Monthly Archives: October 2009

Disc of the day: 31-10-09

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The Terence Blanchard Group: Choices (Concord 7231736)
One thing you never get from Terence Blanchard is the same old same old. There are sometimes fairly straight jazz dates but some of my most treasured discs are The Heart Speaks, the trumpeter’s collaboration with Brazilian composer Ivan Lins and his recent requiem for Hurricane Katrina, A Tale of God’s Will.

For Choices he assembles his current band of Fabian Almazan on piano, Derrick Hodge on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums, to which he adds Walter Smith III on saxophone. Guests musicians are the singer Bilal and the guitarist Lionel Loueke. And then there is Dr Cornel West, writer, speaker, educator and activist.

West talks quite a bit through the album. He has a gritty, resonant voice that reminds me in timbre of a tenor saxophone, he has a lot of wise things to say and he says them in a compelling way. But after the first half dozen plays he does become a bit like a really good man at a cocktail party whose story you have now heard a few times, and beyond whom there is the rest of the party going on. You’d quite like to introduce him to someone who has just arrived at the party and doesn’t yet know his views, then quietly slip away to refresh your drink and listen to the band.

And I suppose you can do just that by programming the CD or importing selected tracks.

Because the music is just glorious and, as always with Blanchard, it is exquisitely played and exquisitely recorded. Surely the loveliest and most human trumpet sound on the planet at present? Lovely tunes and lovely arrangements, and a great range of moods with a style that is both timeless and contemporary.

Try Journey, Bilal singing over a lithe Brazilian samba, or Hacia del Aire, with its oh-so-dignified  trumpet and bass intro, it’s fulsome piano development and eventual cinematic theme which leads into a trumpet/saxophone double solo of ever heightening tension and emotion. Those are just for starters – there is plenty more, from the more straight-ahead quintet of Him Or Me to the dreamy Touched By An Angel.

And, where the spoken word is blended in with the music more, like on the title track and on the most extended track, Winding Roads, that works just fine, too. Ultimately West has the answer himself, when he says Beethoven called music “deeper than philosophy” to which one might add: “yep, and deeper than talk, too.”

Disc of the day: 30-10-09

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Kenny Wheeler & Colours of Jazz Orchestra: Nineteen Plus One (Astarte 015948 301838)
The Canadian-born, English resident trumpeter and flugelhorn player Kenny Wheeler is, it seems to me, one of the most influential figures in the British jazz of the past 30 years or so. His way of arranging and orchestrating, of bringing a somehow both rigorous and dreamy feeling, as shy and subtly voiced as his own manner onstage, has permeated a whole generation (or two?) of British jazz musicians. It is there in the more ambitious works of everyone from Michael Garrick (or has he just gone the same way in parallel?) to Julian Arguelles and Mark Lockheart from the Loose Tubes generation, through a lot of the BBC Big Band arrangers, and down to the more pastoral of the young composers/arrangers like Tom Richards.

And, of course, Wheeler’s influence both as composer/arranger and player has not been limited to this country. I remember Marcus Stockhausen telling me how hearing Wheeler turned his world around and was virtually the trigger that signalled his change of interest from the classical to jazz world.

On this disc his style is thrown into sharper relief because, for a substantial part of it, the tunes are standards which Wheeler has arranged, so we can clearly hear the re-voicings, that characteristic Wheeler personality and mood applied to tunes we are very familiar with: Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen’s Only The Lonely, for example, and Irving Berlin’s How Deep Is The Ocean.

The orchestra’s make-up will be familiar to Wheeler fans, too, with the usual trumpet, trombone and saxophone sections plus rhythm fronted by Wheeler and a female singer who often sings wordlessly along with the horns. This time Diana Torto is in that Norma Winstone role, and the orchestra is the Italian Colours. Torto, the orchestra and the soloists, especially Simone La Maida on alto, acquit themselves adequately, and Wheeler should always interest.

But, and I feel wary of writing this because Wheeler is something of a sacred cow among British jazz critics, my overwhelming reaction to this album is one of lethargy , a kind of sad and dispiriting ennui. I don’t think it’s a self-instigated dissatisfaction and debilitation, because there is much else that I am listening to at the moment that excites and enthuses me. And listening to older Wheeler albums – I recently acquired a new copy of Gnu High because my original had gone walkabout, and it sounded again just as wonderful as I remembered it – hasn’t robbed me of all energy the way Nineteen Plus One does.

Maybe it is the fault of the band and Torto, maybe they just don’t have enough passion in them, despite their Italian heritage? No, it’s unfair to lay it all on them. They deserve to be inspired by the star soloist, composer and arranger. It’s just a dud session, I guess. Polite, efficient, deferential even, and as a result just plain dull. Then again, John Fordham gave this disc four stars in the Guardian, so what do I know?

Sorry!

Disc of the day: 29-10-09

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Quincy Jones: Smackwater Jack (Verve 02527068909)
Ah, time for a little nostalgia. I well remember this from my student days – it came out in 1971 on A&M.

The title track really is a little lame, though it’s nice to hear Quincy singing. The real fun starts with Cast Your Fate To The Wind and a classic Eric Gayle guitar solo. Mr Jones was already busy building up fabulous personnel lists on his records, and the soloists on this disc include Toots Thielemans, Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson and Jim Hall. Oh, and Bill Cosby gets a vocal spot on the deliriously stupid Hikky-Burr.

