(Review by Hugh C).
Following
Russell's excellent (and accurate) review I would like to add my two penn'orth
(1/21st of Three and Six if my maths is correct!).
The brave few
ventured forth on the Saturday morning following to attend the Buck Clayton
Legacy Band Workshop. We duly arrived
and were ready and waiting (watches synchronised) outside the Northern Rock
Foundation Hall at 0955h sharp. After a
while one of the Sage Gatehsead stewards arrived and seemed surprised to find
the the tickets we eagerly proffered clearly bore the words Start Time: 10:00 AM.
The band apparently were under the impression that the workshop
commenced at 10:30 AM! One disgruntled
punter muttered the word ridiculous, but, hey man – that's Jazz!
The upside was
we had time to grab a coffee to take in.
As we entered the Hall the band's instruments were already laid out on
their stands ready. The full line-up
from Friday night were there by 1020, no-one looked the worse for wear,
although the trombonist, Adrian Fry, did try and blame a lapse of memory during
the morning on the earliness of the hour!
The workshop
commenced with a rousing rendition of Cotton Tail. The next musical item was Take the A
Train – the first part in the arrangement used in the Friday gig and the
second part straight. The overall format
of the morning was music/talk/music....
Alyn Shipton gave a brief introduction as to why the Buck Clayton
Legacy Band were playing Duke Ellington (one of the reasons was that
Buck and Duke were long-time friends, and indeed Duke Ellington was best man at
Buck's wedding). Each of the Legacy Band
musicians was then asked to paint a word picture of the Ellington Band
musicians who would have played their instrument(s). Some of these pictures took the form of a
question and answer dialogue between the band members. The result was a fascinating insight into the
history and practice of the Ellington Band and the approach that 21st
Century musicians took to this music.
The next
musical item was an illustration of a contrafact - a term apparently
only recently introduced to the remainder of the band by Alan Barnes. A contrafact is a musical composition
consisting of a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafact) and was beautfully illustrated by
playing Johnny Hodges' Shady Side (as on the Friday evening), but this
time preceded by a short extract from On
The Sunny Side of the Street.
When the time
came for Bobby Worth (the self-declared oldest member of the band) to talk
drummers he revealed the ace up his sleeve.
Bobby had actually seen the Ellington band play on two separate occasions
in London.
The morning was
a tour de force, both on the part of the band themselves and the
audience who numbered as many as a cricket team, but were richly rewarded and
also contributed themselves to an informed and interesting discussion during
the workshop.
The band (as we
were informed on several occasions) had a gig to get to in Maidstone the same
evening and were keen to get on the road.
An invited audience request of Mood Indigo provided an
illustrative Ellingtonian ballad (exquisitely played) followed the band's
choice of the more up-tempo Rockin' in Rhythm for a finale.
All in all an
excellent combination – and congratulations to Ros Rigby and the Sage for
programming these two events. It's a
shame that there was not a larger audience for the workshop, but this was more
than made up for by the near sell-out attendance the evening before.
Hugh.
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