Monthly Archives: March 2010

Disc of the day: 31-03-10

Posted on
Reply

Orrin Evans: Faith In Action (Posi-Tone Records PR8058)
Orrin Evans will probably be best known in the UK as the pianist who took the keyboard seat normally occupied by Uri Caine when Dave Douglas  toured here in 2008. He has been heard recently with Jamaaladeen Tacuma. In fact the Philadelphian studied with Kenny Barron, worked a lot with Bobby Watson and with the Mingus Big Band, and made his first trio album in 1994.

This one is a trio disc, too, with Luques Curtis on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums for most of the tracks.

He’s a terrific pianist – warm and solid, able to explore some of those modern hip-hop-nuanced things while still rooted in the grand jazz piano tradition that still finds its sternest testing ground in the clubs of New York – grounds where Evans thrives.

A few of the tracks here are original O Evans credits, but a lot also have B Watson next to the titles, so Evans is happy to keep exploring the material first provided by one of his early employers. And some serious exploring he certainly does in this demanding material.

I’m not sure about the piano sound on the album is all it might be on the more explosive tracks, like Appointment in Milano, but so absorbing is Evans’ playing that one soon forgets any sonic shortcomings. The trio interaction here is electrifying, too.

His treatment of the Watson classic, Love Remains, is rhapsodic and expansive against a strong ostinato from Curtis, with tastily chosen voicings and slow waterfalls down the keyboard, before side-stepping briefly into a soul jazz groove and returning to a bass solo against the brushes. This is timeless stuff.

Concert review: Dan Berglund’s Tonbruket

Posted on
3

Dan Berglund at the soundcheck yesterday (Picture: Russ Escritt)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham UK
30-03-10
The Swedish double bassist Dan Berglund has done a very clever thing. Of course, his former boss, pianist Esbjorn Svensson, prepared the ground. But all credit to Berglund for taking up the baton and running with it, following Svensson’s death in 2008.

E.S.T. started out as a pretty regular jazz piano trio – they even made a disc of Monk tunes – but increasingly Svensson brought something fresh to their music, feeding his own love of pop into the melodies and rock into the rhythms. So, by the time they were playing large venues in their latter years, the music was much broader than we had come to expect from a jazz piano trio. The audience was broader, too, with a high proportion of fans who probably had more Pink Floyd than Bill Evans albums in their collections.

With Tonbruket, Berglund has moved even further. His drummer, Andreas Werliin doesn’t get anywhere near conventional swing, his guitarist Johan Lindstrom probably listens to more Chet Atkins than Joe Pass (though probably not much to either), and keyboardist Tomas Hallonsten (in for this first UK tour in place of Martin Hederos who plays on the band’s debut album on the ACT label) favours the retro Korg to get those ’70s synth sounds.

The music, too, has little of the old jazz in it – or even the new jazz. While Berglund was often showcased in E.S.T. and played exciting Hendrix-influenced solos on wah-wah, arco bass, here he played very much the fulcrum, allowing Lindstrom to set a lot of the tone with his various guitars.

And various they certainly are, from a couple of acoustics early on in the set (though sounding far from acoustic for much of the time) to pedal steel later on. The latter is one of my favourite instruments, and heard all too rarely. It can never shake its strong country & western flavour , of course, but it is intriguing to sample that flavour in a fusion dish, as it were. The overall effect of Tonbruket’s music for me is to conjure up the strange image of a rather flashily dressed cowboy rocker striding along a bleak, windswept Swedish beach.

In a single 90-minute set and encores, the band played nearly all of the album and added some striking new songs – particularly one called Trackpounder (that cowboy, perhaps?) – taking in quiet delicacy and simple timbral contrasts (Song For E, Wolverine Hoods, Sister Sad, Sailor Waltz), prog-rock thumpers (Monstrous Colossus) and dark mechanistics (Stethoscope, Trackpounder).  Some tunes took in all three moods within one piece.

Of course, there might be some who left the gig wondering what those signs saying Birmingham Jazz had to do with any of the music they had heard. But music that prompts that kind of discussion is usually serving a vital purpose right there.