The stand-out tracks are the original Jones theme tunes, Ironside and Theme From The Anderson Tapes – just check out Freddie’s solo on Ironside – and while the version here of What’s Going On might not initially seem to add much to Marvin Gaye’s original, it all kicks off on the hard swinging outro, a masterful arrangement with strong solos and an ace massed strings section inspired by Toots’s harmonica line.

The whole shebang ends with a six minute, 38 second history of blues guitar styles from “Roots to Fruits” in which Gayle, Hall, Thielemans and Joe Beck do their business.

For those who don’t own the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, this disc is still worth hearing for Quincy’s glorious production values pre-MJ, for the great electric piano and rhythm sound, and for those sweet solos from Laws, Hubbard et al.

Gig review: Sam Wooster Quartet

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samwooster_0805

Picture: Russ Escritt

Jazz Club
Rainbow Pub, Digbeth, Birmingham UK
28-10-09
The roar of Ferret could be heard from the bar, and revealed that the quartet had started at the noisier end of their repertoire. And they didn’t let up until the third number, Double Blue. Even that one built to a veritable storm force gale of sound, though it had started rather gently and built in a slow, steady and subtle fashion. Captain Slagwagon was a take-no-prisoners, swirling helter-skelter while Secondary eased the intensity of the mood just a tad.

So how do these four young players with rock band backgrounds and schooled at Birmingham Conservatoire manage in this tricky territory – a harsh land where jazz chops meet noise, where structure and free playing constantly overlap, where technology is employed to ends which are both invigoratingly primal and intellectually complex – where they find themselves?

Well, in general, they manage extraordinarily well. It might sound a little contradictory, but the real art in this kind of music is not making an almighty row but controlling that row in a subtle and sensitive way. The almost gentle build and control of the dynamics in Double Blue, and the balancing of different textures in I’ll Be The Judge Of That were achieved in a remarkably skilled way.

Wooster is certainly not playing it safe with this band He is a strong leader, with a distinctive and personal sound and style of improvisation, and his electronic manipulation of his trumpet is beautifully integrated into this sound. Guitarist Jimmy Brewer draws a remarkably diverse range of sounds from his guitar, each one just right for the different contexts in which he employs them. He is excellent in helping to shape the overall sound of the band and in support of Wooster’s solos, while his own improvisations reveal how well he has learned the modern guitar lessons of players like Wayne Krantz.

Jim Bashford gets my “just bloody fantastic” prize every time I hear him, and here he acts as the central hub, always pulling a great new groove from what can sometimes approach turmoil. Six-string electric bassist Tom Sinnett is clearly a skilled player but, to my ears, his control of dynamics and volume is not subtle enough. Less boom, fewer notes – maybe fewer strings, even – might be needed in achieving a more balanced band sound. That’s a very subjective view, I hasten to add.

Overall, a good crowd in support, a strong set and a very welcome presence which stretches the range of the Conservatoire grad, Cobweb Collective scene.

But enough of the serious stuff – how great to see a band wearing earplugs (I think the last time I saw that was the John Zorn band doing their thrash-jazz thing in the Adrian Boult Hall nearly 20 years back, which just shows I don’t go to enough noisy gigs) and great, too, to hear Sam Wooster reviving the technique expounded by innovative trumpeter Jackson Jeffrey Jackson on The Fast Show‘s Jazz Club: “I don’t blow, man; I suck.”

Disc of the day: 28-10-09

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Empirical_500p

Picture: Garry Corbett

Empirical: Out ‘n’ In (Naim naimcd 139)
I got to hear this material in concert before I was really familiar with it on CD, and that was a great way to get to know it. However, if you haven’t had that chance, this is the next best thing, and a pretty fine thing it is.

The young British quartet of Nathaniel Facey (alto saxophone), Lewis Wright (vibes), Tom Farmer (double bass) and Shaney Forbes (drums) take the music and life of Eric Dolphy as inspiration and have really got to know the man and his music so well that they can internalise the influences and so be themselves while still paying tribute to him.

All four are searching, intellectual musicians, but they are not just about serious exploration – they also have a damn fine time. Just listen to those grinning drums, that bouyant bass, the brilliant vibe runs and crunchy chords, and the energy in the saxophone solos.

The writing is shared between Farmer and Facey, and there are two Dolphy tunes, Hat & Beard and Gazzelloni, too. Facey, especially, really has grown into an interesting composer with this material: try A Bitter End For A Tender Giant and Dolphyus Morphyus for size and you find generous and substantial writing, try So He Left, and you find concision and wit.

A bonus of the CD which we didn’t get in the live performance is the addition of Julian Siegel as guest on tenor saxophone and, all important for the Dolphy connection, bass clarinet.

His work on A Conversation and Another Conversation, especially his interaction with Facey, is in the zone and on the money and all those other ways of saying it’s just right (and then some). He gets co-composer credits there, too. But his work everywhere is superb: just try his clarinet solo on A Bitter End…

There is a great freshness about this band, not only in the instrumentation (vibes seems to leave so much space compared to piano), and not only in its constituent parts: it really is a cohesive and well-realised group sound. Long may they continue to develop it.