Monthly Archives: June 2011

Wake up with Jamie

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Tomorrow is 2Day, as I am sure you are aware if you’ve gone anywhere near a BBC channel on TV or radio in the past few days.

It’s all a big switch-around to draw attention to all the good things on BBC Radio 2, and what that means for jazz fans is that singer, pianist and all round champion of jazz – he’s even a guest director of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival for heaven’s sake – is on air from 7am to 8am tomorrow, along with Simon Mayo (well, you can’t have everything) and we might just get to hear some jazz while we have that first cuppa, or head of for that shave, or shampoo, or whatever…

It all goes a bit pear-shaped after 8am – or not, depending on your taste. Find out the full programme for 2Day here.

CD reviews: Seamus Blake and Dave Juarez

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Seamus Blake Quintet: Live At Smalls
(Smalls Live SL0008)

Dave Juarez: Round Red Light
(Positone PR8079)

It’s tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake and the same instrumental line-up that links these two discs, both fine examples of the kind of jazz being made in the downtown clubs of New York, and featuring some young and some not so young players, mostly NY residents.

The Blake disc features the more experienced crew, including Dave Kikoski on piano and Bill Stewart on drums, with Lage Lund on guitar and Matt Clohesy on bass. With the exception of the standard Stranger In Paradise, all the tunes are Blake originals, and the mood, down in that terrific little Greenwich basement with Louis Armstrong looking on imperiously from behind the bandstand, is luxuriously relaxed. Just perfect for some deep-digging and extensive soloing.

Which is what Seamus Blake does so well. He is a player of the long line and the slow build, capable of great, sustained tension building and ecstatic release. Kikoski is no slouch as a supporting player and turns in a terrific, swinging solo on Stranger In Paradise. Stewart is a constant treat with his characteristic sly grooves and sudden changes of accent. Lund is a pleasant if less compelling soloist.

Overall, a fine set, with the slight rough-round-the-edges feel of a genuine Village night and musicians at ease, just having a ball. The next best thing to being there.

Dave Juarez is a Barcelona-based guitarist, and along with Blake he has British pianist John Escreet, Lauren Falls on bass and Bastian Weinhold on drums. It was recorded in Brooklyn. produced by Marc Free, and all the songs are by Juarez.

And very easy to like they are, these tunes. Montpellier View has a jaunty main melody, which lifts even further before sliding into a more rhythmic pattern to set up the solos, first from Blake, then from the leader with a nice, ever-so-slight edge of distortion to his sound. I thought they could have held that repeat rhythmic bit a little longer for the drums to solo over, which is probably what happens without the fade-pout at 4 minutes 44 seconds.

The title track has a tasty solo guitar intro, and is a richly romantic ballad, with Juarez and Blake sharing the melody in harmony. Again Blake is the dominant soloist.

The Spanish heritage of the leader becomes more apparent as the disc continues, showing in strong melodies and buoyant rhythms with a kick and swirl to them. Escreet does some fine work on Lonely Brooklyn. Belleza Anonima has a lovely, pulsing romanticism to it, and could easily fit into a Pedro Almodovar soundtrack.

There is a lot of arranged and through-composed music here which makes for a coherence and a distinct feel of the leader’s musical character. A really fruitful listen.

Cobweb Pick of the Week

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By JJ Wheeler

Four to choose from this week, although you can get to at least three of them without breaking the laws of physics.

Matt Ratcliffe

My pick this week was tough, but I’ve plumped for Matt Ratcliffe’s Coda quintet. The reason? The intriguing mix of influences on Matt’s composition (George Russell, Ornette Coleman and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet), mixed with previous experience of Matt’s bands. These always provide incredibly well-thought out frameworks allowing each band-member’s own voice to float through the music, delivered with panache and contemplatively intelligent style.

There’s no façade here and I’ve seen Matt work wonders with the piano/vibes combination he utilises once again (this time with Liam Halloran on mallets). Other members of this highly-rated line-up appearing on Thursday at the Yardbird include Lluis Mather on Tenor Sax, Nick Jurd on Bass and one of my favourite drummers, Tymek Jozwiak.

