Monthly Archives: May 2010

Disc of the day: 31-05-10

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Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman: Dual Identity (cleanfeed)
This has been out a couple of months but it has been so absorbing me that is has been difficult to step back and write about it.

Mahanthappa and Lehman, both alto saxophonists of a certain 21st-century New York downtown sensibility, really are taking jazz into fresh territory, and they work extraordinarily well together. Mahanthappa brings a raga sense of busyness achieving serenity, while Lehman has a drier sound and style that often reminds me of Henry Threadgill, both in tone and harmonically.

For this disc they have Liberty Ellman on guitar, Matt Brewer on bass and Damion Reid on drums. I think it’s all a live gig though there is not applause between every piece.

The best bits are when the two saxophones are going at it like competing wasps around a flower, while bass and drums hold a half-time groove and Ellman adds dark, slightly menacing chords to offset the saxophones. As the horns get more intense, swapping the improvisations back and forth while the other holds a complementary pattern, so Reid ups the temperature to a real tattoo, though with very little cymbal action to get in the way of the trebly saxophones.

Try track 9, RudreshM, as a prime example. The title track is a really mind-blowing exchange between the two leaders, full of multiphonics and their own weird harmonic and melodic language. It’s so strange and yet so strangely compelling. Whenever I hear this music I imagine how exciting Charlie Parker would have found it.

Russ’s pic of the week: 31-05-10

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Here is guitarist Jonathan Bratoeff with bassist Tom Mason in the background from their Jazz Club gig at the Rainbow last Wednesday. It’s Russ Escritt’s choice for his pic of the week.

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 are all being loaded onto Russ’s new website which is here. It’s a work in progress as Russ consolidates the content from his previous two sites and moves it all to the new one but there is already a great deal to look at. 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.

Fonseca and other treats this week

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The finest jazz musicians are not always the easiest to “sell” to a young and suspicious pop audience. Too old, not sexy enough, too intellectual in their attitude to the music. Far too serious. So when a player like Roberto Fonseca, the young Cuban pianist and bandleader emerged a few years back, there was every reason to rejoice.

Here was a man who could give jazz a good name – with everyone. Not only is he young and stylish, with his elegant designer clothes and trademark hat, he plays incredibly exciting and cool music, and on top of that he is one hell of a piano player.

He first came to our attention as part of the support band for those veterans of Cuban music, the Buena Vista Social Club. Since then he has released two excellent albums on the Enja label, Zamazu and Akokan, and showed in live performance just how good his own music is.

I still have to be wary of sliding Zamazu into the CD player because track two, Tierra En Mano, is so beguiling I find myself hitting repeat again and again, and there goes the day… Just listen to that bass groove, and that piano solo, and the way the rhythm picks up at the end – it’s out of this world.

A few years ago the band played at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and sold out their event almost immediately.

Now Birmingham’s fans of fine music – not just jazz, but any kind of fine music – get a chance to hear just how good Fonseca and his band are when they sashay into the Town Hall on Wednesday, June 2.

The concert starts at 7.30pm and Fonseca has his regular band – the same one that appears on Akokan – with him. Superb musicians who work so well together. The arrangements and the playing combine to make this something really special.

For more information and to book tickets at £18.50, go to www.thsh.co.uk or call 0121 780 3333.

Tomorrow, Andy Hamilton & The Bluenotes bring Sax In The City to the Symphony Hall foyer bar for a relaxing lunchtime session. The music starts at 12.30pm, and it’s a fine way to avoid too much shopping. Entry is free.

On Sunday at The Chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon, one of Birmingham’s favourite bands is in the house. This is the quintet led by bassist Ben Markland, with his regular partner Neil Bullock on drums, Chris Bowden on alto saxophone, Bryan Corbett on trumpet and Pete Harris on guitar.

The Chapel is at No1 Shakespeare Street, the gig starts at 8pm, it’s a Stratford Jazz production, tickets are £6 on the door and there is more at www.stratfordjazz.org.uk

Disc of the day: 28-05-10

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Metropole Orkest, featuring John Scofield, conducted by Vince Mendoza: 54 (Emarcy0602527144504)
It’s been a while since I’ve been excited by a new John Scofield album, which is what this is, in a way. His excursions into jam band and New Orleans Meters-style instrumental rock have been pleasant but not quite meaty enough to excite ears which grew used to the extraordinary Sco’ sound in the company of Joe Lovano and Pat Metheny and Bill Stewart and suchlike.

But to hear Scofield’s distortion-laden electric guitar sound in the lush surroundings of “the world’s largest professional pop and jazz orchestra” is to enjoy the same complex sensations as to see a rust-encrusted Chevy sitting in a velvet-lined boudoir – it’s both striking in its contrast and somehow the beauty of each is enhanced by the other.

Mendoza is the go-to arranger for this kind of stuff, and has worked miracles giving credible string treatments to such diverse music as Joni Mitchell’s and Joe Zawinul’s; his are not the only arrangements here, but they form the majority, and are as artful and graceful as you’d expect. He contributes two tunes as well, though they are not as memorable as Scofield’s.

And the man  himself plays a blinder – just listen to his fluency in Say We Did, or his greasy funk intro to Twang, the unabashed raunch of Polo Towers and the cleaner sounding , fleet-footed and harmonically twisty solo he plays on Imaginary Time. The other soloists, all from the Orkest, do sterling work, too, and it is truly exhilarating to hear a big orchestras play with such instinctive jazz feel.