Concert review: Branford Marsalis Quartet

Branford Marsalis Quartet
Town Hall, Birmingham
26-05-09

The saxophonist has always been one to confound expectations. A North Sea Jazz Festival appearance had been billed as Branford and his dad playing the gentle ballads from their Loved Ones disc, but he arrived instead with his Dark Keys band and proceeded to take the roof off with aggressive sax trio material. And who would have had the nerve to that holy piece of Coltraneism, A Love Supreme, before Branford led the way?

So, when this exemplary example of a modern jazz quartet took the Town Hall stage, we might have expected the unexpected. A hoary standard, Just One Of Those Things, was what we got, initially at a measured pace, but at double time and with the temperature raised towards the end.

As Marsalis indicated, it had been a spur of the moment thing, and with a pianist, Joey Calderazzo, and bassist, Eric Revis, who have been with him for ages, plus a knife-sharp young drummer, Justin Faulkner, he can afford to be spontaneous.

From then on we heard tunes familiar to those who have the band’s recordings: Marsalis’s spiky Jabberwocky, Revis’s Monk tribute Sphere and the man himself’s Rhythm-a-ning from the latest disc, Calderazzo’s sublime Hope, and Henry Purcell’s peerless O Solitude from previous ones. The black American classical music of the 20th century and the English classical music of the 17th century might not strike one as having a lot in common, but this band sits them effortlessly side-by-side.

All four players – yes, even Faulkner – manage to provide for the listener a strong melodic line going through all they do, no matter how complex the harmonies get or how exuberant their improvisations. The Ruby And The Pearl was a particular joy with its changing moods; the Monk was a tour de force of time changes, each bar seemingly changing the groove from bebop to hip-hop, from lumpy to swing.

Four absolute masters of the music, then, led by a man now mature enough to know just how to adapt a set to a building and an audience. The Purcell made the most of what he called the “marbly” sound of the hall; the encore was a witty St Louis Blues, perhaps, like the initial standard, to acknowledge that a provincial city audience has a wide range of ages and jazz tastes, but also to show that this band can do absolutely anything, and to as near perfection as jazz can get.