotions flowed throughout a special Manchester Jazz Festival commission that even managed that rarest of commissioned work features - a finale with a wordless chorus that could be heard on innumerable lips as the audience filed out. A concert, as with Kalfa and Dumitriu and Deurloo and Frerichs, that could well invite further performances in the UK.

(*) Rob Adams is an advisor to Jazz Promotion Network’s project with Dutch Performing Arts support, Going Dutch.

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP (Part Two): 30th Schaffhauser Jazz Festival 2019, Switzerland

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 30 May 2019 07:30:00 +0000

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio
iPhone snap by Alison Bentley

Schaffhauser Jazz Festival,
(Kulturzentrum Kammgarn, Schaffhausen, Switzerland, May 22-25 2019. Round-up by Alison Bentley)

This is the second part of Alison Bentley's three-part round-up of the 2019 Schaffhausen Festival:

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio (23 May); idée manu (24 May); AKSHAM (25 May)

“Where are the women in Swiss jazz?” asked a series of talks and discussions at the Festival. One answer: onstage. Swiss-born, NY-resident pianist Sylvie Courvoisier was playing the last night of her European tour with her US trio. She opened with pieces from her latest album d’Agala. Performing with her back to the audience, she almost seemed to have become part of the piano. The piano sound was impassioned, arpeggios building structures across the funky groove and intermittent dark swing, and a rich, arco, blues-edged bass solo from Drew Gress. Courvoisier has been influenced by Monk, as well as the stride piano her father played. At times, crashing chords sounded like footsteps; in one piece, she played wonderfully misshapen lines, then dusted the bass and drums with speedy, delicate notes. She’s also been influenced by the unsettled tonalities of Schnittke and Ligeti, as well as free jazz. In a slower piece for her mother, Courvoisier seemed to be catching notes as they flew by, while drummer Kenny Wolleson’s brushes were as delicate as moths’ wings. A piece for her cat had Courvoisier’s bass lines and jumping right hand hunting for a tonal home. In the encore, she pulled and slid along the piano strings, creating sound pictures in almost telepathic sympathy with bass and drums.

Zurich pianist Manuela Keller has arranged compositions by 20th Century Berlin composer Boris Blacher for her band idée manu (tonight sans drums.) There was a tightly-arranged formality alongside imaginative improvisation. Time signatures were intricately written, and the mood as restlessly playful as Satie. Nick Gutersohn’s trombone could laugh happily like a human voice and chatter conversationally over meditative piano. Jan Schlegel played electric slap bass, or created evocative sounds, using a drumstick like a bottleneck. He soloed high on the neck, like a classical guitar. Gutersohn blew cries and whispers into a conch shell, Steve Turre-style. As Keller pulled strings eeriely through the inside of the piano, the piano seemed to be breathing out dry ice in a misty cave, before easing into an elegant jazz waltz and fine trombone solo. Dugong from their album Oktopus had bluesy trombone, rock bass and watery layers. Oktopus itself had hints of the Rite of Spring, using bass and trombone to give particular weight to certain notes, both virtuosic and fun.

AKSHAM with Elina Duni (centre)

Albanian-born Swiss resident singer Elina Duni, barefoot in white dress, fronted the Swiss-French quintet AKSHAM (Evening Prayer.) They played their compositions from their eponymous new album. One of the most striking elements from the start was the interplay between voice and David Enhco’s trumpet; high obbligato over deep tones reminiscent of Nina Simone and French chanson, created elegance and mystery. Florent Nisse’s bass and Fred Pasqua’s drums seemed to enhance the melody rather than driving it. Marc Perrenoud’s sensitive piano sounded sometimes like a Purcell song, as in XVII, then would break into Jarrett-like jazziness.

Mon amour imparfait, inspired by James Joyce, was delicately funky, with delicious long vocal and trumpet harmonies. The vocals became bluesier in L'Automne, with the gentlest of backbeats; the voice was pitched higher alongside trumpet in the strong chorus and dramatic vocal improv. The setting of Verlaine‘s Soleils couchants brought out an earthier vocal timbre (Björk, Sidsel Endresen.) Rondeau’s uplifting jazz-rock groove unleashed the band’s power as well as sensitivity.

