Jim Hart’s Gemini: Narrada (Loop Records LOOP1010)
This is a persuasive disc if you give it time to persuade you. When it starts out, it is clear that the playing is most accomplished and the writing strong but it feels that as a composer Jim Hart might have fallen, like so many of his contemporaries, under the spell of the music/mathematics masters like Steve Coleman. Certainly Four Little Words has that “funk for the head” kind of mental appeal, and it does throw the unsuspecting listener in at the deep end.
But, let’s get back to the beginning. Gemini is Hart on vibes, Ivo Neame on alto saxophone, Jasper Hoiby on bass and Dave Smith on drums – all four players are strong giving the band a fine balance, with Hart’s vibes tone and Neame’s relatively rich alto sound stopping things getting too harsh, and Hoiby giving a powerful bottom end. Smith is pushy when he needs to be but is always very musical with it.
Dark Moon starts with loads of atmospheric stuff from Smith and Hart coming in on marimba, before we are headlong into mind games once more, with Neame and Hart in parallel.
It’s when we reach the long title track that the heart makes an entrance to complement the head. Narrada is a place on Bodmin moor where Hart grew up, and this more elemental, lyrical music begins to leaven my initial wariness that this might just be clever-clogs music. Nifty, funky tune taken in harmony by sax and vibes, followed by expressive and finely formed solos from Neame and Hart. Then Bodmin is inexplicably annexed to Cuba at the end!
Other stand-out tracks are the thoughtful Kindred, the driving Crunchy Country and the elegaic Last of the Leaves, which sounds a bit like it was written by Django Bates and J.S. Bach in tandem – not bad role models for a young composer, I’d say.
A really fine record from a group currently touring to support it and are in Nottingham at the Bonnington Theatre on Thursday, Derby at the Eden Gardens on Friday and in Birmingham at the Yardbird on Thursday 26 November.
Each week photographer Russ Escritt sends me his favourite picture of the week, or perhaps one from his extensive archive. Here’s one from the archive – the Jazzcotech Dancers from a gig with the Dave O’Higgins Sextet at the Glee Club in Birmingham on 2 October 2002.
Russ has been shooting (in the nicest possible way) local and visiting jazz musicians for a good few years now. In fact, he has recently compiled a book of the ones he likes best. Here is the cover:
You can order a copy here, or if you want to check out more of Russ Escrit’s superb pictures, go here.
Rickie Lee Jones: Balm In Gilead (Fantasy 0888072317604)
A little break from jazz proper for some compatible folk-rock-country with swing overtones, and guest slots from Bill Frisell as well as Nashville types like Vic Chesnutt and Alison Kraus, and Ben Harper.
This is perhaps a more conventional album stylistically from Rickie Lee but a more consistent and comfortable set of songs than some of her other releases over recent years.
There’s some lazy swinging stuff in the Peyroux vein courtesy of The Moon Is Made Of Gold, written by Rickie Lee’s father, some slow, measured spiritual music in His Jeweled Floor, some pretty straight Nashville in Remember Me and some of the that Muscle Shoals-tinged R&B in Wild Girl.
The Blue Ghazel is an instrumental with some honking baritone saxophone, and the closer, Bayless St, could be a Celtic classic folk song were it not another Jones original.
Sonny Rollins: Moving Out (Prestige 0888072315945)
Sonny in 1954 with Kenny Doreham on trumpet, Elmo Hope on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Art Blakey on drums. This is still bebop inspired music, and swift from the start with the title track, even swifter to follow with Swingin’ For Bumsy. The whole band is cooking, especially Dorham and Hope in their solos, and drum connoisseurs will notice something strange about Blakey’s sound. Where’s teh hi-hat? Apparently due to some “technical issue” – did he leave it in the cab on the way to the session? – Art is sans certain cymbals.
The band calms for the ballad, Silk ‘n’ Satin, with Rollins in imperious form, luxuriating in the lower tones of the tenor from the start. Nice solo again from Hope and there are some lovely distant, echoey trumpet lines behind the saxophone on its re-entry, and it is over all too quickly.
Solid is a regular blues and a good-time thing.
Then, for the final track on this RVG remastered disc, we switch bands and with Sonny for a nearly 11-minute meander through More Than You Know are Thelonious Monk on piano, Tommy Potter on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums. It’s a great tune, Sonny’s tongued phrasing on the melody is thick and his tone lush, and Monk plays it just as you’d expect, rich, crunchy chords pushing those off-off beats. Worth the price for this track alone.
Various: Gilles Peterson presents Havana Cultura (Brownswood Recordings BWOOD038CD)
DJ Gilles Peterson has the very useful skill of making things very cool and hip just be giving them his attention. It’s a skill that he shares with John Peel and, before he went off the rails, Andy Kershaw. And Peterson is very much in tune with his times, which is why he has the trust of both the fans of his radio programmes and DJ appearances, and of the musicians he records.
