Monthly Archives: July 2009

Disc of the day: 31-07-09

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Troyka: Troyka (Edition Records EDN1014)
I realise that bands like Troyka would prefer not to have the jazz tag attached to them for fear it may alienate their younger audience, so apologies in advance for reviewing this disc here. Even through ears attached to an old man with a goatee beard, however, it sounds pretty fine.

Troyka is guitarist Chris Montague, organist Kit Downes and drummer Joshua Blackmore. There is really no way the opener, Tax Return, could exist if Miles Davis and John Scofield, among many others, had not walked some of this road beforehand. Edgy rhythms and time changes, deeply funky leanings, and instrumental mastery of the jazz persuasion.

Clint is just plain scary – large slabs of noise and wild slide guitar, while 140 reminds me of the M-Basers and Frisell at times. Born in the 80s features a beautiful set of intro guitar chords, before building into some serious swing and bloop-bleep interludes. My favourite is Noonian Soong (or should that be song?) which suddenly shifts from a finely tuned and quietly funky interplay into a rock-fusion romp, and then back again.

George Russell 1923-2009

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And so another jazz great is taken from us. My major memory of his music is hearing Living Time, his collaboration with Bill Evans, for the first time in 1972 and having my ears opened to music that sounded completely new, very strange but also strangely attractive. Of course, he had changed the face of jazz long before then, as Doug Ramsey, who has been quick to pay tribute on his Rifftides blog, shows:

There will be much more written and spoken about him in the next few days by scholars and historians, as there should be. The work he did, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s, had major influence on the thinking and performance of musicians who were shaping new ways of approaching the music. On a radio program I did in the sixties, I devoted five weeks of broadcasts to Russell’s music.

via George Russell, 1923-2009 – Rifftides .

What’s on around town this week

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The Birmingham Conservatoire jazz course has produced some very strong musicians over the last decade or so and its graduates are now fairly far-flung, so it is always a treat to have one of them return. Tomorrow singer Lizzy Parks is back in town with her band to fill the monthly Jazz Club slot at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth.

Early on Lizzy moved into the soul-jazz area of the music and brought an understanding of classic jazz singing (she can scat like Ella when she feels like it) to a much more contemporary kind of jazz, happier in a club than concert hall context.

Her second CD, Raise The Roof, came out last year but we don’t get many chances to hear her live with her own band, which includes Rob Barron, Fulvio Sigurta, Riaan Vosloo and Graham Fox, so seize this opportunity. Doors open at 8.30pm, the band is on at 9pm and it costs £3 to get in. It’s a Birmingham Jazz gig – see www.birminghamjazz.co.uk for more.

On Thursday, Andy Hamilton holds one of his regular Jam Nights – you never know just who might be on the stand. It starts at 9pm (doors half an hour before) at Bearwood Corks Club and entry is £4. More at www.bearwoodjazz.co.uk

The Waterworks Jazz Club has a tribute night to its founder and former president Barry Phillips, who died earlier this year. Barry was a trombonist and a pretty good dancer, too, and one of the bands he played in was Barbara And All That Jazz, so it is fitting that Barbara and the band are performing on Saturday. The club meets at The Nautical Club in Bishopsgate Street, it starts at 8.30pm and entry is £7 for members, £8 for non-members. You can find out more at www.waterworksjazz.com

Busy trumpeter and one of the stars of the Walsall Jazz Orchestra, Ray Butcher leads his own Quintet at Stratford Jazz’s regular Sunday spot, and marks its return to the Oak Room in the White Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s a strong band with Tim Amann on piano, Ian Hill on saxophone, Mike Green on bass and Miles Levin on drums. Entry is free but the gig is helped by the traditional raffle, so give generously. It starts at 8pm and for more on this intrepid club go to www.stratfordjazz.org.uk

The Scarlet Pimpernel in Tennal Road, Harborne, has regular Sunday afternoon jazz masterminded by pianist Edgar Macias and this Sunday he has a very special guest with his trio in the form of saxophonist Simon Spillett. It starts at 3pm and it’s free. Call 0121 426 0930 for details.

Disc of the day: 27-07-09

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Kurt Elling: Dedicated To You (Concord Jazz)
The singer from Chicago has always been immensely talented but listening to his early recordings now, and fine as they are, they are not a patch on the latest ones. In the last few years either his voice has caught up with his imagination, or perhaps he has reached some other kind of maturity where his voice and imagination have settled into perfect harmony.

Whatever happened, Nightmoves of two years ago marked a new high point for Elling and this disc, his tribute to the classic Impulse! disc made by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman  in 1963, continues that high quality. It’s recorded at the Lincoln Center as part of their American Songbook series – probably the same show that Elling did at the London Jazz Festival last year, although the saxophonist there was Benny Maupin, whereas here it is Ernie Watts.

Weirdly, sometimes the audience seems to be there and at other times it doesn’t, and there is an abrupt break between My One And Only Love and Nancy With The Laughing Face, but maybe that is just on my pre-release review CD. Yes, you are right – the former song is on the Coltrane/Hartman disc, but the latter is not. This is no simple recreation of the John and Johnny disc, although the concert does include all those songs. In addition to the quartet there is a string quartet on some tracks. At the helm of the arrangements is pianist Laurence Hobgood, and he is a crucial factor in the quality of this music – not only a peerless accompanist for a singer but a great soloist and arranger, too.

