The Tommaso Starace Quartet in full cry at Lichfield Guildhall last weekend, courtesy of Lichfield Arts. It’s a new picture to add to the impressive archive of Garry Corbett. It’s also the latest in a regularly updated gallery of images from Midland based photographers, interpretations of what jazz looks like to them.
For more of Garry’s rich and insightful photographs go to his flickr site here.
So, a cursory glance through the West Midlands arts organisations that have been lucky enough to find themselves within Arts Council England’s new Portfolio scheme and can, from 1212, expect regular funding for at least three years, would not reveal the name of our most conspicuous local jazz provider: Birmingham Jazz.
BJ has been a regularly-funded organisation for a while and three years back received a large boost in funds from the Arts Council to give them a bit of security. So where are they now? Don’t worry, they’re there. Look not for Birmingham Jazz on the list but instead for Performances Birmingham Ltd.
Who they? Well, they are the people who run Symphony Hall and Town Hall – thsh to the web-surfers – and from 2012 they will get £80k or about that, that they never had before. And the reason they are getting it now is specifically for contemporary jazz and education and, as we understand it, under the banner Birmingham Jazz.
Will jazz by any other name swing as sweetly? Well, BJ put a buoyant press release up on www.birminghamjazz.co.uk and www.thsh.co.uk did the same. Tony Dudley-Evans, BJ’s artistic director, assures me this is good news for jazz and the city. After all, BJ and thsh already collaborate on the regular free Friday sessions in the Symphony Hall foyer.
It would seem logical that, with the two organisations coming together, some core costs (like separate offices, etc) can be reduced, and we would like to think that money could then be redirected into a bigger or better programme of jazz.
Tony also assures me that collaborating with a venue-based organisation won’t stop BJ using the venues like Rainbow, Jam House and Hare & Hounds that it currently uses, in addition to the CBSO Centre. (though speaking personally, I cannot abide the Rainbow, but that is another matter…)
The big question that all this begs is will it mean more jazz for Birmingham and, more specifically, more jazz in Symphony Hall and Town Hall. And to answer that question we will have to wait a year.
Now, venues have been much on my mind in the last few weeks. Venues and bigger jazz names. Because while I like to hear the fare that BJ is currently offering us, I am also aware of what it isn’t offering.
A few weeks back I travelled to The Edge at Much Wenlock to see the great acoustic guitarist Ralph Towner, and a fabulous concert to a jam-packed, sold-out room it was, too. Why wasn’t he playing Birmingham? Well, he was originally, but then the tour dates changed and no venue in Birmingham could be found for the new date. So that was Birmingham’s loss.
I went down to London recently to hear Kurt Elling with Richard Galliano and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Elling and the band had done three nights up in Scotland previously. It would have sounded great in Symphony Hall. Another trick missed.
While I was in London I noticed there were two great jazz players doing gigs at the Union Chapel: guitarist Mike Stern and his band one night and bassist Avishai Cohen another night. How wonderful, I thought, would it have been to have them play in Birmingham? Well, dream on, I guess.
Joe Lovano - saxophonist sans venue
Then I noticed the great, great tenor player Joe Lovano was playing with his US Five band up at The Sage in Gateshead and then down in London, at Ronnie Scott’s. And you know what? He played in Birmingham as well. You didn’t know? Well, I’m not surprised, because he did a workshop for the students at Birmingham Conservatoire on a Monday afternoon, but somehow he couldn’t do a gig here. The word on the Birmingham Jazz website is, and I quote: “Sadly it proved impossible to find a suitable venue in Birmingham that was available in the tour period.”
And that’s just what we have missed out on in the past month.
So the question I am asking myself now is: given that from 2012 we have a jazz organisation inexorably tied by the Arts Council to a company which runs two vital venues, will it still “prove impossible to find a suitable venue” for the big names from over the water that are currently playing down in London and up in the North East, but nowhere in between?
And does the Arts Council’s “Strategic Framework for the Arts” and its vision of “achieving great art for everyone” even address the issue of big jazz names from over the water. Isn’t it just worried about British jazz for British jazz listeners? Well, judging by the large amount of money it gives to the production company Serious, which has something of a stranglehold in this country on the really big names in jazz and world music, one would think it does have a vision beyond this island. But the question still remains: how are these other cities able to manage what we cannot?
Now, in case you should think I am being unappreciative of homegrown talent, of course I am not. I have written enthusiastically enough about loads of British jazz musicians and bands, and I support the local scene with every hair in my jazz beard. But I have not been short of opportunities to hear British jazz over the last few years. Tony Dudley-Evans and Birmingham Jazz have given me ample opportunity. And repeated opportunities to see the same bands, too.
What they haven’t been able to supply in any quantity – in fact, ever since the Contemporary Music Network died some years back - is a sufficiently varied menu of foreign jazz. Yes, I know BJ provides some, but it tends to be from a more restricted niche. Now I guess that it is well within the rights of the man doing the programming to go with what he prefers to listen to, though it should perhaps also be remembered that he is spending your and my money.