CD REVIEW: Len Aruliah – No Complications

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Thu, 30 May 2019 06:30:00 +0000

Len Aruliah – No Complications
(Self-release/ CDBaby. CD Review by Lauren Bush)

Canadian-British Len Aruliah is a well-versed alto and soprano saxophonist and composer who uses his cross-the-pond connections to collaborate with his favourite musicians. This is his sophomore album that follows beautifully on from his first recording, also featuring Jared Burrows on the guitar. Burrows and Aruliah have obviously built up a strong musical connection and it comes across in their work.

The collection of songs is eclectic and shows influences from all styles of music. The opening track, Low Tide, starts with a charming soliloquy from Aruliah on the alto, flowing nicely into a dance-like melody played in unison by the saxophone and guitar - insight into their teamwork for the rest of the album. It’s clear that while this is Len Aruliah’s work, he features his friends as often as possible. Anyhow Stories then introduces the soprano, following a similar relationship between the horn and the guitar before moving onto track three where we see a more quirky, groovy side of Aruliah’s composition style. The Buzz has a memorable bass line that drives the whole piece, expertly played by Paul Rushka, that feels like it belongs in a 1940’s detective film. Burrows plays a very bendy solo on the electric guitar as the villain gets away.

Next, the title track, No Complications, is at first a return to the quieter, long-phrased patterns that Aruliah is so good at writing before it drives forward with an undulating pattern in the unusual time signature of 13/4. The name must be a nod to how complicated it actually is as he whips out a soprano solo with ease reminding the listener that these are not just interesting arrangements, but he came to play!

Porfirio, a standout tune on the album and a stunning rhumba, features Nick Peck on the piano, playing an elegant introduction, bringing in the alto first before Burrows comes in surprisingly with an accordion solo that introduces a Cuban flavour similar to a more romantic Besame Mucho. This is yet another layer of the album that demonstrates how broad Aruliah’s influences are.

Joe Poole’s drum chops are featured again on Forget-Me-Not, in another odd meter of 5/4, and this tune and Contingency give all the instrumentalists on the album a chance to blow and let them all delve into a round of up-tempo bebop solos. Three Wishes brings us back down after such a brisk trip and allows Aruliah and Burrows to again show off their connectedness as they intertwine melodies that expertly support one another.

The last track - and what a terrific tribute to end on - For Billy Strayhorn brings back a haunting, memory of the pleasing dissonance that Strayhorn was so famous for. This rings true in Aruliah’s writing and playing of this tune and it’s the cherry on top of a well-made, gorgeously flavourful cake!

LINK: Len Aruliah's website

REVIEW: Mélanie De Biasio at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Wed, 29 May 2019 14:33:00 +0000

Mélanie De Biasio
Photo credit: Suzanne Schols/ Creative Commons

Mélanie De Biasio
(Queen Elizabeth Hall, 28 May 2019. Review by Peter Jones)

With a completely new band since she last visited London a year and a half ago, Mélanie De Biasio also seemed somewhat changed. Then she looked as if she was playing Hamlet in a silent film; now she wore a loose red shirt and a small black hat, like a Parisian Communard. She still writes Brel-like songs of abandonment and hopelessness, of disappointment in loveless relationships. Yet although her music has, if anything, become even bleaker than before, on this evening in late Spring she was often smiley – even giggly – as if to suggest that the enveloping darkness of the songs is no more than a pose. And certainly the performance was as theatrical as ever, balletic but cramped, long stiff-legged strides interspersed with simian crouches and strange, eloquent gestures with her right hand. Theatrical, too, in her reluctance to acknowledge the audience: the fourth wall remained almost unbroken.

The two keyboard players of recent years have gone, to be replaced by one – Matthieu Vandenabeele – who commands no fewer than five instruments. And Mélanie has now been joined by Axel Gilain, who alternates between acoustic and electric bass and electric guitar.

Her distinctive sound is a result of self-imposed restrictions. The minimalism of the music arises from the use of very few chord changes and almost no solos, underpinned in a low-key way by Aarich Jespers on drums. When Mélanie plays flute, it’s often only a brief sequence of long, low notes. The idea is to maintain an intense, dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish vibe, as on Brother, a deeply gloomy, slow dead march that grows in intensity on its single chord, or And My Heart Goes On, a real subterranean chiller like something David Sylvian would write, albeit flattened out and elongated as if with a rolling pin.

