Graeme Wilson (tenor
saxophone) & Paul Edis (piano)
(Review by Russell/Photo courtesy of Mike Tilley)
Wilson and Edis play Monk. Eagerly anticipated. This
Saturday evening the Jazz Café drew Mionk disciples, Caff habitués and the
regular slew of city centre circuit drinkers.
Thelonious Monk would have liked the Caff’s piano – he surely played worse pianos, much
worse. Graeme Wilson’s flying visit to
the north east (he had played the Opus 4 Jazz Club in Darlington the previous
evening) heard him on tenor in the company of a long-time musical friend,
pianist Paul Edis.
The front row crowd attentive, others – the cloth-eared
– less so, heard two sets of the finest jazz one could wish to hear. Bright Mississippi, with the chord changes to Sweet
Georgia Brown right there, opened the programme. It couldn’t get any
better, could it? Crepuscule with Nellie –
it just got better and better! Graeme Wilson always plays the perfectly
conceived solo, whatever the tune, the construction logical, fully formed. The
duo format can be something of a high-wire act, the musicians exposed to the
dangers less evident in larger ensembles. Every nuanced note heard, Wilson and
Edis have an empathetic, if not telepathic, understanding. Edis’ piano playing
continues to astonish – Monk with baroque right hand and stride left. Complex,
brain-befuddling, the trick, if there is one, must be in the compartmentalising
(in the brain) of two disparate musical ideas.
A ballad – Light
Blue – should have been heard in reverential silence. No chance. The
punters were in talkative mood. At one point during the evening Jazz Café
proprietor Mike Tilley told the unruly to shut up or get out. Keith Crombie
would have approved! The Monk disciples applauded spontaneously – things were hotting
up! Four in One – perhaps the tune of
the night – reached new heights. To top the lot Nutty was nothing short of brilliant. The deafening applause, short
of a standing ovation, won an encore. Wilson and Edis’ gig is a real contender
for Gig of the Year, that’s how good it was.
Russell.
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