Posts Tagged ‘Percy Pursglove’

Friday 10th September
Symphony Hall Main Hall
5:30 – 7pm
£free

Percy Pursglove Quartet

Following the very successful session in the main hall at Symphony Hall for last year’s Artsfest, we return this year with a special double bill.  Ben Markland will be well known to most Rush Hour Blues regulars as he plays with a whole host of local artists.  Here he leads his quintet playing a mixture of originals and standards.  Next up is Percy Pursglove with a new quartet with Andrew Bain on drums Ross Stanley on Organ and Chris Montague on guitar.  Percy’s had a great year so far with an appearance at the Harmonic festival with New York based Claudia Quintet in March.  The quartet will be playing original music written by Percy as well as standards.

The Sundown Jazz Sessions take place in a very attractive small room at the back of the George IV pub in Lichfield and are a part of the Lichfield Festival – great that a prestigious festival like this is supporting the best young jazz in the region.

The room only holds about 30/40 people and was more or less full on Tuesday when I went along, so that plus the excellent acoustics made for a great session with wonderful uncomplicatedly swinging jazz in an informal setting where every note is heard clearly and every facial expression of the players in action is caught!  The music starts at 9.30 and there are usually two sets.

On Tuesday it was a band put together by drummer Andrew Bain featuring Jon Irabagon from the US on alto sax, Percy Pursglove on trumpet and Ross Stanley on keys with Hammond Organ sound.  This was a great band playing a good mix of standards and originals and in a style that was neither too far out nor too mainstream that suited the occasion perfectly.  Jon Irabagon is a very interesting young player now making a name for himself in New York.  He won the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Prize in 2008 and seems equally at home in a straightahead context or in an improvising format.  He is, for example, a key member of the band Mostly Other People Do The Killing, a crazy quintet that plays fast and furious bebop with a kind of rock attitude.    Percy Pursglove made an excellent frontline partner on trumpet complimenting Jon’s varied solos with long flowing lines on the trumpet.  Ross Stanley also added very interesting and inventive solos that avoided the cliches we sometimes get on the Hammond Organ.

Percy Pursglove is featured in an article in this month’s Jazzwise which you can read here.   It’s good that Birmingham players and the great Birmingham scene is beginning to get recognition.

At the Sundown session tonight (Thursday 15th) is the Rob Anstey Quartet featuring Ben Bryden; tomorrow (Friday 16th) it’s the Lluis Mather Band (the one that won the Dave Holland Ensemble Prize) and on Saturday it’s Chris Mapp and his new Gambol band.  All the bands are programmed by the Cobweb Collective.

Tony

Friday 12th March
Part of Harmonic at the CBSO Centre
8pm
£15

Tickets: http://www.symphonyhall.co.uk/view/claudia-quintet-plus-3-part-of-harmonic-festival-

Box Office: 0121 7803333

A very special collaboration between Birmingham Jazz and Harmonic, a new festival for 2010. One of the most progressive bands in jazz, New york based Claudia Quintet will be making a special appearance at Harmonic. As well as playing music from their forthcoming new album they will be joined by Birmingham based musicians Percy Pursglove on trumpet and Steve Tromans on Rhodes to play specially commissioned arrangements of Claudia’s music. John Hollenbeck, drummer and band leader of Claudia, has arranged some of his music for this one-off collaboration.

Listen to Claudia Quintet on Spotify:

Thursday’s Cobweb Collective and Friday’s Rush Hour Blues session at Symphony Hall saw the launch of a great new band:  Percy Pursglove’s Organ Trio.  It has Percy on trumpet, Ross Stanley on a real Hammond Organ plus Leslie and Andrew Bain on drums.  I didn’t catch the Thursday session, but Friday’s RHB session had a great vibe with some splendid interaction between the members of the trio.  I love to hear Percy on the trumpet though we seem to hear him more of him on the double bass.  He is able to develop in his solos long fluent lines that are full of interest and surprises and he has something of the facility of a saxophone player on the much more difficult instrument that the trumpet is.  Ross Stanley is also full of twists and turns on the Hammond and Andrew Bain drives it along with great elan.  I particularly liked the bit of ‘performance art’ during one of Andrew’s solos where he cued a short blast from Percy and Ross as he reached peak points during the solo.

The band works well as a trio, but might also develop in interesting and different directions with an addition of another horn.  I also look forward to the group developing its own material.

