The Quakerhouse
is a CAMRA award-winning pub, it features more or less perennially when the
gongs are handed out. Darlington Jazz Club meets regularly in the upstairs room
and top quality blues bands play the venue week in week out. The downstairs bar
in Mechanics’ Yard hosts the annual Saturday afternoon session of the
Darlington Jazz Festival and this year’s event featured three bands with local
connections.
The Dean Stockdale Trio (Stockdale, piano, Grant Russell, double bass and Adam Dawson, drums) opened
the show at one o’clock. This, a second lunchtime gig in two days (a monthly
gig has recently been established by Mick Shoulder at Bishop Auckland Town
Hall), heard Stockdale firing on all cylinders ahead of his soon-to-be-released
new CD. Working with him on this festival engagement were the Greater
Manchester bass and drums pairing of Grant Russell (the bearded bassist would
be staying over to play the Nick Ross Orchestra’s Glenn Miller show at the
Forum, Billingham on Sunday) and Adam Dawson, heard recently at the festival up
the road in Gateshead . Joyspring, Jobim’s Triste,
Mingus’ Nostalgia in Times Square –
exactly the sort of material to play on a Saturday afternoon to a crowd of jazz
fans and the unsuspecting casual
drinker. Stockdale’s fluent piano playing, observing the melody, met the
approval of the crowded room. Depping Grant Russell’s propulsive bass playing
worked a treat in the low-ceilinged ancient hostelry. Stockdale, Russell and
drummer Adam Dawson were literally in touching distance of one another such is
the cramped ‘performance’ space in the Quakerhouse.
Stockdale’s own
compositions sat well in the set list of standards; the pretty tune Another Time and Pike Place two of the pianist’s tunes, the latter an opportunity to
stretch out just as Oscar Peterson did on countless occasions. The room
thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Dean Stockdale Trio and having closed with Moonlight in Vermont (Dawson ’s excellent brush work), and Out of Nowhere the audience insisted on
another one. As an encore Stockdale enquired: Have You Met Miss Jones?



The Rick Laughlin Trio with Alan Thompson: Laughlin, piano, Bruce Rollo, double bass, Ian Halford,
drums, and Alan Thompson, tenor
saxophone played for one hour, friends together in the confines of the
‘comfortable’ Quakerhouse. From time to time Halford craned his neck around the
frame of slap king bassist Rollo to make eye contact with Laughlin, checking on
a musical, as opposed to snooker, cue. Thompson’s relaxed, warm tenor style
drew listeners to the heart of the music – Beautiful
Love, Out of Nowhere, Stolen Moments (Rollo taking a solo), Sister Sadie, fine, indeed dazzlingly,
piano playing on Sugar, and Charlie
Parker’s rarely heard Barbados.
Laughlin, stylistically not unlike maestro Alan Glen, is a welcome addition to
the north east jazz scene. This festival date is likely to lead to bookings
elsewhere – perhaps Durham ’s
Empty Shop for one. Rick Laughlin concluded the set with Skylark and, for an encore, What
is This Thing Called Love? Rick Laughlin is back, good news indeed.
Earlier at
Joseph Pease Place trumpeter Matt Roberts conducted a performance by a group of
emerging young musicians. Solid ensemble work, concise solos, Saturday shoppers
stopped by to listen – they couldn’t fail to be anything other than impressed.
As the festival programme proudly proclaimed…DARLINGTON JAZZ FESTIVAL BRINGING JAZZ TO THE TOWN CENTRE.
Russell.
1 comment :
Rick Loughlin and co played the Empty Shop a couple of years back, I think a Tony Eales intervention. They did some Grover Washington Jnr - the Jazz-funk before the smooth - which was a breath of fresh air for me.
They seem to have come in around the same time as me but, while I bought lots of records and got drunk, they learnt how to play it. Respect.
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