So, all this stuff that is going on in Cuba was there before he visited – and some of it we already know about, like the rapper Kumar and the young singer Yusa, as well as musical director and pianist Roberto Fonseca – was already happening before he arrived, and is still happening after he has come home. But now we know more about it, and so the artists featured here, known or unknown, are likely to have enhanced musical careers.
Choosing Fonseca to help mastermind this project is a brilliant stroke. The man is fully steeped in the jazz heritage of the country but also understands the broader street styles. The first disc of this two-disc set comprises a kind of new Buena Vista Social Club format, with Fonseca (he has also contributed to the Buena Vista project) leading the band and loads of special guests. The band includes virtuoso percussionist and veteran of the great Cuban jazz band Irakere, Yaroldy Abreu, fellow Irakerean Javier Zalba on saxophone and flute, and Sierra Maestra trumpeter Yelfris Valdes. Oh, and the music is recorded in the fabled Egrem studios in Havana.
CD02 gives a whirlwind tour around the street music of young Cuba, courtesy of already recorded tracks by groups like Free Hole Negro and Los Aldeanos, and artists like Danay and Francis de Rio, all chosen by Peterson. Listen out for a need incorporation of Caravan into Wichy de Vedado’s La Perla del Son, and Los Aldeanos’ Pasa El Borrador which includes a kind of chipmunk Amy Winehouse Back To Black sample.
The packaging is pretty, there is a good booklet and there is lots more background at www.havana-cultura.com
Outhouse: Ruhabi (Loop Records LOOP 1009)
The coming together of the London jazz quartet and the five Sabar drummers from The Gambia is best experienced live, I think, but then you could say that of most jazz. On disc it still has a lot to recommend it, though, especially if you haven’t had the chance to see and hear the band in the flesh.
The opener, Mam Bamba, is very much a piece of two halves (although unlike football games both show strong play) – the drummers first setting out their stall, then the jazz band theirs. Having understood the constituent elements, we can then get really into the way they mix on track two: Duck Dance (Leumbeul). In some ways, while Outhouse’s bass and drums team of Johnny Brierly and Dave Smith can get in amongst the Sabar drummers, the saxophonists, Robin Fincker and Mark Hanslip, need to tread more carefully or else it gets far too chaotic, and so they do with some cryptic little melodic phrases in harmony half way through.
Other highlights are the interweaving of vocal and saxophone lines against an infectious riff and rhythm on Bara Mbaye, and the title track which again features an infectious bass sequence and a lovely interlocking of sax and drum phrases.
In fact the strength of this disc is, ironically, that the two groups don’t try to all play at the same time all that often, choosing to act as contrasting/complimenting textures and moods. What is clear is the vibe that each group takes from the other and uses to enhance their own music. A fruitful collaboration, in other words, without ever being a forced one.
There is a four-way choice this evening – yes, we are spoilt – and while one option is not really jazz at all, it’s still worth a mention.
It’s brass all the way at the Yardbird in Birmingham as Brass Jaw swing in as part of a Jazz Services national tour. The band comprises Ryan Quigley on trumpet, Paul Towndrow on alto saxophone and Konrad Wiszniewski on tenor and is led by Allon Beauvoisin on baritone – so, a sort of saxophone quartet with a twist at the top end.
Followers of the vibrant Scottish jazz scene will be aware that all these players have Scottish National Jazz Orchestra connections, and Towndrow, in particular, is a strong leader with his own band and a couple of acclaimed CDs to his credit.
Brass Jaw plays a mix of originals and well-known standards, all vibrantly re-arranged for this group. When breath is the only force to hand, the excitement is guaranteed. Check this out from 9pm, and it’s free. Presented by Cobweb and Birmingham Jazz.
Sticks and strings make the sounds over in Coventry tonight – and in two different venues.
At the Biggin Hall pub, the Asaf Sirkis Trio mixes jazz up with a particularly adept kind of hard rock. Asaf is on drums, Tassos Spiliotopoulus is on guitar and Yaron Stavi on bass. In the intimate confines of the Biggin, this should get your ears pinned back and your sinuses cleared in no time. It starts at 8.30pm, entry is £10 (£7 for students) and it’s a Jazz Coventry presentation, as well as part of another Jazz Services national tour.
Meanwhile over at Warwick Arts Centre, the truly extraordinary Staff Benda Bilili, a band led by disabled street musicians who live in the grounds of Kinshasa Zoo and get about on motorised trikes, bring their infectious brand of rumba-rooted music to the stage. Roger Landu, the 17-year-old who made his own single-string lute-like instrument, the satonge, is an improviser to watch – in awe. Staff Benda Bilili are in the Butterworth Hall from 8pm. Tickets are £12.50.
Finally, bassist Mike Hatton’s funky jazz quintet MJHQ play at Cork’s Club, Bearwood from 9pm, Tickets are £4/3.
Last Words of Victor Jara
Glee Club Studio
11-11-09
Victor Jara was a Chilean singer, songwriter, theatre director and political activist who supported those who did all the work and had none of the power. As a supporter who helped to bring the socialist Salvador Allende to power in 1970, his star was ascendent.
