Monthly Archives: May 2011

CD review: Julian Siegel Quartet

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Urban Theme Park
(Basho Records SRCD 35-2)

Oh wow! Even after a few hours’ listening to a random selection of the finest CDs of jazz music from the last 50 years or so, this disc still leaps out.

Why is that? I think it has something to do not only with the individual musicianship – which is exemplary not only from a technical point of view but is also full of an often impossible to explain depth –  but it has to do with the equally impossible to explain energy that is created communally by these four musicians.

For a start it seems to me there is something of the Lennon and McCartney about saxophonist/clarinettist Julian Siegel and pianist Liam Noble. No, that’s not quite right, as they have both made superb music without the other, but what I mean is that something really special happens – certain especially bright sparks fly – when they are in the same room.

It is – can you believe? – nearly ten years since the first Julian Siegel Quartet album. That was Close-Up on ill-fated Sound label, which was struck by financial difficulties not long after. I loved that disc and still do. So it’s a real treat to have this one to sit beside it.

There are some changes – out go Jeremy Brown on bass and Gary Husband on drums, and in come Oli Hayhurst and Gene Calderazzo. Brilliant though the former pair were in the band, the current line-up sounds, I think, even better.

Right from the opening notes to Six Four – Hayhurst’s knotty bass line riff, joined by Noble and then by all four – and then on through the album, what is really striking is that the music can be so fearsomely complex in its melodies and often taken at a pretty brisk pace, and yet these musicians seem to have all the time in the world to fill the notes and beats with such nuanced expression, feeling and sheer sense of joy.

Yes, that’s it: it’s the sense of joy in the creation. It might be there in lots of other music, but this band really does send that joy pulsing down the sound waves in a very special way. And, damn! It’s funky. One For J.T., for example, swings like the blazes. I’ve nearly dislocated my neck a couple of times doing the jazzhead to this.

All the music is by Siegel, except for Cedar Walton’s Fantasy in D near the disc’s end, which Julian has rearranged. For the rest, the compositions cover a lot of ground, from 20th-century classical harmony and melodic influence (Heart Song, Game Of Cards), through a funky attitude and with rhythms that range from swing to plain impossible (Keys To The City) and dub reggae (Game Of Cards), to African jazz (Interlude).

That Game Of Cards suite at the centre of the album is something of a highpoint, but then again this disc storms and swirls with pleasures from beginning to end. Lifeline has a compelling clarinet and bowed bass developing melody, with Noble adding electronic keyboard squiggles around it, and Calderazzo adding a whole orchestral range of percussion comments. The tune has the simplicity of line, yet complexity of feeling of one of Django Bates’s.

All four players solo wonderfully and, equally importantly, support and interact with each other in a seamless flow. I’ve loved their playing for years, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard them play quite so well as here. And of course, vitally, all have that crucial quality that separates them as really profound artists from other  more run-of-the-mill jazz players: they have character! And that doesn’t come from just playing the right notes – it comes from living the life, feeling the emotions, and developing the artistry to convey all of it to us, the listeners.

And what damned lucky listeners we are. It’s going to be hard to knock Urban Theme Park off the top of my “best” pile for 2011.

Evan Christopher by Garry Corbett

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Clarinettist Evan Christopher was playing at Lichfield Guildhall last Saturday. It’s the latest from the camera of Garry Corbett, who says: “The band were amazing, blending Django, New Orleans & Ellington into a sublime mix.” For more of Garry’s rich and insightful photographs, not only jazz but a whole lot more, go to his flickr site here.

RIP Gill Scott-Heron 1949-2011

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Sad news that the composer, singer and poet Gil Scott-Heron has died at the age of 62 in New York.

Here’s a pretty poor picture, but I took this on my phone at Womad last July. I was just amazed to be seeing the man in the flesh, as I thought, like many others, that if I hadn’t been to one of his concerts before his serious decline into drug use, it was too late now.

I had listened to him a lot in the 1970s, from The Revolution Will Not Be Televised through Lady Day And John Coltrane and later with the very pleasant but less vital Storm Music. A mesmerising voice conveying such acute wisdom and humour, over some really groovy music.

That he was back on the road, with a new album in the racks, was more the result of  the enthusiasm and tenacity of British hip-hop producer Richard Russell, but back – briefly – he was.

We thought as we watched him on that summer night that, like Brian Wilson, he had perhaps been able, with a lot of support, to put his demons behind him. He was superb – sharp, funny and hip, and that voice was hardly diminished. A month later as I read a chilling interview piece in the New Yorker I realised such thoughts were naive. The man still had a serious crack habit that was destroying him.

News of his death is here. That New Yorker article is here.

Cobweb worth getting tangled in

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The jazz scene in Birmingham has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades.

