It’s the monthly Jazz Club night at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth this evening, and this one is pretty special.
Get The Blessing is a Bristol-based quartet of bass, drums, saxophone and trumpet, and their two albums, the most recent being the newly released and exceptionally good Bugs In Amber (see my review here), show them able to combine the power of the post-jazz, punky style and a good deal of subtle delicacy as contrast.
The band is on at 9pm and it’s just £3 to get in. Highly recommended.
Grant Green: Street Of Dreams (Blue Note 65142)
Well I suppose one can have too many Grant Green albums and the guitarist did seem to churn them out, but this one is a little different because there are just four seven or eight-minute tunes which means there is some nice, extended soloing, and the band is pretty interesting both in instrumental combination and in the musicians who are working them.
Green is on guitar of course, Bobby Hutcherson is on vibes, Larry Young on organ and Elvin Jones is on drums. Rarely has Elvin been quieter, and, on track 2, Lazy Afternoon, for example, all the sidemen seem in suitably laid back mood, playing with great group empathy and restraint rather than showing those chops.
Charles Trenet’s I Wish You Love gets a neatly phrased interpretation, while the closer, Somewhere In The Night makes me wonder whether Donald Fagen listened to it just before he wrote Between The Raindrops from his Nightfly album – not that there’s any quoting going on or anything, just a lilt in the swing, an elegant turn to the groove.
Louis Sclavis: Lost On The Way (ECM 179 8497)
The French clarinettist always delivers and never compromises, but while some of his past ECM releases have become firm favourites, I’m not so sure about this one.
Certainly it opens attractively with the long, serpentine melody of De Charybde en Scylla (presumably swirling through the dangerous passage between). Sclavis and soprano saxophonist Matthieu Metzger are as one on the melody before the leader takes off on a great solo, to be joined later by the soprano, while guitarist Maxime Delpierre, bassist Oliver Lete and drummer Francois Merville cook beneath.
There is lots more like this – sometimes the improvisations show Sclavis contemporary classical leanings as well as a jazz sensibility; sometimes things get quite heavy and electronic.
So what’s to complain about? Well, not much I suppose, though the whole disc at ones does take some endurance on the part of the listener – there are few breaks in the relentlessness of it all, and while the technical prowess of the band is not in question, a little more heart with the head wouldn’t go amiss. What they can manage is to sound a whole lot bigger than a quintet; sometimes they sound like a chamber orchestra meeting a noise-rock band.
Then again, presumably Ulysses’ long voyage home was a pretty gruelling affair.
More from Tony Dudley-Evans at Meltdown. Read the full piece by clicking the link at the bottom…
It was another amazing weekend. I couldn’t go down for the Ornette Coleman Quartet show on Friday, but was there for the Saturday and Sunday shows. Saturday night’s concert started with a short and very concise set given by The Bad Plus entering into the spirit of Ornette’s Meltdown by playing a mix of material including material by Stravinsky and Ligeti. They were on top form and Dave King’s drumming is as impressive as ever. Then came the Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, with a version of the band that included various British players…
via Birmingham Jazz » Blog Archive » Final Weekend of Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown.
Jan Lundgren Trio: European Standards (ACT 9482-2)
In 1997 the Swedish pianist (who could have been a tennis star) made an album called Swedish Standards, comprising jazz versions of Swedish folksongs. That was just part of the Scandinavian push to find its own non-American jazz base metals.
Now Lundgren, with Mattias Svensson on bass and Zoltan Csorsz Jr on drums and percussion, has widened his field to the whole of Europe and revisited many songs that you will know, and some that you probably won’t.
He starts off in Germany with Computer Liebe, which has a partly Southern African feel and features a very effective double bass solo, Svensson switching on a hint of wah-wah though using it in a far gentler way than Dan Bergland would. Lundgren, meanwhile, comes on like Ramsey Lewis – there are even the funky handclaps. But you’d never guess it was originally a Kraftwerk song.
To France and Les Moulins de Mon Coeur (or Windmills of Your Mind), to England for a fresh take on Paul McCartney’s Here, There And Everwhere, and so on…
From Italy there is the poignant theme to Il Postino, from Poland another film tune, Kzysztof Komeda’s uncomfortably unspooky theme for Rosemary’s Baby, and the lovely and poignant finale is Esbjorn Svensson’s Pavane – Thoughts Of A Septuagenarian (which of course prompts the sad thought that he’ll never actually have them).
Lundgren and his fellows are not making ground-breaking music – but they are making a very lovely sound and both their individual skills and group interaction are impeccable. Just try Un Homme Et Une Femme, with Csorsz getting a little quiet shuffle going, Svensson holding it all down, and Lundgren lyrical and light on Fender Rhodes. Fresh, smooth and cool.
