Posts Tagged ‘The Jazz Breakfast’

This was a wonderful gig with a very good crowd in despite the temptations of barbecues on a balmy night, the European Cup Final on TV or the Rod Stewart concert nearby at the NIA (!).  There were so many good things about this concert: the variety of the music, the wonderfully supportive bass playing of Steve Swallow and drumming of Adam Nussbaum, Gwilym Simcock’s intricate piano solos, the fact of everyone contributing compositions including a nifty blues from Adam Nussbaum, the evident enjoyment of each player and respect for the other members of the group, the audience response.  But for me the highlight was hearing Mike Walker really playing at his peak and contributing so many pieces to the band’s material.  Those who have known Mike’s playing for some years know that he is a world class player; it was great to hear him in a context that really matched this and brought out his full potential.  See Peter Bacon’s review of the concert on his Jazz Breakfast site here.  I agree with Peter that this is a transatlantic collaboration that should tour again and play major festivals.  There will also be a review on the London Jazz site as Sebastian Scotney was at the gig.  I will add a link to that when it appears.

Here it is!

Tony

The trio Fly with Mark Turner on tenor and soprano saxophone, Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums gave us all a treat last week in Birmingham.  They had given a wonderful performance at a sold out Cheltenham Jazz festival show, a performance that was much praised in the review’s of this year’s very successful festival, but they seemed that little bit more relaxed at the Birmingham show.  This was, I suspect, partly because they had more time in the 2-set show, but also because they had given one of the best master classes ever for the Jazz Course at the Conservatoire in the afternoon.  The students were really there with them on the evening gig.

As always, Peter Bacon’s comments on his Jazz Breakfast site give an excellent summary of the gig; you can read that and see Russ Escritt’s photo here.

Fly is a trio whose music is based on musical and personal respect between the three players.  This respect leads to the very interactive nature of the music; it feels very loose and free, but it is based on a harmonic approach to improvisation.  Mark Turner’s solos are special with totally unique use of the possibilities of each tune’s harmonic structure.  He acknowledges a strong influence from saxophonist Warne Marsh, a player who studied with pianist Lennie Tristano and is associated with the so-called cool school.  But he is also inspired by John Coltrane and his personal mix of these and other elements make for a very unusual but delightful voice.

Tony

Mark Lockheart In Deep
Photograph by Russ Esscritt

Read Peter Bacon’s review of last night’s concert with Dave Stapleton and Mark Lockheart here.  Peter’s review captures the concert very well, so I won’t add much here apart from saying that I totally agree with Peter’s comments about these excellent and distinctive quintets.  I really enjoy Dave Stapleton’s writing and the interaction within Mark Lockheart’s group was stunning, especially when pianist Liam Noble locked in with the rhythm section.  As Peter says, it deserved a larger audience.

Tony

This Friday, 23rd April, promises to be a very rich day for jazz in Birmingham.  For the Rush Hour Blues session at Symphony Hall at 5.30 we have set up a project with Ray Butcher, his quartet and  saxophonist Jean Toussaint. Jean is originally from St. Thomas on the Virgin Islands, but made his name with the last version of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in which he played alongside the excellent trumpeter Terence Blanchard.  The Jazz Messengers was always a great ‘finishing school’ for young jazz talent and Jean was one of the finest to emerge in the last years of the band.  Ray and Jean met at a TLC (Tony Levin’s Club) session a year or so ago and have wanted to play together again ever since.  Jean settled in London after he left The Messengers and teaches at both the Guildhall and Birmingham Conservatoire.  His quartet has recently recorded an excellent album Live in Paris and London.

