Monthly Archives: January 2011

CD review: Trichotomy

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The Gentle War
(Naim Jazz naimcd156)

This Australian piano trio sounded rather too influenced by the Swedish trio E.S.T. on their debut Naim disc, Variations. This time around they are very much their own men, making highly attractive piano trio jazz with all the right modern flavours, from funky, chunky timing, to pop-friendly melodic hooks.

Take the track Cute – perfectly named for its lightly stepping melody which lures the listener in and its infectious beat which has the toes tapping from the start. Apparently drummer John Parker wrote it for his son, and it has all that childlike sense of fun about it, jumping from light step to crashing interlude and back again. And then pianist Sean Fora throws in a little Latin touch just for the hell of it.

Chase, which opens the album, has a country-tinged tune which reminds me a bit of Brad Mehldau’s turn of musical phrase, but then goes minimalist with choppy, brushed rhythm, damped piano strings and Pat Marchisella’s bass taking centre stage, before getting back to the tricksy-timed tune. Despite the cut and paste construction, it flows nicely.

Here it is with a fun video:

In fact that is the hallmark of this album as a whole. I suspect the material was honed over lots of live playing because despite its complexities, especially rhythmically, it coheres wonderfully throughout.

If you miss the lamented E.S.T., have some Neil Cowley in your CD collection and sometimes find The Bad Plus play the jokes a little too strongly, The Gentle War will definitely hit the spot. And look out for them playing live over here next month. They start their eight-date tour in Southampton on 15 Feb, end at The Stables, Wavendon, on 25 Feb and come to The Cross in Moseley, Birmingham, on Wednesday 23 Feb. For more about the band and the tour, go here

Concert review: Steve Lehman Octet

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The Steve Lehman Octet (Picture: Russ Escritt)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham UK
21-01-11

This was a bit of a treat – the chance to hear what is going on at the cutting edge of jazz in New York, from a composer who allies some of the preoccupations of contemporary “classical” music with the instrumentation, energy and rhythmic feel of jazz , leading a band that included some of the hottest players around.

They were playing music from Lehman’s 2009 Pi Recording, Travail, Transformation And Flow. Most of these pieces are not much longer than a modern pop song, and, while most concert performances of recorded jazz will be extended and relatively open-ended, it is indicative of Lehman’s working methods that he can introduce a piece by telling you exactly how long it will be. Dub was a blast of one minute, 45 seconds; other pieces were around four to five minutes.

This is music that depends on its original compositional structure. Individual soloing is tightly reined in to make the most of the tightly packed, intricately layered musical ideas that Lehman has detailed on paper. What you will not find in it is much melody or much emotional range.

A lot of the time the frontline horns – Mark Shim on tenor, Lehman on alto, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Tim Albright on trombone would be playing lengthened stabs on single notes so tightly packed harmonically and so tightly phrased that they felt like overtones of the same instrument. Behind them, Dan Peck on tuba and Drew Gress on acoustic bass would be pumping out complex lines in tricky, ever-changing pulses, while vibraphonist Chris Dingman added rich, ringing accented chords, almost as tightly packed harmonically as the horns.

Then, some of the front line would step back while one horn would break out in a brief solo: blisteringly fast, condensed ideas from the saxophonists, marginally airier, more impressionistic playing from trumpet and trombone.

And, behind all this was Tyshawn Sorey. The last time I saw a drummer hit a drum that hard was the last time I saw Tyshawn Sorey. And ditto the last time I heard a drummer play quite so melodically with such force. The man is like a force of nature, a swirling storm one minute, a placid pool for a brief moment, followed by a deluge and a raging typhoon. Perhaps I was sitting too close, or perhaps I just find his playing too compelling, but there was the risk that Sorey is such an extraordinary performer that it threw off kilter the overall balance of the band.

Certainly I came away thinking that, despite the complexity and skill of the Lehman’s music, it nevertheless is contained in a fairly narrow band of expression. He does what he does remarkably well, but the tight intellectual focus of his ideas results in a tight and restricted emotional range too. In contrast, what Tyshawn Sorey brings to it is a much broader, more generous personality. The seven are squeezing their musical expertise into the constricting structures Lehman has provided them with; Sorey is bursting free.  (It is interesting that he is the only player without a score.)

A challenging and viscerally exciting evening that went down especially well with the musos (I reckon probably half the audience were practising musicians) and would, I suspect, have excited a Birmingham Contemporary Music Group audience equally well.

Did we witness jazz’s future direction? I don’t think so. In fact I hope not. Lehman’s music has an intriguing but in the end a far too constraining perspective. It’s a vortex into which jazz might spin and disappear altogether.

But you can sign me up for the Tyshawn Sorey fan club.

