Community Choir and Loco Wheels Show Jazz is on the Right Track.
(Review by David Gosling)
This
double bill Darlington Jazz Festival event took place at The Friend Meeting
House on Sunday afternoon to a packed audience – and stage.
The Vocal Collective,
a Darlington based community choir, having only been in existence for 6 months
turned up with forty or so of their members to perform this, only their second,
gig. Led by Liz Shevells (piano) and Katie Hibbard (conductor) the ensemble
soon steadied the nerves with a joyous and lively version of George Gershwin’s Summertime. If this opening number was
apt given the beautiful day we had on Sunday the choir’s second number was even
more so as they would be followed by Locomotive Rhythm who would pay homage to
Darlington’s railway heritage. The choir launched themselves into Choo Choo Ch’boogie.
Goodnight
Sweetheart brought a little doo wop into the repertoire before the Vocal
Collective completed their set with three traditional into modern music
medleys. The folk blues song Black is the
Colour seamlessly blending into a Fleetwood Mac hit after a beautiful
Siobhan solo. Cold Play then got into the act as they were mixed into the
gospely Magic and they finished off
with a mix of the Eurythmics’
Sweet Dreams and Adele’s Rolling in the Deep entitled Rolling in the Dreams.
A
superb performance from a fledgling outfit which promises much more for the
future and for me the stand out number was a Jim Papoulis song entitled Can you Hear? in which a delightful solo
was delivered by Judith.
Locomotive Rhythm turned
out to be a project for ‘Darlington railway heritage buff’ and drummer Graeme
Robinson in which he teamed up with his old school pal, multi-instrumentalist
and composer Phil Taylor to improvise music inspired by railways and Graeme’s
newly cast railway wheel cymbals. The sight of Graeme’s drum kit was worth the
entrance fee on its own.
Fittingly
the first notes of the set came from the five specially cast steel, alloy and
bronze loco wheels before Graeme launched into a five minute drum solo
introduction to Loco Wheels.
References
to Darlington’s railway heritage abounded in the song introductions as well as
their titles. Stone Sleepers, Myers Flat
Battery, Forty Foot Road, A DME Leaving Boro Station were tracks all paying
homage to the town’s industrial past – I believe!
Myers Flat Battery
featured Kevin Eland’s muted trumpet and brought back memories of the Miles
Davis sound from his ‘electric’ era. For the most part the funky fusion sound
was more reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters band than as suggested by
Jazz North East’s Paul Bream in his weekly ‘Jazz Alert’ communication that
Locomotive Rhythm would be akin to the more blander of The Crusaders output.
I
did, however, hear a little of The Crusaders in the track Forty Foot Road as Phil Taylor on keys, Graeme on his drums and
loco wheels and some great sax work from Alex Baker brought the tune to life.
And as if by magic a tune appeared later in the set that ended on the Crusaders
riff for Put it Where You Want it to prove Paul Bream right about the likeness
in sound but on this showing definitely not the blandness.
This
band, Graeme Robinson - drums, Phil
Taylor – keys, Kevin Eland – trumpet, Alex Baker – sax, Gavin Bell – bass and
Chris Rutherford – guitar produced a great sound for the first outing for
Locomotive Rhythm and this for me was most evident in Grey Horse a tune we were told was named after a pub at the end of
a horse drawn carriage link to the railway in Darlington.
The
finale saw all forty members of the Vocal Collective take the stage with
Locomotive Rhythm to wow the audience with a song dedicated to an 1800’s social
housing experiment called Hopetown – Built
on a Dream. The wonderful music produced by the band, forty voices and the
loco wheels was a fitting tribute to, not only Darlington’s railway heritage,
but also the vibrant jazz scene that thrives in the town today.
David Gosling,
Cumbria.
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