I really enjoyed last night’s concert (7th November) with Portico Quartet and Sweet Billy Pilgrim. It made for a fascinating contrast between both the vocal music of SBP  and the instrumental music of Portico Quartet, and also the essentially indie ‘folktronica’ of SBP and the mix of jazz and minimalism of Portico Quartet.  I do, however, find it quite difficult to describe the music of both bands and it seems that I am not alone in this!  I found very odd John L Walters’ comment in his otherwise excellent review in The Guardian on Friday 6th November (you can read it here) that Portico’s music is ‘world music … that hails from our part of the world’. That’s probably just a way of saying that the music is indefinable, and, interestingly, by juxtaposing these two bands SBP, normally described as very leftfield, seemed almost poppy, while Portico, often described as minimalist ,  seemed quite jazzy to me.

But it was an excellent night with a big and enthusiastic crowd in, in fact the largest audience of the year at the CBSO Centre.  I anticipate that this eclectic post jazz, post rock approach to music that is difficult to pin down and define will become increasingly popular and that gentler jazz groups such as Fly,  Sam Crockatt Quartet, Kit Downes Trio will fit very well into this category.

Tags: Fly, John L Walters, Kit Downes Trio, Portico Quartet, Sam Crockatt Quartet, Sweet Billy Pilgrim

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Gig Reviews, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.