Monthly Archives: March 2009

Big gig in a small space

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The big gig of the week in Birmingham is a small one – just three musicians up close in the intimate space of the Glee Club Studio – but what a band!

Lionel Loueke might have been a new name to many of those who packed Symphony Hall last November for the Herbie Hancock Sextet, but I’m sure this extraordinary guitarist and singer was a talking point afterwards.

Always quick to bring jazz’s most intrepid explorers to our attention, Birmingham Jazz invited Loueke back, this time in his favoured trio format.

With an acoustic guitar, his voice and some electronic gizmos Loueke produces the simply amazing multi-layered sound of a world orchestra and choir.

His bass and drum partners (most likely long-time collaborators Massimo Biolcati and Ferenc Nemeth) need to be good time counters – one of his pieces is called Seven Teens and is in 17/4 time. Try playing that while looking relaxed!

Loueke was born in Benin (like world music star Angelique Kidjo), studied in Ivory Coast and ended up at the famed Berklee School in Boston.

The journey from tough beginnings to being quickly embraced by jazz’s masters (he has performed with Cassandra Wilson, Wayne Shorter and Marcus Miller as well as Hancock) has been something of a meteoric rise. Even as a sideman he makes his mark – listen to his great rhythm and fills on Edith and The Kingpin, behind Tina Turner, on Herbie’s tribute disc to Joni Mitchell, River.

His mix of African music with jazz is compelling and seductive, his technique astonishing and it is all made more attractive by his mild manner. Just check out his album Karibu on the Blue Note label. Guest players with the trio on the disc are Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. And his version of Skylark is just out of this world.

The Lionel Loueke Trio is at the Glee Club Studio on tonight. Doors open at 7.30pm, tickets are £11 if there are any left. For more details go here and here

Concert review: Grand Pianoramax

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Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham UK
14-03-09

Showdown, heard second on Saturday evening, is this trio’s defining piece of music, dealing as it does with both superheroes and sex.

Leo Tardin is something of a mad professor turned caped crusader of keyboard wizardry, while hip-hop poet Mike Ladd details the war between love and sex in a climaxing polemic. Adding the urgent bump pulse is Dominik Burkhalter. 

Tardin takes some serious piano training as the bedrock of his style, but, influenced by minimalism’s overlaying repeat patterns, the greasiness of funk and the mechanistic beat of 21st-century dance music, achieves a dance-trance state. The Fender Rhodes remains the retro instrument of choice but he uses the Minimoog to great effect, too, digging deep with crunch and buzz in the bass lines. His ability to keep the constant patterns of Tempest going while all the time adding the bombastic bass line was mesmerising.

Ladd moves, for the most part, outside the conventional hip-hop parameters of rhyme and rhythm, taking inspiration from further back: from the 1960s protest poetry of The Last Poets certainly, though his socio-political commentary also sounds, to these uninitiated ears, like a more urgent, less stoned Gil Scott Heron. He speaks because he can’t sing, but he still puts across a compelling version of the old Gene McDaniels classic, Compared To What. And he can do conventional hip-hop when required, as he showed in the crowd-pleasing freestyle encore.

 Burkhalter infused funk elasticity into the breakbeat style, and he was the most consistent player of the evening.

Despite poor PA sound, which marred the clarity of the vocals and made the keys sound harsher than they should have done, the small upstairs room of the Hare & Hounds had the atmosphere of a hot Brooklyn night – no bad thing.

Gillian with a Guh, not a Juh

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Aside from jazz musicians, there are a few others who I would travel a long, long way to see. One is Country/Americana singer songwriter Gillian Welch and her longtime partner, the astoundingly wonderful guitarist and harmony vocalist David Rawlings. Alas, she has not toured in Europe for a while now, but new insights into her songs are at hand.

I’m delighted that two jazz discs have arrived on my desk recently which include Welch covers. One is Paul Clarvis’s and Liam Noble’s Starry, Starry Night which includes their instrumental version of Dear Someone; the other does have a singer – Becca Stevens – doing a suitably slow and just a tinge menacing reading of I Dream A Highway on Elan Mehler’s most enticing new disc, The After Suite.

I don’t think that one is released yet, but start saving your schindlings now – it’s a fine shape of a thing.

CD reviews: 16-03-09

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Gareth Williams Power Trio: Shock (Linn)
The Welsh pianist is not what you would call the shy and retiring type. I remember many years ago at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival seeing him cheering the John Scofield Band from the floor of Cheltenham Town Hall with a gusto that showed either overwhelming enthusiasm or that he had been celebrating the success of his own festival performance earlier in the day – I could never quite decide which.

The title of this band and that of the album are not obviously reflected in the first couple of tracks – they find Williams unexpectedly at the electric keyboard, and are fairly laid back, with lovely singing electric bass from Laurence Cottle and funky grooves from Ian Thomas on drums.

It’s the conventional Joanna for the only non-original, a rich and hard-swinging Giant Steps, though, with the band squeezing down on the gas and starting to live up to their nomenclature.

It’s followed by a heartfelt ballad and the full scope of the album becomes apparent – far from following a concentrated emotional or stylistic path, Williams and crew are keen to range far and wide. That they do so while maintaining a cohesive group character is testament to their close ties and clear joy in music-making.

Played on repeat those first tracks make more sense, too, with the whole thing not just a listen for special occasions but the kind of disc you can spend a lot of time with.

Expect some cheering from the floor when they do it live later this year. 

Melody Gardot: My One And Only Thrill (UCJ)
Lush strings and a gently plucked acoustic guitar frame the entrance of the singer/songwriter’s warmly-relaxed voice.

I realise the words no reviewer should utter in this context are Jones and Peyroux, but, hey, they are useful to point out differences. Melody has some of Norah’s tone and some of Madeleine’s retro feel, but she sounds strangely more cheerful than both.

Her scat on If The Stars Were Mine – and the tune itself – manage airy lightness without being trite.

Even the classic blues sentiments and instrumental setting of  Who Will Comfort Me fail to disguise Ms Gardot’s good humour, with her muted-trumpet timbre shining golden.

The songs – with the exception of the closer, Over The Rainbow – are all hers and universally strong. She actually writes songs with a verse and repeated choruses in the grand old Tin Pan Alley tradition. The arrangements are richly varied and the whole thing is given the warm embrace of a Larry Klein production. Classy.

Peter James Trio: Visions and Vistas (Mulberry Tree Music)
Lyrical, harmonious and heartfelt music from a pianist who grew up in Scarborough, studied at the Royal Academy in the early 1990s and has been quietly honing his craft since.

The Spanish-tinged opener is solo, then he is joined by better known fellow Academy alumnus Jeremy Brown on double bass and Thomas Hooper on drums.

Aside from Stella By Starlight the tunes are all originals, and while they are all pleasant enough, they do not easily stay in the memory. Likewise, the playing here tickles the ears most pleasingly but leaves little trace.

The recording is a little confined and the piano doesn’t sound nearly “grand” enough.