There were surprises too. Amid the extended grooves, the gorgeous One Time was pretty much a conventional ballad, her voice accompanied here only by Vandenabeele on piano, as he and Gilain supplied subtle vocal harmony. This was followed by I Feel You, with just percussion for backing.

I’m glad I went, because Melanie de Biasio is one of a kind – always worth hearing. But for me this gig was less satisfying than before. With Gilain the band sounds harsher, whereas with two keyboardists it was harmonically more subtle, more liquid, and frankly more interesting, while rhythmically the groove was steadier.

CD REVIEW: Kate Williams’ Four Plus Three meets Georgia Mancio – Finding Home

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Wed, 29 May 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Kate Williams’ Four Plus Three meets Georgia Mancio – Finding Home
(KW Jazz – kwjazz002. CD review by Adrian Pallant)

"Secret, silent moments. Sweet, familiar voices. Colour into colour. Wonder into wonder. Beautiful traces play inside my mind."

Those words from the coda of Finding Home’s final track, lovingly referencing those who have gone before us, also speak to me of the imaginative approach to this meticulous and poignant collaboration between Kate Williams’ Four Plus Three (the strings of The Guastalla Quartet alongside her piano trio with Oli Hayhurst and drummer Dave Ingamells) and vocalist Georgia Mancio. Williams’ concept of merging two different musical entities – with potential to feature guests – was realised in 2016, followed by the release of Four Plus Three’s eponymous debut album. Yet the idea of these two friends working together was kindled further back when Georgia asked to write lyrics to Kate’s composition Silhouette, which would become the title track to the singer’s 2010 release.

Songwriters’ opportunities are many, but the ability to connect words – of candidness and love, ugliness and beauty, despair and hope – with music which has been crafted with both empathy and interest requires dedication. As this album’s spirit unfolds, it’s clear that Kate Williams, Georgia Mancio and their fellow musicians grasp that essence; and their conveyance of so many moods in these twelve tracks can easily catch one emotionally off guard, with a depth transcending mere ‘song’.

The Williams/Mancio writing partnership (composer/arranger and lyricist) is at the heart of half of the album’s works, their opening One for the Bees colourfully and rhythmically portraying a view of our responsibility to the natural world. It’s a harmonious sound, never with any sense of ‘string quartet bolted-on to jazz trio’ – and Mancio’s possession of every phrase is as impressive as ever. The choice of reinterpretations is exquisite, too. Jobim’s No More Blues swings lusciously, showcasing typically dextrous vocal lines as well as the many textures available to the ‘four’ and ‘three’; and in the Arthur Kent miniature, Don’t Go To Strangers, Williams’ beautiful string arrangement (cello, then viola) supports Mancio with delicate poise.

A trilogy of songs strike at harsh reality, born out of Georgia’s continued commitment to aiding refugees in Northern France, their lyrics inspired by her on-the-ground experiences there which include first-hand accounts from children. The weary plight conveyed in The Last Boy on Earth ("I have no name, I have no worth. I have no kin, I had no birth. No-one comes near, nowhere is home.") is paired with Kate’s jarring, beleaguered arrangements; and animated Halfway soars ("Watch us shine, now we’re free!") with rising string phrases and piano trio buoyancy. As heartrending as this sequence began, We Walk (Slow Down) wanders between desolation and human resolve, Williams’ churning composition illustrating Mancio’s "We bleed, we burn. We struggle just to find our place on Earth". The Key and Finding Home seem to continue the theme through Marie Schreer’s plaintive solo violin and Mancio’s affecting, softly-accompanied monologue ("I know the crows are circling but they do not pull me down.").

It’s a pleasure to find celebrated classical guitarist John Williams (Kate’s father) guesting on the album, most prominently in an evocative guitar, strings and percussion arrangement of Victor Jara’s Caminando, Caminando (Walking, walking) with Spanish lyric. Elsewhere, Mancio’s successful collaboration with the great Alan Broadbent is reflected in their moving, elegant Tell The River, Williams’ pianistic expression as graceful here as in her own, sunshiny Heartwood. And that closing original number, Play, might be hallmarked ‘a classic’ with such a warm, uplifting demeanour, all enriched by this most pellucid of voices.

