Nick Malcolm Quartet @ The Bridge Hotel. January 17

Nick Malcolm (trumpet), Alex Hawkins (keyboards), Olie Brice (double bass) & Mark Whitlam (drums)

Jazz North East’s first gig of 2013 brought trumpeter Nick Malcolm to Tyneside. It was a case of Trains, Planes and Automobiles in getting the quartet to the Bridge Hotel. Malcolm travelled in the auto with pianist Alex Hawkins, encountering heavy snow north of Yorkshire. Olie Brice and his bull fiddle let the train take the strain and it was down to the affluent drummer Mark Whitlam to take the short-hop plane journey from Bristol to Newcastle (only joking Mark…there was a cheap flight available!). Whitlam arrived with sticks in hand (Splinter’s house kit was at his disposal) having caused alarm at Bristol airport - officious types suspected he posed a terrorist threat! What to do? Whitlam took out his brushes to demonstrate a shuffle!
The presence of Alex Hawkins suggested this would be some gig. The pianist had played several gigs on Tyneside in recent times and never failed to deliver the goods. So too Olie Brice, most recently heard at the Cluny with Ken Vandermark. The quartet performed numbers from their debut CD Glimmers and tried out some new material, so new the sound check allowed a last minute run through of heads and codas. The first tune, the eponymous Glimmers introduced trumpeter Malcolm as a supremely gifted musician; confident, accomplished, imaginative. The second number - There’s Led in Their Pencils - pointed to a lineage many a jazz fan would have got, no problem. My scribbled notes read Monkish. Dazzling playing, in and out of tempi, the swinging pulse of Brice (outstanding), the revelatory drumming of Whitlam and the prodigiously talented Hawkins playing around with a quirky, retro Fender Rhodes sound! Bandleader Nick Malcolm is a trumpet player for the twenty first century fully conversant with the post war history of his instrument. Close your eyes and this was Dizzy, Freddie and Miles. Ferocious volleys, squeezed quarter notes. Wow! Another Bridge premièred piece - Its Alright We’re Going to the Zoo – unleashed mighty solos and after two sets a third set, a lock-in and more wonderful contemporary jazz would have been paradise. The band’s second CD release should be out sometime later this year. A tour will follow and a Tyneside date must surely be on the itinerary. Be there

Russell.