I believe strongly in the global art form in its widest range of styles (and so does thsh judging by some of the excellent world music that has been appearing in their brochures of late), so I would prefer not to have national borders and programmer’s preferences restricting what I can get to hear. I also believe that Birmingham is big enough and has (surely!) enough venues, if only they are looked for, to be able to accommodate a wider range of visiting players.
But let’s finish with a positive. The good news is Birmingham Jazz in the person of Tony Dudley-Evans and Performances Birmingham in the person of programmer Paul Keene have a year to, in a rather crude manner of speaking, get their shit together for this new jazz age. Will it be a brave new world? Or more of the same? I shall be watching with interest.
Skala
(ECM 274 3228)
The Norwegian trumpeter who started out in Jaga Jazzist , has always been at the pop end of jazz. He made increased solo impact with his first album, The Door, and as a member of other bands which record for ECM, including Manu Katche’s and Jacob Young’s.
He won the prestigious Statoil Talent Award in 2009 which enabled him to tour extensively, and it is from that tour that a lot of this new material comes. I first heard Edinburgh, written a couple of nights before in the Scottish capital, when the band played The Edge in Much Wenlock.
This album has received a mixed response – enthusiasm from some reviewers, a panning from others. I’m with the first group. The album it reminds me of, despite the actual sound being quite different, is the white covered Pat Metheny Group album that came out in 1978. Like that LP (and it’s of LP length, available on vinyl as well as CD), Skala is filled with hooky grooves and melodies that have less to do with jazz, but which use jazz sensibilities and technique to give them extra subtlety.
The core band has Eick’s trumpet over electric bass, two drummers and piano, with Susanna Wallumrod’s one-man Magical Orchestra, Morten Qvenild, on keyboards, some choice harp texture and everybody’s saxophonist of the moment, Tore Brunborg, added for some tracks.
The double drums are used quite far in the background, and Torstein Loftus and Gard Nilssen use dampened sounds to form more of a cushion to the harmony and melody instruments. Eick, on the other hand, plays close to the mic much of the time to exploit his rich, multi-harmonic texture and near vocal phrasing. He whispers, stutteringly, at the beginning and end of Biermann, for example, and soars between the two.
There is some strong soloing from Brunborg, too, especially on Day After.
The song writing influences seem to come from Radiohead and Sting and Joni Mitchell (overtly declared in the track Joni which uses her open-ended narrative style) with lots of tunes you can find yourself whistling long after the CD has ended. and the production procedure was, as I understand it, very much in the rock mould of layering rather than a one-shot live session.
To ears accustomed to a lot of busyness, punky attitude and upfront cleverness, this disc might sound a little bland, but I think that is to miss the point and to misunderstand Eick’s purpose. Within the mellifluousness there beats a strong heart and some forcefully building rhythms.
Hopefully, marketed in the right way, it will find its true home, which is in record collections that include E.S.T. and Metheny and Tord Gustavsen alongside the Jobim and Kenny Wheeler and Chet Baker. There really is nothing wrong with prettiness.
If you are down in London, a visit to Pizza Express in Dean Street this evening is a must. The wonderful Brooklynite and former Miles saxophonist Dave Liebman is there with a pianist I was less familiar with before listening to Eternal Moments, their gorgeous disc on the Bee Jazz label, released in 2010.
Born in Tangiers and resident in Paris, Jean-Marie Machado has played with Paolo Fresu, Martial Solal, the Moutin brother, Paul Motian and Andy Sheppard, and his first album with Liebman fed on the fado tradition – Machado has some Portuguese blood. He has a richly melodic piano style and a hinterland which includes classical and folk traditions as well as jazz.
Liebman, of course, is the man when it comes to vocal, conversational, declamatory, orational, just straight-talking saxophone, and he is also supremely eloquent on the flute. He includes some of that here, though majors on soprano saxophone – an instrument on which he has a singular and readily identifiable sound.
The material on the album encompasses original tunes, some Monk and some Ravel. There is also a striking Amalia Rodrigues song called So A Noitinha which has Liebman and Machado doing interesting things with flute, soprano, alternative piano and percussion sounds. It has that timeless fado feel in the melody and a feeling of antiquity in the sounds produced.
Live, the pair is likely to produce one of those evenings that you can luxuriate in and that stays in the memory for a long time afterwards. Eternal Moments indeed!
If only Birmingham wasn’t so far away…
Eternal Moments by Dave Liebman and Jean-Marie Machado (Bee Jazz BEE044) – www.beejazz.com
Dave Liebman and Jean-Marie Machado at Pizza Express, Dean Street, London – www.pizzaexpresslive.co.uk
Golly, there are a lot of them! Russ Escritt ‘s pic of the week is of Sid Peacock’s Surge with Django Bates at the mac last Thursday. Just click on the picture to find Russ’s website with loads of his other pictures plus his blog. Russ has a new book of his photographs available to buy. It’s called A Jazz Year In Birmingham and covers September 2009 to August 2010. Get a preview of this and also of his previous collections here.