Gig review: Phil Robson’s Instant Message Service

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Phil Robson and Mark Turner (Picture: Bill Shakespeare)

Birmingham Conservatoire Recital Hall, Birmingham UK
19-01-2011

There were at least four strong reasons for going to hear this quintet: guitarist Phil Robson is always an interesting player and a consummate composer; Mark Turner is one of the most individual and fascinating of current saxophonist stylists; double bassist Michael Janisch promises, and always delivers, a buoyant energy which lifts every band he is in; and Gareth Lockrane’s elegant flute playing is heard all too rarely since he forsook the Midlands for London. If drummer Ernesto Simpson was not sufficiently known here, the Cuban’s decision to base himself in London guarantees we will be seeking him out in the future.

So, five strong players playing new music specially written by Robson with a linking theme of communication. Why the linked theme? Robson was honest in the mid gig question and answer session: in order to acquire funding for the project. Still, he admitted that, contrived as it had started out, he nevertheless found it rewarding (musically, and hopefully financially too) to work this way.

And pieces like Telegram (he said he had always viewed those cryptic messages as romantic, symbols of classic films and dangerous liaisons) and the morse-code inspired The Immeasurable Code, were rich with musical material for all the soloists.

The gig was further enhanced by Lockrane’s tune Dark Swinger, which did what it said on the tin, and by a new untitled-as-yet piece by Turner, showing his intricate harmonic palette and knotty melodic lines at their most accessible.

The evening was part gig and part masterclass for the jazz students at Birmingham Conservatoire. While it was fascinating to hear Robson talk about composing, Janisch talk about his practice regime and Turner’s advice to the students to search historically in all of music, irrespective of style, for what made most sense to them, and ,equally important, moved them, the lack of mics and the quiet manner of some of the musicians, meant this fascination was limited to the first few rows of audience.

Having some of the students play was a nice idea but also not fully utilised and felt rather unconnected to the rest of the evening. If the band had played with the students it would have had a point.

As a regular, unacademic fan of jazz, I relish opportunities like this to hear musicians not only do what they do but talk about it, too, so I wouldn’t want to discourage Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham Jazz from doing more of this kind of thing in the future. They just need to think it through more thoroughly first in order to avoid what felt like a jumble which in the end did full justice to neither gig nor masterclass.

The week ahead in gigs

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Since jazz was first identified as a distinctive musical style, I guess there have always been some interesting practitioners in New York. And if the golden ages in the city’s jazz history ebb and flow, even the quiet times are still interesting.

Not that I think this is one of those quiet times. No, things are pretty exciting in the 21st century in New York, and a compact bunch of young musicians can take a lot of the credit for that.

They include pianist Vijay Iyer, saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Lehman, bassist Stephan Crump, guitarists Liberty Ellman and Mary Halvorson, and drummers Tyshawn Sorey, Dan Weiss and Marcus Gilmore.

Although we’ve been able to hear the music on recordings, with one or two exceptions (we did get Sorey on drums with the John Escreet band a while back, for example) we haven’t yet been able to experience the music in concert .

Which makes tomorrow’s visit by the Steve Lehman Octet a particularly welcome one.

Lehman has a distinctive voice on the alto saxophone but from the CDs I’ve heard he is equally important as a writer and arranger of this new jazz.

It possesses an exacting, almost mathematical basis upon which improvisations are constructed with all kinds of fresh harmonies. The rhythms are often urgent and equally complex.

It’s music that is cool and hot at the same time, sweet and sour in equal parts, and if it appeals predominantly to the head, the heart and feet also get a look in.

Lehman brings with him to Birmingham a very strong band. Tyshawn Sorey and Drew Gress are on drums and bass, Dan Peck adds further bottom end action on tuba, Chris Dingman is on vibes, and the horns are Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor saxophone and Tim Albright on trombone.

They have a recent CD out on the Pi label, called Travail, Transformation and Flow. It has all those qualities about it, and I am optimistic we will hear some of it tomorrow evening.

The band plays at the CBSO Centre from 8pm. Tickets are £14 (£12 for members and concessions) and these can be booked at www.thsh.co.uk There is more information about this Birmingham Jazz gig at www.birminghamjazz.co.uk

Before that you can hear another outstanding saxophonist leading another strong band.

The Chris Biscoe Quartet has Chris and Tony Kofi on saxophones, Larry Bartley on bass and Stu Butterfield on drums, and they will be playing music from their Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus repertoire in the Symphony Hall foyer bar for this week’s Rush Hour Blues early Friday evening session.

It’s free, starts at 5.30pm and ends at 7pm, meaning you just have time to bolt down a snack before the Lehman gig.

Also this week:

Tonight at the Back Room, George IV in Lichfield, two young bands, the JJ Wheeler Quintet and the Tom Dunnett Quintet, play for free from 8.30pm.

On Tuesday there is jazz at The Spotted Dog in Alcester Street, with M.O.L.E., a septet led by Mike Fletcher on alto saxophone and including Lluis Mather on tenor, Dan Nicholls on piano and Rob Anstey on bass. It starts around 8pm and goes till late.

On Wednesday the Jazz Club at the Rainbow in Digbeth celebrates its 5th birthday with a double header of Trio VD and trumpeter Sam Wooster’s new project, Husk. Start time is 9pm and entrance is £5. More at www.birminghamjazz.co.uk