Disc of the day: 30-03-10

Posted on
Reply

Abdullah Ibrahim & WDR Big Band Cologne: Bombella (Intuition INT34302)
The South African pianist has suffered at the hands of the Germans before – there was a disastrous attempt by an arranger to give his songs an orchestral setting that  not only didn’t do them justice but sounded more like a wilful act of kitsch vandalism.

This time he fares much better, partly because the WDR Big Band Cologne is filled with superb musicians and also because conductor and arranger Steve Gray has a musical head on his shoulders. In fact, given that Ibrahim was originally taken under the wing of Duke Ellington when, as Dollar Brand, he first made the journey from Africa to the western world, these arrangements have a distinctly Ellingtonian feel to them, especially when Heiner Wiberny is sounding as fruitily Johnny Hodges-like as he does on Song For Sathima.

But it’s still not an unalloyed success. I’m afraid, listening through South African-educated ears, as I must do, I am not convinced by the Germans’ take on the kwela sound of Mandela. It doesn’t sound like the real thing – and how could it? – so it ends up sounding like a pastiche.

The music works best when Ibrahim has a bigger role, as on District Six, or when it has a less specifically South African flavour, like the title track. In fact, to most ears it will all sound fine and there is much to enjoy in the expert playing throughout.

Ultimately though, there are no drummers quite like South African ones, and this music would sound much better with players of more authenticity even if that meant they were not quite so meticulous. In fact, less meticulous would be a bonus.

Disc of the day: 29-03-10

Posted on
Reply

Curios: The Other Place (Edition Records)
The second CD from Tom Cawley’s piano trio feels like a really strong development, and that’s taking into account how strong the first one was. The rapport between pianist Cawley, bassist Sam Burgess and drummer Joshua Blackmore is clearly so much deeper after countless gigs together, and the technological trickery Cawley uses – a loop device – is incorporated with great subtlety.

The opener, Pursuit, opens with a walking bass line and a minimal Monkish piano theme over a drum beat that sets up a nice counter to the bass line. There’s the feeling almost of the three players starting out in separate places and with separate vibes, moving in parallel and then slowly becoming more intertwined as the piece progresses. It’s an original start and hugely effective. And the way in which it moves towards a climax and then finishes in a calmer place is masterful.

Plea is one of Cawley’s achingly beautiful and poignant melodies that gives a gentle nod to Brad Mehldau in the delicacy of its harmonies. And then we are into the quiet funkiness of Roadster.

The pianist’s love of motor racing crops up at the end as well with a hip-hop rhythmed tribute to the 2009 World Champion, Mr Button, and apparently the tune that precedes it, Belief, is also about Button, whether his belief in himself or Cawley’s belief in him I’m not sure – both probably.

In between the first tracks and last there is the thoughtful Pure, the piano accompanied by quiet reverse-looped sounds and another gem of a melody, the virtuoso display of trio interaction that builds to a torrent and then drops to a sublime pause before the finish in Impure, and lots more to delight heart and mind.

When Cawley is not playing stadiums with Peter Gabriel, he is going to be touring this material, and he comes to the Midlands on 18 April when he will be in Lichfield’s Guildhall, courtesy of Lichfield Arts. Book for that on 01543 262223. And find out where else they are going here. Oh, and buy the album and listen to a podcast from Tom here.

Russ’s pic of the week: 29-03-10

Posted on
Reply

Here is saxophonist Art Themen at Andy Hamilton’s birthday gig at the Bearwood Corks Club last Thursday.

Russ has hundreds more like this – in fact when it comes to jazz musicians, if they’ve played in Birmingham he has probably taken their picture. And they will soon all be loaded onto Russ’s new website which is here. It’s still in the construction phase at the moment as Russ consolidates the content from his previous two sites and moves it all to the new one. And now there is the added bonus that you can search for a particular musician. Russ also has available three books of his photographs: two of general pictures and one dedicated to the legendary great grandaddy of Birmingham jazz, Andy Hamilton. Go to the ABOUT section of the site for more details.