Monthly Archives: October 2011

Reminder: Surge on Jazz On 3 tonight

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Sid Peacock’s fabulous big band Surge is performing on the BBC Radio 3 programme, Jazz on 3 this evening. The programme starts at 11pm, so do check it out or make sure you find it on the iPlayer if you are out this evening.

Here is what the Jazz on 3 e-newsletter has to say about this evening’s show:

Some of the most memorable Jazz on 3 performances of recent months have been from big bands and large ensembles – think Darcy James Argue, Orchestre National de Jazz and Django Bates’s T.D.E.s. Tonight, we have another – an exclusive session recording and national radio debut, no less, for Northern Irish composer Sid Peacock and his Surge big band.

Before we hear the whole ensemble, the saxophone section plunges alone into Peacock’s soundworld. Their short set encapsulates both the festive energy and dark reflectiveness of his writing – it’s a great taster for the main band.

Next up, Jez speaks to Sid about some of the musical influences that have shaped his work, in our now established MP3 shuffle – delving at random into the music he’s got on his MP3 player to find out what makes him tick.

‘A hallucinogenic, uplifting, chaotic, exciting and emotionally charged musical landscape’ – that’s how Peacock has described Surge’s music, and the first number of their main set is all of those things. The music’s vibrancy seems to come, not only from the composer, but from the crop of 16 young musicians brought together under the Surge umbrella. The middle part of the set runs together 3 pieces that approach group improvisation in different ways: the first – Left Direction – adopts ‘conduction’, with Peacock directing what is largely free improvisation with spontaneous hand gestures. Then to finish we’re into the title track of their latest album, La Fête, combining a carnivalesque atmosphere with a darker undercurrent – perhaps the signature of what this exciting young band is all about.

There’s a hint of the Latin to some of Surge’s music, and at the end of the programme we take a look at the state of Latin jazz today. With its category dropped at the Grammys this year, are its best days behind it, or does the music still have something to offer to the cutting-edge of jazz?

And here are some vital links:

Listen to Jazz on 3 for 7 days after broadcast
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tt0y

Download the Jazz Library podcast
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/

More Jazz on Radio 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/

Make some dates with Watson and Jazz Journal

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John Watson, one of the photographers who contributes regularly to thejazzbreakfast, has just been commissioned to create a 2012 calendar by another publication he contributes to regularly: Jazz Journal magazine. The calendar uses his evocative black and white images of some of the great names of jazz.

Here is the cover shot of tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, and other artists pictured over the 12 months are Wynton Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, Norma Winstone, Chet Baker, Clare Teal, Tommy Smith, Bob Brookmeyer, Digby Fairweather, Chris Potter and John Scofield.

The shot of Tommy Smith was caught at the 2011 Lichfield Festival, where Smith was leading the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in Lichfield Cathedral. Others were
taken at events including the London Jazz Festival, the Cheltenham Jazz
Festival, Brecon Jazz and the Gateshead Jazz Festival.

The calendar, spiral bound on stout card, has space on each page for short notes, such as gig or club reminders.

To order the calendar, which costs £9.99, email admin@jazzjournal.co.uk.

John Watson is a UK-based photographer and writer specializing in music. His book of jazz photography, The Power Of Jazz, is exclusively available from www.blurb.com/bookstore and can be viewed online before purchase.

In 2011 he was nominated for the third successive year for jazz photography in the JJA Jazz Awards in New York, organised by the US-based Jazz Journalists Association.

To see more of his work, visit www.jazzcamera.co.uk

The week ahead in gigs

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One of the most creative and distinctive new strands in British jazz over the last few years has been the consolidation of a strong crossover between jazz and Asian music. Zoe Rahman’s band with her brother Idris on clarinet, is one such group, but perhaps the standard bearer for this fusion is clarinetist Arun Ghosh.

Arun Ghosh

On Saturday he brings his Sextet, which includes Idris Rahman on his more usual instrument, tenor saxophone, to the MAC.

On bass is Dr Das, with Aref Durvesh on tabla and other percussion, Koshon Khan on piano and Myke Wilson on drums.

Ghosh describes his heritage thus: “Conceived in Calcutta, bred in Bolton, matured in Manchester and now living in London.”

The snake-charming, sinewy melodies of the clarinet and saxophone over the hot rhythms of South Asian music form a heady and beguiling mix, and Ghosh brings a passion to both his music and the band which makes an Arun Ghosh performance one not easily forgotten.

