When I discovered that 81 year old Stan Tracey was unable to make the sell-out Sage Foundation Hall gig I must admit I was fearful for the man. When his son, drummer Clark Tracey, announced that Stan's incapacitation was caused by his reaction to a Flu jab I was also fearful for myself; me having a 'spiking' appointment on the horizon.These things aside, and despite Stan's non-appearance, replacement piano man Dave Newton more than filled his piano stool --musically speaking of course --he was simply tremendous.
Meanwhile, entrenched on the front line, Guy Barker and Dutchman, Benjamin Herman, on trumpet and alto respectively, had moments when the muse descended. In particular, Monk's "Bright Mississippi" brought a slow moving first set up to speed with Guy sounding at times like Roy Eldridge and the Dutchman reincarnating Charlie Parker via the medium of the latter day Lee Konitz. I also liked the shoes on the hooves of the horns. Guy favoured Italian style black patent leather with toes so pointed he could have cleaned his finger nails with them whilst Dutch sported a pair of two tone black and white brogues that would have done credit to Charles Boyer in a 1930s movie.
The second set saw the band move up a gear, not least because of an improvement in the sound and all five punched their weight on "I Want To Be Happy".
As befits a Tracey concert, even if the only Tracey present was Stan's son Clark, Monk figured prominently in the program and Benjamin played rather beautifully on the high priest's composition "Pannonica".
Throughout, Andy Cleyndert on bass was a tower of strength but, for my money, Dave Newton was the man of the match.
A good gig that seemed to simply fly by.
As an afterthought; I had the impression that Andy Cleyndert was also from the land of dams and dykes but it turns out he was born in Birmingham - how did I pick up that misconception?
No comments :
Post a Comment