Monthly Archives: September 2010

The week ahead in gigs

Posted on
Reply

The ever-resourceful Stratford Jazz deserves the gold star this week for securing the services of the Chris Biscoe Quartet on Sunday.

The band is led by the man who for a long time played Johnny Hodges to Mike Westbrook’s Duke Ellington, a self-taught saxophonist who has carved out an impeccable line in elegant, intelligent and uncompromising jazz for the last 35 years.

For this band, dedicated to the music of Eric Dolphy, he plays alto saxophone, alto clarinet and alto flute, and is joined by Tony Kofi, also on alto saxophone, Larry Bartley on double bass and Stu Butterfield on drums.

It is the band that recorded Gone In the Air a couple of years back, and one that really gets to the heart of Dolphy’s music, while also bringing his inspiration on in more contemporary styles.

These men clearly feel that Dolphy, who died dreadfully young at the age of 36, was one of the prime innovators in jazz, and after hearing them it is hard to disagree.

The gig is at The Chapel, No 1 Shakespeare Street, Stratford-upon-Avon at 8pm. Tickets are £10. Go to www.stratfordjazz.org.uk for more information and call 01789 264787 for tickets. It might be better to book early.

On Saturday jazz and silent film come together with remarkably entertaining results as the Belgian big band Flat Earth Society gets its horns into a film from 1919 called The Oyster Princess.

The band, led by reeds player Peter Vermeersch, has had theatrical leanings from the outset. Its first gig in 1997 was a collaboration with a circus troupe, and the fanfare-heavy Belgian brass band tradition, called HaFaBra, feeds strongly into their wild and wonderful music.

The mac theatre should provide the ideal setting for film and band to coalesce. This Birmingham Jazz event starts at 8pm, tickets are a mere £7, and you can book them at www.macarts.co.uk or on 0121 446 3232.

Before all that, tonight the Edgar Macias Quintet are Andy Hamilton’s guests at Bearwood Corks Club.

The Venezuelan pianist has really made a mark on the Birmingham scene, and for this gig the band includes Chris Bowden on saxophone and fellow Venezuelan Wilmer Sinfontes on percussion.

Doors open at 8.30pm, the music starts at 9pm, the venue is on Bearwood Road, and tickets are £5 on the door. More at www.bearwoodjazz.co.uk

There is no Rush Hour Blues session tomorrow – something to do with a political party conference – so why not go out for dinner instead?

Saxophonist Lluis Mather and pianist Matt Ratcliffe present Jazz at Bohemia, at the Bohemia Cafe Bistro, 23 Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak, from 7.30pm. For £25 you get a three-course meal plus some very classy jazz.

You do need to book in advance, though. Call 0121 4712713 or book online at www.eatbohemia.co.uk

And finally, if you can’t make it down to Stratford on Sunday, or if Eric Dolphy really isn’t your thing, there’s a new gig in town. It’s on the first Sunday of each month, at The Old House At Home in Lordswood Road, Harborne, and the accent is on the old jazz.

Now, the old jazz doesn’t need to be fusty, as the first band up shows. They are the Dixie Ticklers, from London, led by Dom James on clarinet. All young, hip music grads, they know just as much about the stuff being composed today, but for this band they choose to revive the music of Kid Ory, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and the like.

And they do it very well indeed. The gig starts at 7pm, and it’s free.

CD review: Anat Fort Trio

Posted on
Reply

And If
(ECM 273 3216)

Just as it is true that a musician’s first major label album is likely to be somewhat star-studded and the sometime ragbag setting out of a stall, showing versatility and eclecticism, so the sophomore release will be a return to the musician’s working band and a more focussed set of what they do best.

And so it is with classically trained, now very much jazz-based, pianist Anat Fort. Fort was born near Tel Aviv, then moved to the States where she paid her dues in New York, and now divides her time between the land of her birth and the land whose music she most loves. Her music, in a way, reflects those influences, having loads of jazz credentials but also leaning towards the kind of folksong melodies, the gypsy quality, and the almost Russian heightened romanticism that give her music its accessibility and bring her a wider audience.

Her band – Gary Wang on double bass and Roland Schneider on drums – has been consistent for the past ten years.

For an example of a lovely, strong, folkish melody, try En If, which does have some of the easy, rolling lyricism of a Jarrett encore – when all the striving and tension has gone and a pianist is ready to relax and let the beauty flow through long single-note lines before returning to an almost Bach-like graceful formality.

The band returns to this theme on the later If, with drummer Schneider taking a more prominent role this time around, while Lanesboro features bassist Wang.

And the album is bookended by tracks called Paul Motian (1 and 2), tributes to the man who played on her debut and introduced her to ECM.

