Noel Dennis (trumpet & flugelhorn); Dean Stockdale (piano)
(Review by Russell/photo by Lance from archives).
Together again at the Jazz Café, Noel Dennis and Dean Stockdale played a superlative set of standards. Autumn Leaves, Love for Sale (Noel Dennis straight at it with ideas flowing) and Beautiful Love (Dennis on flugelhorn). Dean Stockdale coaxed a tune out of an ailing upright. Two top flight musicians in top gear. Quite a start!
My Funny Valentine (‘a week late’, observed Dennis) featured sensitive flugelhorn. Kind of Blue yielded Freddie Freeloader with Wynton Kelly’s part taken on by Stockdale with value added stride into the bargain and Dennis hitting on a slurring N’Awlins’ vibe. Class playing, the audience showed its appreciation, an excellent first set.
Nostalgia in Times Square opened the second half with Stockdale’s penchant for stride in evidence and Dennis saying he had left his car in the nearby Times Square multi-storey car park! Tom Harrell’s Moon Alley got another runout. Trumpet players love Tom Harrell, this one a bossa feel, straight in. Alone Together was very together; fleet flugelhorn and a sparkling piano solo. Some Day My Prince Will Come, Blue in Green – the tunes kept on coming. Introducing the latter number whilst fitting a battered mute, Dennis recalled that one of his young children said to him as he was about to get in some practice: Dad, close the door.
The Saturday night Jazz Café crowd comprised the usual faces, the new and the transient. They were treated to – Humph would have concurred – the best of jazz. Determined to go out on a snorter, Dennis and Stockdale left them trailing in their wake on Au Privave. An insistent audience won an encore. Dennis’ lip was surely in danger of giving out. Superb playing all night, he and Stockdale took it down on There is no Greater Love.
Russell.
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