And so to that voice and that singing. Elling is surely the most intelligent vocalist on the planet today? (The question mark is probably unnecessary but I’m inviting debate here.) Those quiet high notes he hits in Dedicated To You; the breathy, bending phrasing, the ability to suggest a whole (very interesting) chord in a single note by somehow finding just the right overtones; the grittiness in his voice on Nancy which is as close as a singer comes to the saxophone. And the way he sits rhythmically and assuredly at the centre of the cushioning music; vocally he throws his arms wide to embrace the band and the song.

Ernie Watts has always been a personal favourite – like Elling he has those sweet high notes that bring a nurturing grace to a melodic line. And like Elling he can get deep in the groove, too.

Just try Say It (Over And Over Again). First you get the gorgeous Hobgood string quartet intro, then enter a reverie as Elling sings the song.  And then Ernie sings just as sweetly and eloquently. It all gets richer and richer in the final chorus and outro. This really is 6 minutes and 32 seconds of jazz heaven.

A lovely, lovely album that sends you back to Coltrane and Hartman and then forward again to Watts and Elling(who sound nothing like them – and that is partly the point). Oh, and the spoken story of the ’66 recording day to the accompaniment of It’s Easy To Remember is lovely too. A man who treasures the music’s history, and is playing a vital role in its present and future.

Concert review: Keith Jarrett Standards Trio

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Royal Festival Hall
25-07-09
Signs at every door warned against even thinking about leaving mobile phones switched on or secreting about one’s person anything able to record in an audio and/or visual manner. Promoter Serious’s main man John Cumming came to the microphone to stress that it was the artists’ wish (or more acurately artist’s wish) that there should be no recording devices of any kind in play – oh, and please could we now make sure our mobile phones were switched off. Helpfully, he  held up his mobile phone (switched off!) so that we could see what one looked like, in case we should unexpectedly come upon a similar-looking device in our pockets or bags, and know what to do should it still exhibit some signs of life.

At the beginning of the second half an announcement boomed disembodied about the theatre – could we please make sure to switch off our mobile phones and we should be reminded that no pictures or recording should be undertaken within the these hallowed walls – oh, and this time could we also try to keep coughing to a minimum. Phlegm, along with pixels, was now verboten.

For an audience under siege we remained remarkably cheerful. And jolly well-behaved, I thought. Well done, everybody!

And so, in a moment, to the music. Because all this “no cameras, no coughing” stuff is, of course, just a sideshow, albeit an irritating one. The uncharitable view is that it’s all an excessive display of artistic temperament, that the audience has handed over a pretty substantial sum of money to be in their seats and if they want to clear their throats, or even take home a small memento in their phone gallery, then that’s their business – the man’s just an entertainer, after all, and we are paying him.

But, to take a more understanding view, it seems to me that Jarrett is reminding his audience that if they just sit in silence, with absolute concentration, distracted neither by the tickle in their throat nor the wizzy little slab of technology in their pocket, they really will get more out of the experience, will receive more completely what he intends to communicate to them, will emulate as listeners the effort and dedication that he puts in as a musician. Because, let’s not for a moment underestimate this man’s dedication to what he does and, despite outward appearances away from the piano, his desire to communicate with us.

From the opening notes of Leonard Bernstein’s Tonight, Jarrett had put himself in his very own special “zone”, gently pulling the song’s joyous yearning and expectation out in fresh chord voicings and nuanced phrasing of the melody. He doesn’t just feel every note, every harmony, every rhythmic beat, he feels the micro-tones, the micro-blends, the micro-beats within them. Bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette are support, and counterpoint melodicists and rhythmnists all at once – the pianist might, inevitably, dominate the harmonic content, but, especially in rhythm and beat, all three weave equal strands (and last night was a clear reminder that DeJohnette is the most melodic of drummers – you can hear the tunes in his solos almost as strongly as in Jarrett’s and Peacock’s).

They found new riches in Autumn Leaves (surely the most abused of standards – and I should know, I regularly murder it to a Jamey Aebersold backing, and have been doing for the last 15 years).

If the concert proper seemed meagre in quantity – a mere six or so tunes in two sets – it was of the highest quality imaginable. The way Jarrett plays those melodies, the way he plays out such a solid, endlessly inventive yet always coherent line through his improvisations, and the depth of soul he brings to the music is just staggering. And the grooves were remarkably deep and funky last night, too.

God Bless The Child – the first of four generous encores – was a peak among a whole mountain range of them, with a lovely extended solo from Peacock. The vamp that Jarrett added to the end of the song was a strong reminder of the sort of thing he did in Koln Concert, and showed just how great DeJohnette can be just settled deep in the groove, but I felt Jarrett never really found the right hand riches he searched for, despite the grand funkiness of his left hand riff. As a result it felt it slightly overstayed its welcome.

Later encores were just lovely – that final settling down into simply playing the tunes (though in a far from simple fashion) that comes after excitement and climax give way to reveal a hard-won period of gentle reflection.

At the beginning of the evening, Jarrett had responded to the eventual subsidence of the  tumultuous audience greeting with a terse (or was that embarrassed?): “Are you finished?”; at the end he limited himself to “Thanks” but it felt genuine. We were free to cough and take pictures of an empty stage.

For Sebastian Scotney’s reflections on this concert at LondonJazz, go here