Monthly Archives: May 2009

E.S.T. bassist’s new band

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Following the very sad death of Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson in a diving accident nearly a year ago, his partners, bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Ostrom, decided that the one thing they couldn’t do was form another trio with a new pianist.

That meant going different ways, and now we hear Berglund has a new band, an album on the way and a worldwide tour to follow.

The band will be a quartet with Johan Lindstroem on guitar, Martin Heteros on piano and Magnus Persson on drums. They are all old friends from the pre-E.S.T. days and have pop experience as well as jazz leanings.

They are in the studio at the moment recording their own compositions for an album on the German ACT label, the same one E.S.T. stuck with throughout their career, and it is due for release in January 2010.

The Dan Berglund band will then go on tour around the world, the UK leg of which is likely to be between 12 and 31 March 2010.

How do you vote on the j-word

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It rears its head from time to time – the word jazz. Do we like it? Do we think it’s run its course as a stylistic label? It’s often musicians themselves who have a problem with it. Soweto Kinch felt it was keeping his music out of the hip-hop racks; Andy Sheppard said recently he had a problem with the word and it could be argued that it only reflects part of what he does. Take a moment and make your virtual cross on the ballot paper – see the panel on the right and vote today.

Disc of the day: 31-05-09

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Pedro Luis e A Parede: Ponto Enredo (World Village WV479028)
This Rio-based band, known as PLAP for short, builds on the traditional percussion-heavy batucada street band style by adding an electric funk-leaning band and a wider variety of song styles.

Most of the songs are written by leader Luis who does most of the singing, with lots of harmony choruses from the rest of the players and a bunch of instrumental guests.

The batucada style and the massed drums at the centre of the music has, to my ears, the double connotations of carnival and military bands, and the strange double-exposure mental picture that results is both incongruous and slightly disconcerting.

With changing moods, from full-on party to more laid back, the album develops nicely, and early worries that drum bands are better enjoyed live than on disc are dispelled by the richness and variety of the settings that surround them. Cantiga, for example, has a tasty five-piece trombone section providing a rich middle ground with the drums beneath and voices above.

Luis’s voice and phrasing – on Santo Samba and Luz da Nobreza, for example – is sometimes reminiscent of Sting, but I wouldn’t hold that against him.

An appropriate accompaniment to tending the barbecue, which is what I’m off to do.

Disc of the day: 30-05-09

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Vassilis Tsabropoulos: The Promise (ECM 1773377)
The Athens-born classically trained pianist notches up his second solo piano disc for ECM with this set of original compositions plus his own version of a Greek folk song.

The pieces are mainly composed but have the natural flow of spontaneous improvisation in the moment. They are vaguely linked both in mood and with recurring motifs, and are uniformly gentle, precise and quite sparse, cool with an underlying warmth, calm with a lurking passion. They provide soothing shadows on this gloriously sunny, summer’s day in the middle of England.

I couldn’t help thinking of French piano  music, for some reason – the miniatures of Satie or the sun glittering on a stream image that is conjured up by Poulenc. And then there is a minimalist feel to some of it, minimalism slowed down perhaps, with fewer notes.

Tsabropoulos says: “It can be very easy  to play many fast notes, however, for me, it’s a principle of life that less is more: Simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve. Both as performer and as a listener I’m trying to find beauty inside the things, in details and nuances and in parts which are not so obvious.”

It is certainly not difficult to find the beauty in this music.

Disc of the day: 29-05-09

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Julian Arguelles: Momenta (Basho SRCD29-2)
Saxophonist and composer Julian Arguelles has been in residence in Frankfurt, working with the HR Big Band. In his spare time he recorded the recent solo project Inner Voices, but this live recording shows the rewards of the day job – his own compositions played live by the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, with guest soloist Gwilym Simcock on piano and, of course, the man himself on tenor and soprano saxophones.

Barcelona 1936 is the opener, written specially for the band, and with strong solos from both Simcock and Arguelles, whose lyrical, long lines of improvisation are so distinctive and yet always sound so fresh. It’s a great piece of jazz orchestral writing having a modern Spanish tinge and yet also sounding poignantly nostalgic.

Most of the rest of material will be familiar to Arguelles fans but it is great to hear it played by larger forces, for which re-arrangements were necessary. It includes You See My Dear from Inner Voices, Phaedrus and Hi Steve from way back at the start of his solo recording career (1990 to be precise), and Evan’s Freedom Pass from his trio album Partita.

Strikingly, there is only one piece from his Octet book, now called Skull View but which I seem to remember was once called Head Pan. The Octet is one of my favourite bands, able to give a rich mini-orchestral scope to the music but small enough to have the liveliness of a jazz combo. So maybe that’s why I find this among the most satisfying pieces here, having a bit more energy, while some of the playing elsewhere feels a little too polite. Simcock’s solo here is a particular gem.

Mish Mash is the closer, a multi-sectioned piece which really raises the temperature during Martin Scales’ guitar solo, before falling back to that lovely thing Arguelles does with a horn section, getting them to play overlapping single note, minimalist riffs, over which he solos on soprano. It then changes in mood once more for a Peter Feil trombone solo.

Momenta is another highly worthwhile addition to the Arguelles catalogue, and a reminder that the scope and depth of his contribution to 21st century jazz continues to grow.