I have been out on the road since Friday 20th November with the Profound Sound Trio, that’s Andrew Cyrille on drums, Paul Dunmall on saxophones and clarinet and Henry Grimes on double bass and violin.  The tour, which is being run and sponsored by Birmingham Jazz, has played Belfast, Leeds, London and Manchester so far, and will be in Gateshead tomorrow, Thursday 26th, Derby on Friday 27th and finishes its tour in Birmingham at the CBSO Centre this Saturday (28th November).

The music is fantastic and I urge people to come and hear it.  It has been different each night but has reached the same consistently high standard.  There are constants every night with the band playing a very intense 75 minute through set; it usually starts with Paul on tenor sax with Andrew complementing him with intricate patterns on the drums and Henry underpinning and anchoring the whole thing with his very strong bottom end rhythms.  There is usually a gentler phase with Henry playing violin, and interacting with Paul playing either clarinet or soprano.  Henry also plays arco bass brilliantly, which adds a whole different texture to the set.  But every night there are surprises and the music suddenly takes a quite different direction from previous nights.  These surprises arise from the fact that these three musicians interact so well together and clearly enjoy the process.  Also audiences have been good and very enthusiastic.

You can buy tickets for the Birmingham show here.  It is the opportunity to hear three wonderful exponents of free jazz, two (Andrew Cyrille and Henry Grimes) from New York and one (Paul Dunmall) from the West Midlands. Henry was one of the most promising bass players in the 1950s and 60s working with Gerry Mulligan and Sonny Rollins before becoming the bass player who, through working with Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, more or less defined the role of the double bass in free jazz.  He then moved to California and, through a series of unfortunate accidents, stopped playing music for 35 years; he was even rumoured to have died.  He was rediscovered and came back to New York in 2003 and began playing again with a bass donated by fellow bass player William Parker.  He very rapidly regained his reputation of being one the finest bass players in jazz.  Andrew Cyrille also spent many years with Cecil Taylor, and both with Taylor and various other bands, also played a major role in the development of the free jazz drumming style.   Paul Dunmall may be based in UK, but tours widely in Europe and has a reputation second to none in the free jazz and improvised music world.

Tony

Tags: Andrew Cyrille, Birmingham Jazz, Henry Grimes, Paul Dunmall, Profound Sound Trio

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 3:36 pm and is filed under CBSO Centre, 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.