Imagining future possibilities for ‘Kate Williams’ Four Plus Three meets…’ is tantalising, in a recording which again identifies Georgia Mancio as one of UK jazz’s most accomplished vocalists. Thanks to its emotional profundity and sheer joy of entertainment, Finding Home remains in my playlist after many weeks.

Released on 1 June and available from Georgia Mancio’s website.
The UK tour continues into July at Calstock, Dorchester, Colchester, Thornton Heath, Frome and Bolton Abbey (Skipton).

LINKS:
Feature/interview
Photos/report – album launch, 606 Club
Podcast with Kate Williams and Georgia Mancio

REPORT: The Street Music Conference at The Forum in Norwich

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Wed, 29 May 2019 10:22:00 +0000

The conference's Musician in Residence Pete Moser
Photo courtesy of Prof. George McKay

Street Music
(University of East Anglia - Arts and Humanities Research Council - Connected Communities. May 14-15, 2019, The Forum, Norwich Conference. Report by Jane Mann)

The speakers and the delegates at the Street Music Conference were academics, including musicologists, anthropologists, social geographers and historians; street arts administrators; music writers; and every sort of musician. There were buskers, various marching band players: klezmer, brass and wedding; and singers, music teachers, choir leaders (and combinations of all these.) A show of hands early on indicated that most of the attendees had busked at some point in their lives.

Professor George McKay (a double bass player) welcomed us all to the conference, followed by a rousing trumpet fanfare from the Musician in Residence for the event, Pete Moser.

Moser is an impressive character, a composer, performer and teacher. He was founder and artistic director of the community music charity More Music from 1993 – 2018. Before that he was music director of the fabulous Welfare State International – “a collective of radical artists and thinkers who explored ideas of celebratory art and spectacle between 1968 and 2006”. If you ever caught one of their amazing outdoor shows, you will know how crucial the music was to that company. He is also a one-man-band – in fact he gave us two totally different one-man-band shows on the square outside The Forum – one a joyful, light-hearted, silver-bell tinkling, pink-outfitted performance on the first evening, and an unsettling, dark, masked, black-clad drum and rattle heavy performance on the second. Look him up – he has done some extraordinary musical work over the years. He also chaired some of the discussions, and at one point, joined by a colleague on saxophone, led the delegates up two flights of stairs from the cavernous auditorium out onto the street like the Pied Piper.

The presentations were incredibly varied. There were niche historical topics, e.g. “The role of music and song in electioneering in the East Midlands 1790-1832”, practical advice about licences and the law for contemporary buskers, a film and some talks about street choirs, and, from Directors of Outdoor Arts Events, some lovely films and slides of spectacular site-specific Street Music Events. The distinction was made between music which just happens to be played outside, like summer festivals, and music which is only ever played outdoors.

For those who want to see the full schedule of events, I have included it below. There was much of interest. I enjoyed hearing Mykaell Riley, formerly of Steel Pulse, now an academic at the Black Music Research Unit at the University of Westminster talk about his research. He showed us photos from what looked like a great show – his exhibition Bass Culture 70/50 (2018) which explored the legacy of the Windrush generation and the impact of Jamaican and Jamaican-inspired music on British popular music.

I learned about the difference between inside and outside instruments at Dr. Tony Lidington’s talk “From Silver Swans to iPods” about the evolution of street instruments over the last 200 years, from aerophones to portable mechanical devices. He had brought several mechanical instruments with him, which he demonstrated and then let us try. It’s not every day you get to have a go on a barrel organ, let alone a barrel piano. Dr. Lidington looked familiar to me – then, prompted by a hat amongst his props, I remembered seeing him as Uncle Tacko, proprietor of a Flea Circus, at an outside event years ago. He also has a traditional seaside concert band called the Pierrotters. Previously he was Artistic Director of the Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House, and before that another member of the influential Welfare State International.

