Monthly Archives: August 2011

CD review: a few in brief

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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.


 

CD review: Avalon Trio

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Forlana
(Marquetry Records MR936)

Given that 20th-century English classical composers were often highly influenced by the folk tradition and thus wrote music with strong melodies and springy rhythms, it’s surprising that contemporary English jazz players have not looked their way more often for material. Before the arrival of this CD by Pete Churchill on piano, Tony Woods on saxophone and flute and Rob Millett on percussion interpreting music by Delius, Finzi and Vaughan Williams, the only other example that springs readily to mind is the version of Walton’s Touch Her Soft Lips And Part played by John Taylor with Peter Erskine and Palle Danielsson.

Mostly the Avalon Trio sticks to the mood of the original pieces: try the dreamy and pastoral mood of the title track, adapted from Finzi’s 5 Bagatelles for clarinet and piano, with Wood using the rich tone of an Indian Basuri wooden flute and the clarinet part as a springboard, or the country fairground cheerfulness of Brigg Fair, a traditional song adapted by Delius.

The Avalon Trio

Sometimes the interpretations extend the original vibe somewhat – Tony Woods’ Summer Night On the Water strikes me as a whole lot funkier than the one that inspired Delius’s original sound picture. Maybe a strong wind whipped up, or a sudden thunderstorm pitted the water… Finzi’s Dead In The Cold has a contained, almost flamenco flair to its bittersweet, funereal air, which warms the body as well as the rising soul.

Woods is a wonderfully articulate player who always brings a lyrical quality to his solos, whether blowing cool or hot; Churchill has a composerly understanding of the rich harmonic material at his disposal, and his own two compositions fit in a treat, while his revoicing of the non-originals gives equal weight to the classical and jazz traditions; Millett brings a wide range of sounds to the party, and somehow make tabla sound thoroughly English.

The interaction of the three musicians suggests a strong mutual respect, a common vision and that this project is something close to their hearts. They have already played this music live in a short tour in the early summer, and they will be coming to the English Midlands on 9 September to perform it for the Derby Jazz Club (see here for more details).

Forlana is available in all the usual ways, and also from their label’s own site which is here.

Atomic by Escritt

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Russ Escritt’s choice for his pic of the week is one from the archive: Atomic at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham last September. The band could be heard together with the Vandermark 5, with whom they shared the Birmingham gig, on Jazz On 3 last Monday, and you can still hear the BBC radio programme here. Just click on the picture to find Russ’s website with loads of his other pictures plus his blog.  Russ has another 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.

Time to head for Brecon

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The hills are alive with the sound of music, and Julie Andrews is nowhere in sight. It’s the weekend of Brecon Jazz.

There are various stages at the Christ College campus, there is some action in Brecon Cathedral, and then there is the classic Market Hall.

Brecon hit the skids a couple of years back, and was saved by the Hay Festivals organisation, and they really have given it a new lease of life, while sticking to the original principles of a good mix of jazz and associated musics, British and US players, and a wide range of styles, too.

The highlight tomorrow night has to be the Matthew Herbert Big Band, a stylish outfit if ever there was one, and with the added attraction in Brecon of Basement Jaxx vocalist Vula Malinga. They are all in The Big Tent at Christ College at 8.30pm.

Elsewhere tomorrow, special mention must go to another biggish band, trumpeter Rory Simmons’ Fringe Magnetic, at The Hall, Christ College at 10.30pm; saxophonist John Surman with bassist Chris Laurence and a string quartet on the Christ College Stage at 9.30pm; and the Pascal Schumacher Quartet, led by the vibist, at The Hall at 7.30pm.

On Saturday things get going early with a few gigs at 12 noon or shortly thereafter, and saxophonist Courtney Pine and pianist Zoe Rahman sharing a gig of two halves at The Big Tent at 2.30pm.

There are pianists by the woodshed-load, including Bill Carrothers in a trio led by drummer Kevin Brady, the Monty Alexander Trio, the Elan Mehler Trio, Dave Newton as part of the Tim Kliphuis Quintet, Phronesis with Ivo Neame on the piano stool, the Yaron Herman Trio, and legendary New Orleans producer and songwriter, as well as pianist, Allen Toussaint.

There’s another attractive double bill at 9.30pm in the Market Hall with Polar Bear on one side of the interval and Matthew Halsall Remixed on the other.

But the gig of the day for me is vocalist Norman Winstone with her recent collaborators, Klaus Gesing on reeds and Glauco Venier on piano, at Brecon Cathedral at 6.30pm.

Sunday’s grand finale comes from Femi Kuti, son of Fela, the great Afrobeat pioneer and currently, bizarrely, the subject of a Broadway and West End musical. Femi continues to hold the torch for his father’s terrifically exciting music with his band The Positive Force. They are in The Big Tent at 8.30pm.

But before that there is so much more music, 17 different gigs, no less, including performances by World Service Project in The Hall at 12 noon; the Sam Crowe Group on the Christ College Stage at 2pm; Meadow, the trio of saxophonist Tore Brunborg, drummer Thomas Stronen and pianist John Taylor, in Brecon Cathedral at 2pm, Led Bib on the Christ College Stage at 4.30pm, bassist Michael Janisch’s Quintet in The Hall at 6pm, the Robert Glasper Experiment, featuring not only pianist Glasper but the jaw-droppingly fine drumming of Chris Dave, in the Market Hall at 6.30pm, and singer Mina Agossi’s Trio on the Christ College Stage at 730pm.

There are also workshops and all the other paraphernalia of a good festival, and you can find out all you need to know and book tickets, which range from £7 up to £32, at www.hayfestival.com/breconjazz or by calling 01497 822 629.