Other gigs include the all-star cast at Fizzle at The Lamp Tavern (more free-improvisation based) of Paul Dunmall/Barry Edwards/Tony Bianco. This promises to be a fiery night, Dunmall presumably wielding his Tenor Sax, although the bagpipes might make an appearance! This one’s on Tuesday, starting at 9pm.

Also on Tuesday, The Spotted Dog in Digbeth (Cobweb’s newest regular night) hosts Jonathan Silk’s Octet (line-up yet to be revealed!). This is another new group from the soon-to-be-graduate from Birmingham Conservatoire, who seems not content with leading both a Quartet and Big Band already.

Finally, on Saturday it’s back to the Spotted Dog who are hosting a BBQ from 1pm to accompany Barbacoa Musical, featuring Sam Watts Quartet (well worth a watch – rising star on piano!), Miguel y sus Flecheros (presumably Mike Fletcher) and The HDs feat. Indigo. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain…

Tony on the radio

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Don’t forget, there’s a programme this evening dedicated to the memory of drummer Tony Levin, who died in February.

Alan Musson will be presenting a two-hour radio tribute from 9pm on 102.5 The Bridge. He will be joined by Tim Wall, Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City University, and will be playing a selection of Tony’s many recordings, with contributions from some of Tony’s friends and colleagues. 102.5 is a Community Radio Station broadcasting to the Southern Black Country on 102.5fm and also available online at www.thebridgeradio.net

Concert review: Tony Levin Memorial

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Keith Tipppet, Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders and Miles Levin (Picture: Russ Escritt)

A Celebration of the Life and Music of Tony Levin
mac, Birmingham UK
18-06-2011

The evening was divided into two: a first half would be  “straight” jazz, with established rhythms, and melodic and harmonic elements set beforehand, upon which the players had a chance to improvise, and it would feature some of the musicians Tony had played with earlier on in his career; a second half would be of “free” music, where the initial canvas is blank, and the players interact to create a fully improvised piece, and would feature his closest fellow musicians of more recent times.

As Tony Dudley-Evans, of organisers Birmingham Jazz, observed: Tony Levin, who died in February, operated happily in both worlds, but in a sense there was a false dichotomy here, because Tony wouldn’t have separated them in his own mind. He brought some freedom to the “straight” stuff and some structure to the “free”. Tony Levin played as all the great jazz players do – he played as himself.

The first half was full of fine, dedicated jazz from John Taylor on piano, Arnie Somogyi on bass and Clark Tracey on drums with a series of saxophonists, Ray Warleigh, Jean Toussaint and Stan Sulzmann, first individually and then together.

Warleigh got the horns off to a slightly nervous start, perhaps self-conscious in the circumstances, but he soon warmed up. Toussaint treated the large audience to a bluesy kind of Traneism, and raised the temperature further, while Taylor added the sparks in a terrific, game-changing solo on Kenny Wheeler’s Jigsaw. A multi-horned Mood Indigo felt slightly incongruous, but served to add a moment of quiet reflection, and the set ended strongly with For Chris, a tune John Taylor had written for a band back in 1969/70, of which Tony Levin had been a part. Sulzmann’s solo  was a thing of spiralling, gleaming brilliance.

It was a rewarding set from some fine players, but it also felt like history. These were were the fond memories.

The real loss to music, the real impact of Tony Levin’s death, what it means right now, was made viscerally manifest in the second half.

Behind one drum kit was Tony’s son, Miles, behind another was his friend Mark Sanders, and on piano, bass and saxophone were Keith Tippett, Paul Rogers and Paul Dunmall, the surviving three-quarters of Mujician. These three had played with Tony for the last 23 years, had interacted with him, had been fired up by him, had fed back ideas in turn. They probably knew Tony nearly as well as he knew himself.

The septet poured its all into this set. There were moments of great delicacy, of Tippett tapping the bells attached to the piano, of Sanders and Levin glancing their sticks off the cymbals; and there were moments of almost terrifying ferocity, with the two drummers churning up a hurricane and Dunmall, Tippett and Rogers piling on the agitation. They dug deep and they dug hard.

This really felt like an outpouring by the bereaved, working through the full gamut of those natural emotions from denial, anger and depression to acceptance. But it was also the kind of celebration that Tony Levin would have loved: wide-ranging, bold, sometimes very dark and dangerous, but also cathartic and ultimately life-affirming.