After a military coup was mounted in 1973, his star fell – the day after Allende was executed, he was taken along with countless others to the Chile Stadium, and shortly thereafter, shot by firing squad.
Steve Tromans (piano), Aaron Diaz (trumpet), Miles Levin (drums) and Chris Mapp (bass) are four young jazz musicians who – and I am making an assumption here – have so far led far less dramatic lives in a country of far fewer contrasts and in far greater peace.
But Tromans is clearly an explorer – not just musically but intellectually, and then emotionally, too. In the process of researching the poet Alan Ginsberg, for a piece based on his poem Howl (which turned into a Birmingham Jazz commission a few years ago), he came upon the name of Victor Jara, and inquired further.
The result was this compelling and substantial evening of music. It began with a recording of Jara’s widow, remembering him, and then the band started a quietly building, increasingly churning piece, rather evoking thoughts developing, a movement gaining pace, a blossoming of ideas. This was not the music of Jara but of Tromans, but the lilt and lyricism of South American folk music was there along the seductive rhythm. I remembered the Liberation Music Orchestra of Charlie Haden and its jazz reworking of Spanish liberation songs – a fine tradition to follow.
The first half developed with hope and more musical exploration. Levin is a very interesting player, seeming able to create long almost melodic lines and great washes of percussion on the drums, in contrast to the instrument’s naturally staccato nature. By contrast, Tromans stresses staccato – evoking the plucked guitar or harp of Chilean music. Some of his precise, repeated phrases reminded me of the Necks’ Chris Abrahams.
Mapp turned in some strong, searching solos of his own, and some dramatic arco work in the second half, but his main strength was in support. Diaz is a very interesting player, getting right into the heart of the music with clear open lines or low growls – it’s striking and very refreshing to hear a trumpeter work hard at the lower end of the instrument’s range, and in the intimate setting of the Glee Club Studio he had the right environment.
At the beginning of the second half, we heard the last words of Jara, words smuggled out of the Chile Stadium on scraps of paper and here in an English translation by poet Adrian Mitchell. What followed was an attempt to convey in music the turmoil and tragedy of the military take-over, the shattering of dreams, the tragedy of Jara’s end. And it was very impressively done.
And then they finished with a tune by Jara himself – full of light and hope and love. It was that love that Tromans stressed at the start of the evening as what had drawn him most to Victor Jara’ s story.
And that is why Tromans’ attempt to document and celebrate the life of Victor Jara is, it seems to me, so effective. It was really striking that, throughout this whole concert, there was not one moment when any of the musicians showed off their instrumental skill just for its own sake (and you don’t need me to tell you how rare that is in a jazz gig, never mind whether the band is young or old). It was all dedicated to, as one friend said, story-telling, and trying to convey the universal emotional empathy that, despite all the contrasts, links a South American revolutionary hero and martyr with four young jazz musicians working hard in a Birmingham nightclub.
Of course, it’s also the reviewer’s job to listen critically, and there are four things I’d suggest: firstly, some editing, especially in the second half, would improve the piece a lot; secondly, the piano sound needs to be improved; thirdly, the Jara song at the end might be even stronger if it was just played straight without improvisation, and finally, if more people are to hear this music, the band needs to rustle up a few more friends, family, distant acquaintances, anyone to improve on the 18-strong audience they had last night.
John Hicks: I Remember You (High Note HCD 7191)
I remember first hearing pianist John Hicks in the David Murray band. There, he revelled in the role of contrast to Murray, the quieter, contained and dignified power of his solos just perfect as a foil to the saxophonist’s boisterousness, bravura and bravado.
Of course he also played a vital role in the bands of others, too, like Art Blakey, Betty Carter and Bobby Watson, and would later become a stalwart of the late night New York club scene, and Bradley’s in particular.
But this is Hicks in early 2006, playing a solo gig in New Hope, Pennsylvania, just weeks before his death, and working his insightful way through some standards. The title track is an 11-minute masterpiece which takes the listener from quiet reflection up to a dancing groove with some Monkish, punctuated passages, and a little Teddy Wilson in there, too, with a gorgeous two-handed brief return to the tune at the seven-minute mark.
All Of You, Solar, Everytime We Say Goodbye, Upper Manhattan Medical Group – a lot of great jazz tunes with lot of history get the Hicks treatment and feel more freshly burnished as a result.
A great valedictory statement from one the lesser known but nevertheless great jazz pianists of the late 20th century.
Victor Jara
This evening pianist and composer Steve Tromans brings his Debop Band into the Glee Club Studio in Birmingham to perform his Last Words Of Victor Jara.
Jara was a Chilean singer-songwriter, political activist and all-round charismatic good guy who was one of the many victims of the US-backed coup in that country that swept Pinochet to power. Tromans uses Jara texts read by Andrew Cowell, an American-Columbian the pianist worked with in Mongolia, as an integral part of the music and the band is completed by Chris Mapp on bass, Miles Levin on drums and Aaron Diaz on trumpet.
This is a Birmingham Jazz gig and starts at 8pm and tickets are available at www.glee.co.uk or on the door.
