Jacqui Dankworth: It Happens Quietly (Specific Jazz)
The first words you hear on this CD are those of Jacqui’s father, the late Sir John, counting the orchestra in. It’s the perfect start to an intimate family affair, with John writing the arrangements and playing alto saxophone, and brother Alec is here on bass.
The songs are classic jazz standards, from A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square through to The Folks Who Live On The Hill, and Jacqui sings them superbly. She has a great sound, perfect timing and the ability to add just the right nuances and decoration without ever getting frilly or self-indulgent. She is obviously a firm believer that the song is the thing and a singer does her job well if she draws attention to that rather than to herself.
The arrangements are sharp and witty, showing that the great Sir John never lost his edge. An excellent jazz vocal album that deserves international recognition.
Billy Jenkins & Trio Blues Suburbia: Jazz Gives Me The Blues (VOTP)
We thought the guitarist and joker had given up music to conduct humanist funerals fulltime, but he’s back, and in moderately laid-back mood, devoting this album mainly to standards like I’m Just A Lucky So And So, God Bless The Child and For All We Know.
His guitar playing is as fresh as ever – a raw mix of blistering runs and chunky riffs – and works a treat on Duke Ellington’s I Ain’t Got Nothing But The Blues. His harmonica playing is pretty good, too. As a singer he is always subversive – which is the only way to go if your voice is rubbish.
The band – Finn Peters on saxophone and flute, Jim Watson on organ and Mike Pickering on drums – is strong and acts as straight man to Jenkins’s anarchic spirit.
The musical equivalent of Duchamp’s moustachioed Mona Lisa.
Pat Metheny: What’s It All About (Nonesuch)
Having used a huge mechanical orchestra on his last album, the guitarist is alone again here, with just some acoustic guitars for company.
Mostly he uses a baritone guitar, though he brings out his amazing 42-string harp-guitar for the opener. As with the previous One Quiet Night solo acoustic album, he chooses some classic pop tunes to reinterpret.
Here we get Paul Simon’s Sounds Of Silence, Lennon and McCartney’s And I Love Her, Nichols and Williams’ Rainy Days And Mondays, and Burt Bacharach’s Alfie – hence the album title – among others.
It’s all very gentle and thoughtful, and the playing is extraordinary, sounding at times like a whole guitar orchestra rather than just one man (and he stresses there are no overdubs).
In the end though, Pat’s just been on his own too long. If you don’t already have One Quiet Night, I’d go for that and wait till the man gets a real band together again. Unless you’re a Metheny completist, of course.
Corea, Clarke & White: Forever (Concord)
In the 1970s Return To Forever became in some ways the most bloated of jazz-fusion bands. With Forever, the band’s three core players are back in stripped down, acoustic fashion. Gone are the banks of keys, gone is the huge drum kit – here we have Chick Corea at the grand piano, Stanley Clarke at the double bass and Lenny White behind a small jazz drum kit.
Disc one was recorded over a 2009 world tour and comprises jazz standards like On Green Dolphin Street and Waltz For Debby as well as Corea classics like No Mystery and Senor Mouse.
The second disc is the studio rehearsal for the tour with added friends: violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, singer Chaka Khan and Return To Forever guitarist Bill Connors.
The rehearsal disc has a fun-filled atmosphere, but the live disc is the really special stuff: three instrumentalists of extraordinary facility and power having a damn fine time out on the road and reworking their past in highly creative fashion.
Nicola Conte: Love & Revolution (Impulse!)
Conte is an Italian guitarist, producer and DJ who has perfected an attractive style of jazz-inflected easy-listening music. He uses an acid jazz push, a bossa nova feel, a huge dollop of retro cool, and then pulls in all the grooviest names in the business to help him.
So the cover of this latest release has a charming hippy-chic look, the music – how perfect is Love From The Sun as a feel-good title? – is upbeat and simply charming, and the guest singers include current soul-jazz favourite Gregory Porter as well as the big vocal news of a couple of years back, Jose James.
Important instrumental contributors include German smooth trumpeter Til Bronner, Swedish saxophonist and, here, musical arranger Magnus Lindgren, and Italian trumpeter Flavio Boltro.
Add this to your summer barbecue party and you will be the coolest person on your street. That’s a promise.