CD review: Ralph Alessi

Posted on
Reply

Cognitive Dissonance
(CamJazz CAMJ 7827-2)

The Californian trumpeter has had some presence in this country, mainly, in my memory, working with players like Uri Caine, but also leading his own band, This Against That, at the 2008 Cheltenham Jazz Festival. He has a striking playing style and, it is clear on this disc, a clear composing style, too, which somehow manages to be exacting and loose-limbed, precise and slurred, crisp and flowing.

He has an exceptionally fine band in pianist Drew Gress, drummer Nasheet Waits and, for most of the album, Jason Moran on piano (Andy Milne is the pianist on two tracks).

The title track which is the opener has the melodic and stylistic feel of one of Charlie Haden’s revolutionary songs – with Latin nuances and a certain romantic fighting spirit. Elsewhere (track 4, Duel, for example) the writing feels almost mathematical, overlaid with a gorgeous trumpet solo that has a lot more emotion than the stricter groove would have first suggested.

One Wheeler Will, presumably a reference to fellow trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, has in fact more of a Carla Bley feel to its composition – a playful, again Latinish tune, given great bounce and life by Waits and Gress.

The whole album is filled with such moments. Alessi is a master at blending head and heart in a quite contained way; his restraint has a way of heightening the emotional impact.

All the players give superb performances, especially Moran, but this is very much Alessi’s album in terms of solos.

CD review: Loose Tubes

Posted on
Reply

Dancing On Frith Street
(Lost Marble LM005)

First, let me tell you what a pleasure it was to write that headline. To have a new Loose Tubes album to listen to is something I might have hoped for but didn’t really expect.

And this is not just some roughly recorded scraps of tape off the cutting room floor – it’s the band sounding as fine as it ever did.

It’s a live recording from Ronnie Scott’s 20 years ago almost to the day, some seven years after Loose Tubes grew out of a Graham Collier-amassed bunch of young musicians and probably days before those musicians all went their own ways, most of them to continue shaping the sound of British jazz as it is today.

It’s clear from the first few minutes of the Django Bates-composed opening track, Yellow Hill, what it is about Loose Tubes that was so special.

There are good big bands and there are great big bands. Good ones are full of talented musicians that are probably interchangeable with other talented musicians. They sound like the composers and arrangers of their music want them to sound, with minimal added character. They are the transparent jazz orchestras, and we have all heard them.

And then there are the great bands, bands made up of strong musical characters who bring their sounds collectively to the benefit of the whole. They are usually led by strong musicians who understand that personal expression enhances the group sound and is to be written specially for and encouraged at all costs. Think Duke Ellington, think Charles Mingus, think Carla Bley, think David Murray…

Loose Tubes took it even further, having no real leader, though, let’s face it, the fans always thought it was Django, really. What is indisputable is that this was one of the great bands. And the members were not interchangeable with whoever happened to be in town that night or didn’t have a gig with one of their other bands. These guys were totally committed to this band and a solo from any of the other excellent guitarists in the country would have been no subsitute for a John Parricelli solo, for example.

Just listen to the opening ensemble playing on Yellow Hill, the gorgeous way the Iain Ballamy’s soprano solo is cushioned by the rhythm team on the same track, the barely contained chaos in the centre of Discovering Metal, and the way it coalesces into the head at the end, the growing groove of the tune in Eddie Parker’s Last Word, . The examples go on and on right through this disc…

I didn’t get to hear them this week in 1990 but had the privilege to sit in the front row on one of their previous residencies at Ronnie’s. That was when I first felt the physical exhilaration of big band blast at close range. And it really was physical, an impact of blown air!

But brass power is only one element. There is the wide range of influences from rock, reggae, Latin and world music, the playfulness, the passion for the music and the lightly worn intelligence and wit of it all.

Of course, how the hell over 20 strong creative individuals could all stay together and move in a cohesive manner for so long is extraordinary. Herding jazz musicians must be nearly as difficult as herding cats. So, it was never going to last, but we give grateful thanks that it lasted those seven years and that this superb example of what they sounded like is now available for our enjoyment.

Buy this, I urge you, buy multiple copies and send them to all those you love… And buy them from Django Bates’s website. That way, the band members get the most benefit. The link is here

Now let’s get the band’s three studio albums away from whoever holds the rights or whatever, and get them released! The Loose Tubes revival campaign starts here.

If you want to read the conversation about  Loose Tubes that has built up on this blog over the past months, it’s here

Russ’s pic of the week: Eugene Chadbourne

Posted on
Reply

The one and only Eugene Chadbourne at Fizzle on Tuesday evening. It’s Russ Escritt’s pic of the week.

Russ has hundreds more pictures 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 on Russ’s website which is here. 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.