Then, there was a smattering of regular gigs around the region, usually with bands of 50-year-olds playing fairly standard jazz tunes with an extra leaning towards the old New Orleans/Dixie styles. And then there were concerts by touring jazz groups, often with players from the US, or occasionally from Europe.

Those strands still remain, though the average age of the trad groups is now probably 70 or more, and the big-name, international touring concerts seem to be a little thinner on the ground, especially as there has developed a more robust British scene.

But there is a vital new strand. And it’s an especially important one.

I think we can mainly thank the introduction of Birmingham Conservatoire’s specific jazz course for bringing it about, and Birmingham Jazz for fostering it.

I remember sitting in one of the new Mailbox bars at about the turn of the century and a pianist barely out of his school clothes was playing graceful songbook tunes as background music. Here was a Conservatoire student paying his dues, and if he wasn’t being fully appreciated by most of the punters, that was only due to unfamiliarity on their part – and the overruling desire to get that alcohol inside them.

Those were early days; a decade on and it really has flowered remarkably. The students, who came from all over the country, had a chance to play outside of the practice room, and when they graduated, instead of decamping en masse to London or back home, many decided to stay in Birmingham. They played a wide range of music from the established jazz core repertoire to their own original material. And they played it with confidence, with knowledge, with energy, and with love. They also started organising themselves.

Mike Adlington

The Cobweb Collective is a united effort by graduates and current students to consolidate the production and marketing of the activities of these young men and women who have chosen the most difficult – some would say foolhardy – career path imaginable: to be professional jazz musicians.

So, let’s look at what they are up to in just the next seven days.

Tonight a quintet led by guitarist Joseph Howell, comprising Matt Gough on trumpet, Toby Boalch on keyboards, Hamish Livingstone on double bass and Jonathon “Silky” Silk on drums, is at The Yardbird in Paradise Place.

The music starts at 9pm, it turns into a jam session after 11pm and entry is free.

On Monday the David Grey Trio (David on keyboards, Nick Jurd on bass and Jim Bashford on drums) is at The White Swan, in Grosvenor Street West (that’s B16 8BP), the music starts at 9pm and entry is £1.

And on Tuesday trumpeter Mike Adlington, of the Sub Ensemble, leads his Sextet at the Spotted Dog in Warwick Street (B12 0NH). There’s an 8.30pm start and they have an “audience donations” policy.

And all this week there have been bands playing at the Old Joint Stock Jazz And Beer Festival Week. Tonight the Tobie Carpenter Group is on from 7.30pm, and on Saturday the Richard Foote Quartet starts at 2.30pm.

All Cobweb Collective gigs are recommended. Find out more at cobwebcollective.com

CD review: Pascal Schumacher Quartet

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Bang My Can
(Enja ENJ-95722)

When playing the Name Three Famous Belgians game, it is always useful to remember Django Reinhardt. Perhaps in decades to come, another jazz musician will join Django. But Pascal Schumacher would just miss out, as he would have to be a part-answer to the Name Three Famous Luxemburgers game, instead.

Schumacher, who studied classical composition in Strasbourg and  Luxembourg, moved towards jazz and the vibraphone and, as is clear from the title of this album, is also influenced by the contemporary classical, especially minimalist, music of bands like Bang On A Can.

And yet the line-up of his quartet – vibes, piano, bass and drums – as well as that slightly formal, classical structure to some of the pieces, also brings to mind the great Modern Jazz Quartet.

What separates this band from the MJQ is its use of a more modern harmony, and a completely different rhythmic feel. While there are a lot of influences in the melody and harmony, there is a distinct lack of blues lines in this music, and MJQ always had a blue tinge. And this band might rock on occasions – it’s also possible to hear some est and Radiohead vibes in this music - but it doesn’t really swing in the way that MJQ swings.

These are not necessarily criticisms; just an attempt to describe the music by explaining what it is not.

Standout tracks for me are Seven Fountains which has a slow, building ECMish groove, and the title track, which full exploits that complex interaction Schumacher gets between vibes and piano  and has some nice changes of beat and mood, from formal chamber music to rock and back again. Franz von Chossy is the pianist, with Christophe Devisscher on bass and Jens Duppe on drums.

But the band achieves perhaps its most delicate emotional depth on the sparse and graceful A Fisherman’s Tale, written by Devisscher, with the vibes, bass and drums adding delicate background sounds to a piano foreground.

Pascal Schumacher was to appear at the Symphony Hall foyer in Birmingham with pianist Jef Neve in April of last year, but their visit was stymied by the ash cloud that grounded Western Europe’s planes. Hence, presumably, track 10 here, No Dance On Volcano Ashes.

Let’s hope Schumacher and his band have more luck next week when they arrive in London for an album launch at the Vortex Jazz Club on Tuesday (though the official release date of Bang My Can is 27 June). They will then play the South Hill Park at Bracknell on Wednesday and will be back in Britain in the summer for the Manchester and Brecon jazz festivals.