Birmingham Jazz has been dedicated to working in schools for a few years now and, in addition to regular in-school sessions and workshop Saturdays at the CBSO Centre, they occasionally perform for the public. This evening is just one occasion and the Birmingham Jazz Youth Group play the Symphony Hall Rush Hour session from 5.30pm.
Masterminding the whole thing, and using a highly individual and successful teaching technique, Sid Peacock encourages the young players from all kinds of backgrounds not only to “make up stuff” by improvising on their instruments but also to make up their own tunes.
The big band he directs is particularly impressive, creating some wild and wonderful sounds and bringing great energy into any room they play in. Check them out today, and if you want to know how you can help further Birmingham Jazz education happen, go to www.birminghamjazz.co.uk
Stanley Clarke Trio: Jazz In The Garden (Heads Up HUCD3155)
The label “power trio” is usually applied to heavy rock bands, but when the piano, bass and drums are played by Hiromi, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, I can’t really think of a more appropriate description.
And yet, while there is some pretty blistering, high energy work here, the more surprising insights come when things calm a little. Track one, Paradigm Shift, written in honour of the US election day last year, for example, opens with explosive stuff and lightning runs, but then settles into a lovely reflective semi-Latin feel, with graceful solos from Hiromi and Clarke.
There are also jazz standards on here, like Ellington’s Take The Coltrane, Miles’s Solar and Joe Henderson’s Isotope.
Clarke, as is his wont these days, sticks to acoustic bass, and his tone and way of phrasing is unmistakeable. White likes his cymbals and makes ultra fast look easy, as, of course, does the young Japanese pianist who seems to be able to think and move in a superhuman way, but is articulate whatever the pace.
A band of wide scope and skills which is still probably most effective turning up the heat and the speed. Here’s a sample:
The late and very great Joe Zawinul would have been celebrating his 77th birthday today. So let us remember him with this orchestral version of his tune Peace, played by the Metropole Orchestra conducted by Vince Mendoza.
Elisa Caleb: Carry Me Home (Jazz Talent JTR1)
A charming, non-nonsense vocal album by a singer with a gospel background and deep appreciation of the jazz greats: Billie, Sarah, Ella.
There are quite a few chestnuts from the great American songbook – Surrey With The Fringe On Top, Everytime We Say Goodbye, Thou Swell, etc – but there are also some interesting songs by Elisa’s husband Jo. The opener, Bring Back Spring, is a brave attempt to write a modern song in that American songbook style and it works just fine. The Wind is singled out as a single and could turn into a real favourite this summer. It has all the right ingredients both in melody and lyrics, and steps lightly (think of somewhere in between Corrine Bailey Rae and Liz Wright).
The musicians Elisa has along are fine ones indeed: Ivo Neame on piano and woodwinds, Larry Bartley on bass, Troy Miller on drums and Jo Caleb on guitar (his electric solo on Thou Swell is just one gem; his acoustic rhythm on The Wind is a vital element).
Production by former Amy Winehouse musical director Femi Temowo is clean and classy.
There are some false steps – the gospel of Swing Low is best done with some weight, and the introduction to Alone Together feels a little at odds with what the song turns out to be (the latter being just fine, with another tasty Jo Caleb guitar solo and Elisa conveying the lyric well).
Although Elisa’s voice sounds a little brittle at times and like it will improve considerably with age and experience, this is nevertheless an impressive debut.
The LondonJazz blog has again delivered the right kind of goods with this guest piece by Peter Slavid.
Looks worthy of wide distribution, so in case you didn’t see it at Sebastian Scotney’s blog, here is the intro. Just follow the link below it.
What is wrong with UK jazz festivals, and could a few good ones expand the audience?
Although my first love is modern jazz, I also listen to a lot of other styles of music and I attend a lot of music festivals. I’ve just come back from helping out at a hugely successful folk festival in Yorkshire, a hall with 1000 people all weekend, a marquee with 300, and several other small venues. And then I watched some of Glastonbury on TV. And it has all caused me to wonder…..
via LondonJazz.
Al Orkesta: Where Are We Now? (mognomusic)
So what’s going on in the jazz scene in Belgium, you’ve been wondering. Well, I can tell you.
A saxophonist and clarinetist called Joe Higham is making some pretty exciting music there with this band. Joe originally studied in Brighton and Newcastle before landing up in Brussels and finding they had a pretty good jazz course at the Conservatory. After early on being a fan of prog-rock bands like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant et al, and of jazz-rock like Elton Dean’s, Joe developed an interest in Spanish, English, Arabic, Jewish and Balkan folk music. You can find them all here.
Al Orkesta also has trumpet, guitar, bass and drums and although there are no vocals, one can clearly hear Joe’s interest in the singing that is a common feature of many of the types of music he has brought together. It is there in the long and loping melodies that work through the pieces; it is there in the tone of saxophone, trumpet or electric guitar lines. There are some really jazz harmony lines from the horns and guitar, and occasionally drums and bass are thoroughly in the jazz mould – try Valse Immonde for example. But this is the exception – generally the rhythms are swirling and worldy – driving the feet to step lightly, the arms to raise and the body to spin. There is a great take on English folk music in Joe’s tenor solo of The Slaves Lament.