This is a Birmingham Jazz presentation, and starts at 8pm in the MAC Theatre. Tickets are  £12 and are available from macarts.co.uk. There is more information at www.birminghamjazz.co.uk

Tonight there is a treat to be had at the Yardbird, in Paradise Place, Birmingham. Pianist, trombonist, composer and Birmingham Conservatoire teacher Hans Koller is bringing his Fun House Living ensemble of young Birmingham musicians in – let’s hope they can all fit on the stage.

The music starts at 9pm, there is usually a jam session which follows at 11pm, and entry is free. You just need to buy a lot of drinks to keep the bar’s owners happy.

More information about this gig is at www.cobwebcollective.com

Tomorrow it’s the turn of the big man of the boogie woogie and blues piano, Steve “Big Man” Clayton, to get the Rush Hour Blues crowd swinging their replacement hips. Born in Birmingham and even bigger in Germany than he is here, Steve Clayton has seven CDs to  his name as well as a whole shelf of awards, among them repeat British Blues Connection ones for best piano player.

The Rush Hour session gets going at 5.30pm and finishes at 7pm. It’s co-presented by Symphony Hall and Birmingham Jazz and entry is free.

The trend seems to be to mix numbers and letters in telling us how many are in the group, so to the Robert Mitchell 3io and Kairos 4tet we can now add the Diatribes 6tet. The band, which has an interesting line-up of cello, laptops, bass and percussion, is playing the Fizzle session at the Lamp Tavern down Digbeth way, on Tuesday.

The band apparently favours “evolving rhythm and textures” rather than taking turns to improvise, and they “celebrate all forms of sound from full throttled rhythm to threadbare textures”.

It all starts at 9pm, and entrance is £5 for us normals and £3 for students. There are real ales to be had, I’m, reliably informed. More information at www.cobwebcollective.com

Concert review: Meadow and McCormack & Yarde

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CBSO Centre, Birmingham, UK
22-10-2011

After the Harmonic Festival which opened Birmingham’s autumn jazz season with nearly every player feeding acoustic sounds through masses of electronic processing, here was a concert in which not only were the instruments not plugged in, but neither were there microphones, rolls of cable, mixing desk nor PA speakers. The musicians had nothing but their instruments and we had nothing but our ears.

This was plenty.

Both bands began their sets with the opening tunes from their CDs, but there the comparisons end.

Andrew McCormack & Jason Yarde at the soundcheck on Saturday (Picture: Russ Escritt)

Pianist Andrew McCormack and saxophonist Jason Yarde stuck pretty much to the arrangements of their just-out Places And Other Spaces (Edition Records), the added pleasure coming from the heightened energy the music gained from live performance.

D-Town sounded far more assured than on the recording, while Yarde was able to exploit the acoustic sympathies of the piano strings and various harmonic effects on his own compositions Dark Too Bright and Hill Walking On The Tynerside. The delicate and romantic Spanish Princess and Antibes were simply gorgeous.

After beginning with saxophonist Tore Brunborg’s Badger, a perfect introduction to the reflective, melancholic world of Meadow, the trio created a set of wonders from just a few of the pieces from their CD Blissful Ignorance, Tunn Is and Will among them, interlinked with compositions from all three as yet unrecorded by this band (which leads to the hope that there will be another Meadow album in the not too distant future).

Meadow is a refreshing take on the trio format, Brunborg, drummer Thomas Stronen and pianist John Taylor appearing happy to forego a bass-player and explore the different dynamics that sets up in a band. All three are powerful melodicists and explorers of the textural nuance, and it felt like an honour as well as a joy to be able to hear them in musical conversation.

Taylor has an uncanny knack when it comes to finding new chord voicings, and the ability to raise the temperature considerably in the course of a solo, which he did on more than one occasion last night; Brunborg has a rich and rounded tone, luscious right through the range of the tenor and that Norwegian knack of turning a lot of improvised lines into what might be folk songs of the moment; Stronen brings an original, strongly personal style to his drumming, blending a selection of small bells, a very special gong, conventional drum kit , mbira and giant bass drum into a cohesive whole that amazes and delights in equal measure.

All three are also able to inject a funkiness that adds warmth to its often cool and spacious feel.

This was 21st century music of the highest order, performed with great care and intense listening but also with that freedom, spontaneity and sense of the moment that makes jazz so life-affirming and so special.

Bobby Wellins by Garry Corbett

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The great Bobby Wellins at the Bearwood Corks Club last Thursday, photographed by Garry Corbett. If you missed Bobby this time around, he is back in Birmingham next month for a Birmingham Jazz concert at the MAC. It’s on Saturday 26 November, and you can find more information here. For more of Garry Corbett’s rich and insightful photographs, not only with a jazz theme but a whole lot more, go to his flickr site here.

Picture © Garry Corbett