I enjoyed hearing buskers talking about their experiences – David Fisher has busked in every country in Europe and was invited to join an Armenian Street Band who happened to need a vocalist when he was visiting that country. He spoke engagingly of the different audiences in various places from Turkey to Czech Republic. An American busker Bob Jacobsen told of the scene in the States – he busks in Baltimore, mainly at Farmers’ Markets, as part of a duo. He began his session with a snatch of Stranger On The Shore on his clarinet – a very popular tune with his audiences, apparently Acker Bilk made no. 1 in the USA in 1964. I discovered that there is a Buskers Festival in Ferrara, Italy. Its director, Stefano Bottone, spoke to us through an interpreter. He is a former blacksmith and teacher, who was inspired to put on buskers in his native city after a trip to Paris. Ferrara has a huge pedestrianised centre, the largest in Italy, which he thought would be ideal for street music, so he set out to organise a festival, against fierce opposition. The festival has now been running for 32 years. The next one is in August (LINK)

Norwich also has a largely pedestrianised centre, and there are many top-quality buskers, all year round. One of them, Peter Turrell, a classical guitarist, spoke to us about his move from research chemist to busker several years ago. He slipped away after the day’s business and set up on the street so that delegates (and the people of Norwich) would hear him play on their stroll to the conference dinner, a charming touch.

There were loads of thought-provoking presentations, including those which at first appeared a little obscure or distant, but turned out to be fascinating, including the East Midlands electioneering one I mentioned earlier by Dr. Hannah Nicholson. She raised the most laughs of the conference with her witty and informative piece.

Here are some more of my highlights. There was a brilliant discussion between Trevor Herbert, trombonist and Professor of Music Research at the Royal College of Music, Alex Gibson, trumpeter and Regional Music Specialist for the Salvation Army, and Dr. Jaime Rollins, anthropologist (and nurse) from Belfast, about the shared history of brass bands. It covered a lot of ground, including the place of women in brass bands (fine from the beginning with the Salvation Army, but they were only allowed into mill and pit brass bands in the 1960s), and samba bands in Northern Ireland. These are a new cross-community musical endeavour, the samba was chosen because the instrumentation is as far away from Protestant or Republican Marching Bands as possible. There is so much to say about Marching, Brass and Parade Bands, on so many levels, and the speakers were so erudite and articulate, that I was left wanting to hear more.

I enjoyed an entertaining strand on Resistance and Reclamation, first with a tale about squatters and pop musicians taking over the streets in Thessaloniki in the mid-2000s, and then a wry piece from former rock journalist Dr. Gina Arnold. She is currently a teacher at the university of San Francisco but is also co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock with Prof. George McKay. She talked about Drum Circles, and their history, with reference to the Occupy Wall Street Drum Circle of 2011 which lasted for 60 cacophonous continuous days. She described these modern Drum Circles as a group act which allows individual expression, in that everyone seems to be soloing like mad but the whole thing is a collective act. She concludes that modern protest drum circles, “unchained from melody, unchained from history” have become a pointless and antisocial form of protest. There was a significant political strand in the conference, as so much street music is protest music. I heard about “Yiddish Song as Radical Street Protest”, from Dr Vivi Lachs, an academic specialising in British Jewish History, also a fine Klezmer clarinettist, and Dr. Nadia Valman, Reader in English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. I heard about Choral Activism and the popularity of both Street and Community Choirs from various choir members. I was left with the impression that, like much amateur music making, these choirs exist largely for the well-being of the singers, rather than the declared aim of effecting social or political change – and yes I did enjoy singing four-part harmony with the other delegates at the end of one of the choir presentations.

For LJN readers who might ask about the jazz content, it has to be said that was very little jazz mentioned at the conference, apart from historical references – New Orleans Funeral Bands, historic drum circles (New Orleans again), end of the pier concert bands, and some busking jazz musicians. One might surmise that jazz is well enough established to have made it off the street and into indoor performance spaces.

The Street Music Conference was a stimulating, edifying and entertaining couple of days and the musical diversions were a treat. Thanks very much to Professor McKay, Dr Bennett and team for organising it. As is usual at these events, it was also lovely to spend time chatting and comparing notes with the speakers and other delegates, and the catering was jolly good too.

A report: From Brass Bands to Buskers: Street Music in the UK by Dr. Elizabeth Bennett and Professor George McKay of the University of East Anglia, part of the Public Culture and Creative Spaces project was launched at the conference.