Then at 8pm at the CBSO Centre we present a band that has had a strong link with the Rush Hour Blues session: Dave Stapleton Quintet. They have appeared at RHB on a couple of occasions and really won over that audience with music that has a very strong identity arising from the excellent tunes that Dave writes for them.  Dave also runs the Editions Records label which is building a strong reputation for the quality of its roster of bands.  One of those bands is that led by saxophonist Mark Lockheart and they have issued on Edition an album called In Deep: they will be playing in the second half of the concert. It’s a great album and band featuring Chris Batchelor on trumpet, Mark on saxophones, Liam Noble on piano, Jasper Hoiby on bass and Dave Smith on drums. The Dave Stapleton Quintet has also issued a fine album on Edition Records entitled Between The Lines and you can read Peter Bacon’s Jazz Breakfast review here.

Tony

Johan Lindstrom  – Dan Berglund’s Tonbruket

Photograph courtesy of Russ Escritt

Check out Peter Bacon’s views of the Tuesday concert in his review and one interesting comment on the review.  You can find these on Peter’s Jazz Breakfast site here.

Tony

Harmonic Festival Directors Percy Pursglove and Chris Mapp

Photograph courtesy of Russ Escritt

The Harmonic Festival was a great artistic success that really showcased the immense amount of talent in Birmingham.  A particular success was the way in which the various contemporary jazz communities were all made part of the festival.  Clearly the core of the festival were the two nights at the CBSO Centre, where the New York band Claudia Quintet played on the Friday and a range of Birmingham bands played the Saturday, but the Thursday night session at The Yardbird and the Friday evening Rush Hour Blues sessions were included in the programme.  And it was serendipitous that Dave Holland was in town in the week of the Harmonic Festival and thus the performance by Conservatoire jazz students of his compositions at the Adrian Boult Hall on the Wednesday could be included in the programme. It was also great to have longstanding members of the jazz community like Ben Markland and Sara Colman playing in the same programme as graduates and students of the jazz course, Percy Pursglove, Aaron Diaz, Chris Mapp, Lluis Mather, Nick Rundle etc. and also to have represented the free jazz scene through the great improvising trio with Paul Dunmall, John Edwards and Mark Sanders.

Peter Bacon (The Jazz Breakfast) has a good summary of all the sets he heard during the festival so I won’t go into detail in this blog; you can read Peter’s review here.   What I will reflect on in this quick review is how the various bands, but in particular John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet,  showed how composition in jazz is changing and how there seems to be a trend in certain New York bands towards redefining the balance between the notated passages and the improvisation (see also Steve Lehman’s Octet).  Claudia Quintet’s performance was dominated by Hollenbeck’s brilliant compositions which drew on the textures available through the interesting instrumentation of the group with vibes, accordion, piano as well as the more usual sax, bass and drums.  In a sense this was a contemporary jazz equivalent of Duke Ellington’s writing for the sounds of the various players in his big band, but with very intricate layering of sounds that draws on contemporary classical music and rock as well as jazz.  There were still of course excellent solos, notably from Drew Gress on bass, Matt Mitchell on piano and Chris Speed on sax and clarinet and in the second set from the two Birmingham additions to the group, Percy Pursglove on trumpet and Steve Tromans on Rhodes piano, but all these solos fitted into the overall framework of the writing.

It is interesting to contrast this approach with that of Dave Holland.  Dave writes a huge amount of material for his various groups and when he spends a week in the Conservatoire student groups work  with Dave, rehearsing  and then performing  carefully selected tunes of his.  Dave writes great tunes, but they are very much vehicles for improvisation designed to set up solos from members of the band.

In this context I found Chris Mapp’s writing for his new group Gambol particularly successful.  He drew on various Birmingham themes,  blues bands as well as The Blues football team, balti, markets and the rather odd people you meet in the streets.  Nearly this material had a strong identity into which the improvised solo passages from the band fitted perfectly and thus the approach had much in common with Hollenbeck’s in wanting to escape from the head + solos and head out formula so common in jazz.