Tony

A review by John Fordham in today’s Guardian describes the the annual Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition that is run by the Worshipful Company of Musicians.  It was won this year by Shaney Forbes, the young drummer with Empirical, who impressed us all at the recent Empirical gig at the CBSO Centre.  He is a drummer who clearly enjoys really driving a band and embellishing the soloists’ lines.  So he is a worthy winner.  But I was delighted to read Fordham’s comments on the bass player, Percy Pursglove, who seems to have run Forbes very close.  Fordham describes Percy’s playing in this way: ‘Pursglove’s surging rhythm and pin-sharp intonation – even when flying from the basement register to the treble – flagged up a budding bass sensation ‘  Of course Percy plays bass as his second instrument and is, in fact,  an amazing trumpet player.  He is based in Birmingham, and graduated from the Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Course on which he now teaches.

We get the chance to hear Percy on the trumpet at the Rush Hour Blues session on October 23rd when he plays as part of the Ross Stanley Trio (replacing the originally advertised Jim Mullen Band).

Tony

It was great to be able to launch our autumn season in the wonderful surroundings of Fazeley Studios last night and it was good to see so many people there.  Thanks go to Mary Wakelam, Birmingham Jazz’s General Manager and Chris Mapp, Administrator for organising the event so well.  Thanks also go to the band with Hans Koller on keys and trombone, Percy Pursglove on trumpet, Chris Mapp and Jim Bashford on drums.  Yes, Chris literally did make the sandwiches and then play in the band.

Hans Koller made a very thoughtful speech about the role of Birmingham Jazz and how many jazz projects are developed in Birmingham and then go on national tour.

Great that Peter Bacon picked up on this and blogged about it on his Jazz Breakfast site.  Read his comments here.  Interesting that the London Jazz site that Seb Scotney runs immediately picked up Peter’s comments and summary of Hans’ speech and posted it on the site.  Read his comments here.

Tony

Wednesday 16th September 2009
7.30pm, Fazeley Studios, 191 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, B5 5SE
Invite only, click here to receive you invite

Come and join us at our new home Fazeley Studios, meet the Birmingham Jazz team and celebrate the launch of our Autumn Programme. As well as a set from the Hans Koller trio featuring Percy Pursglove and Chris Mapp, there will be a photography exhibition featuring some of the gig highlights of the last 25 years as well as a bite to eat and drink.

We are delighted to announce that this special event will be sponsored by Barefoot Wine

Bain and Pursglove Present the Jon Irabagon Quartet

Young New York saxophonist Jon Irabagon, winner of the coveted Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition, joins the astute British duo of Andrew Bain and Percy Pursglove in a six-date UK Tour this June.

Jon Irabagon (saxophone)
Percy Pursglove (trumpet, double bass)
Malcolm Edmonstone (piano)
Mark Anderson (double bass)
Andrew Bain (drums)

Monday 8th June 2009
9.00pm
Polo Sessions at The Hill
23 Bennetts Hill, Birmingham, B2 5QP

Tickets: Free admission

For details on the full tour go to:

http://www.stoneylane.net/tours/

For more about Jon Irabagon go to:

http://jonirabagon.blogspot.com/

I enjoyed Peter Evans set at the Yardbird Cobweb Collective session last Thursday very much indeed.  Peter was playing with Percy Pursglove on bass and Andrew Bain on drums and this parternship came out of Percy and Bain’s periods studying in New York where they met and jammed with Peter.  Peter is originally a classically trained trumpet player and his mastery of the instrument gives him the facility to improvise with huge fluency and something of the speed and intensity of a saxophone player.  I had first heard Peter ’s playing on a solo CD and that was totally free and improvised, though, interestingly, using a very different vocabulary from most free jazz players in the US and Europe.  With Percy and Bain, Peter played tunes with a good mix of his own material and some Monk tunes, but really stretched out in his solos.  Again it was apparent that he is a true improvisor with an ability to play long flowing lines that often take different and surprising directions throughout the solo. and that he sounds like nobody else playing jazz and improvised music today.  Percy and Bain kept up with and indeed added to the excitement of the set.  One point that interests me is how much the inclusion of a couple of Monk tunes in a set of very contemporary material adds to the variety of the music and provides a certain familiarity that on the one hand reassures the audience and yet is totally consistent with the contemporary nature of the music.

Congratulations to Percy and Bain and The Cobweb Collective for putting this on.  The next gig in the Percy and Bain Presents Series is on Monday 8th June with saxophonist Jon Irabagon, another great young player they got to know in New York.  For details see www.cobwebcollective.com

The next gig I am really looking forward to is The Necks at the CBSO Centre on Friday 22nd May, presented by us, Birmingham Jazz.  This is an Australian piano trio whose music also breaks away from the familiar jazz language creating something of a trance like sound through the build up of tension coming from a mix of jazz and minimalism.  Each set is totally improvised and consists of one piece that develops from extensive interaction between the members of the trio.  See www.thenecks.com for more information.  Tickets are available from www.thsh.co.uk or 0121-767-4050.