Alex Roth (guitar & effects), Joe Wright (tenor
saxophone & electronics), Nick Roth (alto saxophone), James Opstad
(electric bass) & Simon Roth (drums)
(Review by
Russell)
Firebrick, the
recently established micro brewery in Blaydon vied for attention on the
bar at the Bridge Hotel. A good start to another Splinter at the Bridge
Sunday night session! The upstairs room sparsely populated, guitarist and
band leader Alex Roth took to the stage with tenor player Joe
Wright (earlier pre-occupied setting-up his Apple Mac) and for the
next half hour or so the duo painstakingly created a
pastoral electro-acoustic soundscape, dissolving, fading, resolved.
Down at the bar things were looking up. The George N Porter Brewery (Whitley Bay
We got more, numerically, as the fully-fledged band, the
quintet, played the second set. Family Roth produce musicians. The drum
chair belonged to Simon Roth. Lovely old kit, north east drummers should
have been there, they would surely have drooled over it (hopefully not
literally). And Simon could play. So many fabulous drummers. Get to the Bridge
- they turn up every other week! Five string electric bassist James Opstad kept
things simple or rather made it look deceptively so.
The second set took the form of a suite - the Bielski Suite - written by the band leader, taking
as its inspiration the story of the heroic Bielski partisans - the Bielski
Otriad - during WWII in occupied Poland
Russell.
1 comment :
As I am only too happy to acknowledge that Russell has more extensive knowledge about jazz in his little finger than I have managed to garner over an intermittent career as a fan (so I do hope this wasn't the digit injured in the recent 'incident') I am always interested in his view of what's happening at a gig. Therefore a Hmmmm as an interim review at half time in this gig was a significant pointer, if a little unspecific. However another attendee I met outside the Bridge as I arrived was a bit more enthusiastic, 'Yeah, good, man' he said.
So as I took my seat for the second half with my fairly ordinary pint of Deuchars, my heart sank a bit when the band leader said the second set was going to consist of one continuous piece only.
However, this did not last long as I was instantly intrigued by the story behind the Bielski Suite and as Russell says, this was the business. Great playing and continually engaging music, so much so that I never got to get a second pint as I was not wanting to miss anything.
So double Hmmmm, definitely last week's Gig of the Year!
JC
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