Monthly Archives: November 2009

Disc of the day: 30-11-09

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Gwilym Simcock: Blues Vignette (Basho Music SRCD 32-2)
Gwilym Simcock and his record company are extremely generous people. This album is a double CD, the first consisting of the pianist solo and in a duo with cellist Cara Berridge, the second a piano trio set with Yuri Goloubev on double bass and James Maddren on drums. The first is nearly 70 minutes in length, the second over the hour. And either would have given the listener a musical feast of the most sustaining kind.

Simcock said in the liner notes to his first release, Perception (also on the Basho label) how an album is a snapshot of where the artist is at the moment and indicates that this shows not only where he has got to as a soloist but also, since this is a new trio, where he is going in the future.

So, first the man alone. His technique, classically learned and jazzily expanded, is beginning to sound effortless along with being virtuosic, and that makes for a less knotted brow when listening – and a broader smile, too. The opener is the light-stepping Little People – lyrical, joyous and showing some Petrucianni influence, and he follows it with a jazz interpretation of a bit of the Grieg piano concerto. The stately opening chords are exquisitely stated, slow and pensive, and the improvisation remains classically voiced with the heart very much worn on the sleeve but no blues or jazz-inflected tricksiness. That shows the maturity of the man.

He quickly moves on to playing the whole piano – casing as well as deadened strings – in a funky intro to On Broadway before making it sound like a piece for two pianos. He continues  with three insightful improvisations and two more solo compositions, one dedicated to those two passed masters, Jaco and Joe.

Then it’s in with the cello and a gorgeous two-part suite written by Simcock and inhabiting that now perfectly happy world – created in the last 30 years or so and often on the ECM label – where jazz and the western European tradition meet.

And so to the beginning of something really big – or, at least I hope it grows into that: a major piano trio on the world stage, up there with Mehldau, the Standards Trio, with Charlap’s and Barron’s and the Stefano Bollani Trio – because Simcock, Goloubev and Maddren do sound they have found a magical place already.

You might be forgiven for thinking that at the beginning of Disc 2 and Introduction, Berridge is still in the band – no one plays arco bass quite as precisely and with a cello-like singing tone as Yuri Goloubev, and it means that Simcock can indulge his more classically tinged fancies with someone who can do that too. And Maddren is such a musical drummer, and able somehow to wrap himself around the band – even on a big stage he can sound like he is coming from all corners, though he never overwhelms, is always supportive, almost cosseting.

This second disc is just an unadulterated joy from beginning to end – through the great finale section of Tundra, through the cinematic title track, through the seriously funky Sonny Burke tune Black Coffee. On this and to a much greater extent on Gershwin’s Nice Work If You Can Get It, the trio plays with the timing in a fascinating way. On the latter the speed and feel changes every couple of bars, and still they make it all make sense!

Simcock removes all the cheap emotion that has wrought in popular versions of Cry Me A River (has it ever featured in one of those X-Factor talent things?) and restores all its inherent beauty and heartfelt nature.

We end in 1981, the year of the pianist’s birth, and back in a driving optimistic place, rich with riffs, cymbal splashes and some lovely bass/piano interaction in the Bill Evans-Scott La Faro fashion. A great album and hard to believe it’s still only in recording terms a sophomore outing. Long may this trio last.

Russ’s pic of the week: 30-11-09

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Each week photographer Russ Escritt sends me his favourite picture of the week, or perhaps one from his extensive archive. He’s particularly pleased with this one of Henry Grimes, taken at the soundcheck before the Profound Sound Trio’s concert at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham on Saturday.

Russ has been shooting (in the nicest possible way) local and visiting jazz musicians for a good few years now. In fact, he has recently compiled a book of the ones he likes best. Here is the cover:

Idries Muhammed

You can order a copy here, or if you want to check out more of Russ Escrit’s superb pictures, go here.

Concert review: Profound Sound Trio

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CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK
28-11-09
They started and finished their continuous set with intense, tumbling pieces that had the same individual instrumental ingredients delivered in remarkably similar fashion. But what a difference! At the beginning it was like watching three musicians, each locked in their own little world, pouring out their own ideas for, it seemed, their own satisfaction. There could have been invisible walls between them; there could have been one between them and us.

On the left, Henry Grimes plucked urgently and nervously at the strings of his double bass to produce a low burbling thrum; in the centre Andrew Cyrille had set up a constant flurry around the drum kit that, likewise, formed a fairly uninterrupted swathe of strikes and scrapes; to the right Paul Dunmall poured out torrents of notes from his tenor saxophone in a stream broken only momentarily by the regular pauses needed for an intake of breath.

On and on they went, in isolation. Or so it seemed to me.

But just over an hour later they did the same kind of thing, except this time what I heard was a band – the three musicians still doing what they do best and, more specifically, the only thing they do, but now doing it in tight-knit accord with each other. Both pieces were a bit like the musical equivalent of a monochrome Jackson Pollock paintings (in dark grey upon dark grey, perhaps), except that the first time it had just been a murky mess while the second time light played across the surface, the layers gleaming. The difference is hard to express, but easy to feel. It’s the difference between wanting to leave and being glad I’d stayed.