But for more representative material, try House Of The Marriage – the opener – which is based on a traditional Turkish tune.
There is quite a bit of jazz-meets-folk-meets-world stuff going on at the moment, but it strikes me that these Belgians are getting it right. Good fun, great playing, and while I am sure quite a lot of musicological knowledge is essential to make this all work, the scholarship is lightly worn.
Would be very exciting to hear in the flesh – remember the name next time you are in Brussels. No ordinary Joe, for sure.
Belgian jazz doesn’t exactly have its own rack in HMV, so to track this down go to www.jazzcds.co.uk or www.mognomusic.com or even www.joehigham.com
Partisans: By Proxy (Babel BDV2983)
This is only the fourth album Phi Robson, Julian Siegel, Thaddeus Kelly and Gene Calderazzo have recorded as Partisans, which seems extraordinary to me as they seem to have been around for much of my adult life. This is clearly a case of selective memory telescoping on my part as in fact they have been in existence for 13 years (I only know because I checked) and I have been a so-called adult for an awfully lot longer than that.
Anyway, By Proxy, the music of which the band has been showcasing in gigs around the country over the past weeks – I caught them at the Lichfield Jazz & Blues Festival where they were punchy as hell – is a very strong indeed collection of tunes and playing. The fact that although they might play in countless other bands they keep returning to this one and regard it more as a live band than a recording one (four discs in 13 years is the evidence for that) means that its four members are remarkably familiar with each other’s playing, twists and turns, strengths and other things, and so the group dynamic and interaction is an almost organic thing.
I always think of the word “fusion” with a wry smile when I hear Partisans, because I think the jazz-rock style of the 1970s acquired such a bad name for its excesses that its strengths are often forgotten. And Partisans seem to me to embody many of them.
Advance is the first track here and has that da-da……… da-da……… bass and drums beat that Miles liked to use in his electric period – full of space and just a hint of menace. It also has the electric guitar and soprano saxophone sounds that went that Miles sound at at the time.
The title track is a tour-de-force of Partisans at its chameleon-like best, shape-shifting and colour-changing through various tempi, beats, melodic riffs, and instrumental timbres.
Mirrors also has some of those tempo-changes and odd accents – here is the fusion legacy again. Yellowjackets sometimes seem like a reference point, though Partisans are more experimental and off-the-wall than the American band, I think they would probably mutually appreciate each other’s music.
MBadger has one eight-note riff that keeps appearing, and another one where sax and wah-wah guitar make a kind of tongue-pointing, “so there” gesture that sounds both rather childish and extremely liberating. The interplay in the whole band but especially from Robson and Siegel in their long, intricate harmony lines is astonishing.
Lapdog has an almost bluegrass speed to the guitar and sax lines, while Munch eases the pace with a slightly eerie acoustic guitar and tenor excursion that could be a soundtrack for some film noir – it has oily puddles and reflected neon in it, for sure. And that’s just on the way to look at Edvard’s pictures, presumably.
The finale is a hugely funky take on Ellington’s Prelude To A Kiss, that somehow touches on Kraftwerk, drum ‘n’ bass, space music, and some terrific tenor atmospherics.
All in all, I can’t recommend this disc highly enough. Thoroughly original, thoroughly of its time and also completely fitting to have the name jazz written on it. And, in case I forgot to mention it, what with all the time changes and timbral excitement, it has some real beauty to it too.
Fred Simon: Since Forever (Naim naimcd24)
Pianist Fred Simon writes a kind of charming American pastoral jazz, full of good tunes and pleasing chord sequences – music that will never make great waves to change the course of the music but instead will bring gentle ripples of pleasure to many listeners. And in the end, isn’t that just as important, and maybe even more so.?
For this quartet disc he has Paul McCandless on reeds (for so long associated with the oboe and with first the Winter Consort and then Oregon), Steve Rodby on bass (longtime Pat Metheny Group member and co-producer for Pat and others, including Simon here), and Mark Walker on drums (who has toured as part of Oregon and is associate prof of percussion at Berklee).
It’s all originals except for a neat version of In A Silent Way. The last thing I imagined when I first heard the Miles album as a 17-year-old was that one day bands would be covering this song and turning into a new jazz standard. It just seemed the tune was so inextricably linked to the arrangement and general feel of the recording… but you learn a lot over 40 years, or rather you get taught a lot.
There are happy, “up” tunes here like the wishful thinking No War Nowhere, and there are moodier, darker toned pieces like In The Evening, where McCandless’s lovely, lachrymose woodwind comes into its own. I Know You Know sounds like it could have been written by Metheny – or perhaps Huw Warren… it has that strength of a traditional folk song.
There is a compositional, controlled and considered mood to the whole album and all the playing, and the recording is as fine as you would expect from the makers of high-end hi-fi.
Indian music and jazz have always been happy bedfellows, luxuriating on the mattress of sprung rhythms and puffing up the pillows of improvisation. But enough of tortured metaphors… what about the Rush Hour session at the Symphony Hall foyer bar later this afternoon?
It’s Marva, the group of Manveer Singh, who has studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and carries on the fine tradition started by the late, great John Mayer of making Birmingham a home for indo-jazz fusion. This is a free gig and is a THSH/Birmingham Jazz promotion