LINKS: Free download of the Report
Pete Moser's Website

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP: 30th Schaffhauser Jazzfestival 2019, Switzerland

noreply@blogger.com (The LondonJazz site) — Tue, 28 May 2019 17:10:00 +0000

Lukas Mantel’s 6-tet “Vardah”

30th Schaffhauser Jazz Festival
(Kulturzentrum Kammgarn, Schaffhausen, Switzerland, May 22-25 2019. Round-Up and iPhone snaps by Alison Bentley)

This is the first part of Alison's round-up of a long-standing and innovative festival:

Lukas Mantel’s 6-tet “Vardah” (24 May); Taïga (25 May); Raphael Walser’s GangArt (25 May); Film, Zwischen Kalkül und Zufall by Jürg Egli; Kammgarn West (several days.)

What’s the secret to keeping a successful jazz festival going for 30 years? When Festival co-founder Urs Röllin came back home to Schaffhausen after studying guitar in the US, he and fellow guitarist Hans Naef realised that Swiss jazz musicians were just supporting American stars. They needed a festival to “…try to get interesting projects from Switzerland today”, and put them centre stage. With the help of a team of dedicated volunteers, and the support of Swiss radio (SRF) they’ve built things up so that people “…come to the Festival because they trust us”. Most of the gigs took place in the Kulturzentrum Kammgarn, down the old town’s cobbled streets: a venue large enough to have the atmosphere and lighting of a theatre, but small enough to feel intimate, with tables and Ronnie’s-style orange lamps along the bar.

Several young Swiss bands brought their original, imaginative projects. Drummer Lukas Mantel’s 6-tet “Vardah” had a huge energy, with compositions based on his recent experience of a hurricane in Chennai. Mantel’s playing had tight rolls of sound working through time signatures (such as 10 or 11/8) as unpredictable as a storm. One piece has a very effective two-note bass riff (Lukas Traxel): the pauses were every bit as important as the notes. Long harmonised horn lines implied the chords, drawing the wild grooves together and making sense of them. (Matthias Spillmann on trumpet and flugel, the notes of his solos looping gracefully in the air; Rafael Schilt’s breathy-toned, fluid, tenor and clarinet.) Leandro Irarragorri’s Fender Rhodes kept the rhythmic energy and Travis Reuter‘s guitar solo sounded as smooth and fluent as a keyboard. Mantel’s writing was full of interesting textures.

Taïga spanned the generations with its trance-like, atmospheric, flugel-led electronica. It was like the soundtrack to the slow sci-fi movie you carry around in your head. (One piece was based on Tarkovsky’s iconic film Stalker. ) Pianist Marc Méan rested his keyboard on the grand piano, sometimes Hancockian (the space age albums); sometimes distorting the moody piano sounds. Drummer Valentin Liechti and bassist Fabien Iannone gently evoked an impending storm with hints of trip hop or slow Afro Latin. Matthieu Michel used to play with the Vienna Art Orchestra. Tonight his flugel seemed to pull sweet rushes of notes out from a deep place, the way Miles Davis did.

Raphael Walser's GangArt

Bassist Raphael Walser grew up loving mountains and Swiss folk songs, and his folk arrangements for his band GangArt were fresh and original. Some compositions was Inspired by the Alpine triptych by painter Giovanni Segantini. ‘I started with the moods that the images triggered in me,’ said Walser. At times there was a driving groove with drummer Jonas Ruther, or a restless ball of energy recalling Phronesis. The front line themes (Niculin Janett, alto; Ganesh Geymeier, tenor) at times had a 60s vibe – Walser admires Mingus. Geymeier’s tone had some Joe Henderson it it, Marc Méan stretched the harmonic tension between piano and bass, but never to breaking point: the tenor solo filled the spaces in between. Another section had an alto solo sketching out the chords with pristine clarity. Another piece had bass drops and and time signatures that seemed to change mysteriously, depending on which instrument you focused on.

An exhibition space in the same building hosted a film (Zwischen Kalkül und Zufall – between calcultion and chance – by Jürg Egli) in which Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch responded to the paintings and sculpture of Beat Zoderer as they were created. Bärtsch kept one painting on his piano for inspiration. We could look at some of Zoderer’s paintings on the walls too, while listening to Bärtsch’s music through state of the art headphones – in keeping with the superb sound quality and creativity of the whole festival.