In between, Dunmall played clarinet and came worryingly close to playing a tune; Grimes did one of his unfathomable arco solos, read a poem which linked the now to to the origins of the world, and played violin. His violin playing reminds me of no one so much as John Cale playing viola with the Velvet Underground.

The most magical moment for me came when Cyrille started a groove (or as near to a groove as free jazz gets) with stick on stick, varying the pressure of the hit and so producing an almost melodic variation in note and tone. He built this motif up and spread it subtly to the rest of the kit while Grimes held a rhythmic scrape and saw on violin and Dunmall conversed with the two of them on soprano. The sound of Dunmall’s bagpipes – again it’s a torrent of notes but this time uninhibited by the need for breaths – added a nice earthy and strangely British touch to what had been music not of any particular country or even of this earth. It’s somehow stranger than that – a kind of intergalactic buzz, rattle, screech and squeal of the spheres.

The encore was almost a blues, almost that jazz that is – what would you call it? – “fenced in” rather than “free”?

Gig review: Haines Puddick Jazz Orchestra

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Symphony Hall Foyer, Birmingham UK
27-11-09
Hey, remember Thad Jones Mel Lewis Big Band? A horn player and a drummer leading a group that became an institution and sparring ring for many a fine young jazz player? Well, fast forward a good few decades and Birmingham could have its own version.

Ed Puddick is a trombonist but spent his time in the front, conducting and name-checking the soloists; Tom Haines is a drummer and kept things tight at the back. Both had written lots of new music for this band which has strong Birmingham Conservatoire connections and a lot of familiar faces.

The Morgan brothers were there in the saxophone section, as was Sub Ensemble bari man Colin Mills. His fellow Subber, Mike Adlington was in the trumpets as was Sam Wooster, leader of a very interesting young quartet in this town.

On bass was Conservatoire grad who has gone on to bigger things in London, Ryan Trebilcock, and on piano was the much travelled Steve Tromans.

Of course the band calls itself an “orchestra” so any Count Basie and other big band connections were out of the question – this was much more serious stuff, full of atmospheric textures and more expansive writing.

Full marks to all concerned – Ed and Tom for writing the stuff, the musicians for buckling down and getting on with it, Birmingham Jazz and Symphony Hall for giving them a platform, and all those who turned up to enjoy and applaud. It was an impressively sized audience, even by the standards of these popular weekly sessions.

What I’d really like to see now is the band given scope to develop. That can only come with the guarantee of a regular gig – local promoters please note. What I’d also like to see is a bit more space for the soloists. A composer and bandleader like Maria Schneider writes specifically for the players in her jazz orchestra, and often gives a specific soloist practically a whole tune to themselves. It’s a very effective ploy and I think soloists like the ones in this band would rise admirably to such occasions.

Also, I know it’s early days but a little more edge and a little less politeness from the soloists would help greatly. Mr Tromans can be relied upon to move things up a gear and this he did in a fine and idiosyncratic solo just before the interval. Chris Proctor on tenor played a great little solo early in the second half but was cut off by the tight arrangement before he could really build on the potential of his feisty beginning.

I confess I had to head off to another engagement 15 minutes before the end – maybe the band broke free from the polite arrangements and scholarly, by-the-book solos at the end. Maybe Haines shouted like Mingus while the trumpets headed for the stratosphere and the trombones broke out in dirty chaos. Maybe the sax section marched out into the crowd wailing all the while.

Or maybe that will happen next time. I live in hope.

Disc of the day: 27-11-09

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Holland/Rubalcaba/Potter/Harland: The Monterey Quartet: Live At The 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF Records 0888072312449)
Remember that great tenor led quartet concert from 1964, immortalised on the album Forest Flower? The band was the Charles Lloyd Quartet and the festival was in Monterey. In 2007 the quartet is an all-star one with Dave Holland on bass, Gonzalo Rubalcaba on piano, Chris Potter on tenor and Eric Harland on drums. And while it might not achieve the rock-crowd-friendly icon status Forest Flower achieved, this disc is as jam-packed with great jazz.

Just listen to Potter’s solo at the close of Eric Harland’s tune Treachery, the opening number here. It’s the tenor man in fiery form indeed, and the band really cooking behind him. For these few minutes alone, and the resulting standing hairs on the back of the neck, this disc is worth the asking price.

But there is more, much more. All the tunes are originals and all are contributed by the band. Potter’s Minotaur begins with an exemplary solo from Harland, and settles into a strangely accented piece, a strong Holland riff and more exciting saxophone playing.

Rubalcaba, for all his fireworks playing, is also a master of the subtly harmonised ballad, and Otra Mirada is  just such a piece, the composer contributing a precisely articulated and searching solo; Holland’s Step To It shows that dancing groove he brings to so many of his compositions, and the bass and drums interaction is just fab.

Harland’s Maiden is plain gorgeous, while Rubalcaba’s 50 is perhaps the set’s hotspot.

It’s easy to make a connection between this band and another Miles Davis group veteran’s – the Wayne Shorter Quartet. Both contain a Latin pianist, and both include musical princes alongside the kings. If this band isn’t quite a match for the Shorter band, it might be down to the fact that it hasn’t yet built up that kind of time on the road. Let’s hope it does.