Tony

Nils Petter Molvaer at The Hare & Hounds, Friday 26th Feb / TG Collective at The Polish Club, Saturday 27th Feb
Photographs courtesy of Russ Escritt

It was wonderful and something of a relief that all the set up for Nils Petter Molvaer’s show at the Hare & Hounds last Friday (26th February) went smoothly; it is a very complicated show with a very precise tech and visual spec and thanks to house technical manager Jon Nash and his assistant plus the cooperation of the musicians it all got set up and the show started more or less on time.

I really enjoyed the music.  Drummer Audun Kleive and guitarist Stian Westerhus are brilliant musicians who set up a really interesting framework for Nils Petter Molvaer’s improvisations, building up the tension and occasionally taking the lead in those passages where each member of the trio were really firing.  Nils Petter’s own sound on both trumpet and effects is very beautiful and he mostly concentrates on developing quite long passages where the ambient sound of either the synthesised trumpet or the effects dominate.  Overall this was attractive music with some episodes of really full on intensity.  There were, however, also some down periods when the focus on creating  soundscapes seemed to reduce the level of intensity.  But overall this was a successful gig.

One or two people have commented that the review of the trio’s London concert in The Guardian was too critical; you can read the review here.  Either the London concert was a nervous first concert, or the reviewer missed the point on this occasion.  Peter Bacon has also written a review on his Jazz Breakfast site; you can read it here.

Last night (Saturday 27th February) TG Collective played a warm, very musical and thoroughly enjoyable concert at the Polish Club reminding us all what a charming venue the Polish Club is.  It has a attractive and in a positive way a slightly bizarre feel to it, all added to on this occasion by the presence of its Valentine’s Day and Christmas decorations.  TG Collective with its healthy mix of gypsy jazz, flamenco and more contemporary material, and great musicianship and dancing from Ana Garcia really enthused a good large audience.

Owing to the Nils Petter Molvaer gig on Friday night, I could only catch half an hour of Nick Smart’s Quintet with American saxophonist John Gunther at Rush Hour Blues.  The music struck me as excellent accessible jazz with pianist Malcolm Edmonstone outstanding.

But the gig of the week has to be Trio VD at Jazz Club at The Rainbow Wednesday night (February 24th).  Peter Bacon’s review on his Jazz Breakfast blogsite captures the excitement of the gig – you can read it here. Trio VD are undoubtedly one of the most creative groups on today’s scene and I look forward to seeing how they develop.  The music is highly structured, nonetheless leaving space for improvisation, and it draws quite extensively on elements of contemporary rock music.  It is thus music that should have an appeal to fans who don’t normally listen to jazz.

Tony

( photo courtesy of Garry Corbett )

What a brilliant gig last Friday’s session with the Kit Downes Trio was!  As ever, Peter Bacon’s review of the gig on his Jazz Breakfast site captures it extremely well.  You can read it here.   In addition to the photos by Garry Corbett that Peter mentions, you can see Bill Shakespeare’s shots here.

I totally agree that this was a gig worth paying a lot of money to hear, but there is something special about the Rush Hour Blues free entry gig.  It has a very loyal audience many of whom are not really jazz fans as such, but they seem to love the range of music that is presented at these sessions.  It is a large responsive audience (roughly 300 every week), and more and more bands and players are saying that it is a special and unique gig.

Long may it continue!

Tony

It was great to see so many people braving the winter weather to catch the Bryan Corbett Quartet last Friday at Rush Hour Blues.  I am sure everyone will have thought that it was worth the effort to get there; it is a quartet that has played together for years and it tells.  Peter Bacon has written an excellent review on his Jazz Breakfast site and Garry Corbett has posted some excellent photos on his site.

I very much agree with what Peter says about Neil Bullock and think we should persuade Neil to lead his own group at RHB.  What do others think?

Tony

Have a look at Peter Bacon’s comments about last Friday’s gig with The Sub Ensemble  on his Jazz Breakfast site here with a wonderful photograph taken by Garry Corbett.

It was indeed an excellent gig and an appropriate end to our autumn season.

Tony