What
I Heard For Free
(By Ann Alex/Photos courtesy of Ken Drew).



Sunday
Music students must sleep on Sunday
afternoons, as there were none of them there for The Tuesday Jam On Sunday, unless they’d been before I arrived at
1.30pm. Plenty of other good musicians were present: the house band of Alan Law (piano); Paul Gowland (alto sax);
Paul Grainger (bass); Russ Morgan (drums); plus Stu Finden (sax); Fiona Finden
(sax, vocals); Dave Weisser (cornet) Jude Murphy (sax, flute) Keith Barrett
(guitar). Fiona treated us to a lovely version of Secret Love, sung to a fast repeated 4-note riff from Stu’s sax;
then came Never Leave and Keith
joining in for No Moon At All. It was
interesting to see Alan on what I’d call the naked piano, no front at all,
listeners can see all the hammers in action, which I found a bit unnerving for
reasons I don’t understand.
Over to the Bridge Hotel, to catch the
last of The Improvisers Workshop, where
they were discussing the nature of such an event which raised all the usual
relevant points, such as how abstract is music compared with art, how many
musicians should be involved, what is composition and improvisation, is it best
to have a guiding format, what influence does politeness have on the music.
Then a piece was played with mixed success, a bit messy, involving voices, saxes,
drums, guitar, bass, keys, something metallic, bird sounds, shakers, clapping,
Morse code bleeps, bells. There followed a frank discussion which assessed the
piece well. The discussions were led by Dr
Graeme Wilson and Professor Raymond MacDonald. A final piece was played, a
much more successful work, many musical elements, fewer instruments playing at
once. Someone from the audience joined in with a spoon striking a glass, before
the saxes wound down and a calm guitar ended the piece. I’d advise everyone to
try free improvisation as an interesting challenge to add to your musical
experiences.
I enjoyed what I heard of this festival
and I’d like to see it repeated next year. Thank you especially to Wes
Stephenson, the Festival Producer.
Ann
Alex.
1 comment :
Well, things had warmed up nicely when Anne left. So, just to quickly fill the gap (from memory) - Noel Dennis/Dean Stockdale played many standards with a lovely sound as a duo and with fine individual solo spots along the way.
I often think it's a shame the pianist has to face away from the audience *and* the other players on stage. But this makes their sense of listening to 'the other player' more sensitive, and I think this was borne out when they played as a duo - perfect timing and wonderful interplay. And more than a touch of composing/arranging on-the-fly too.
Finally Raymond MacDonald/Graeme Wilson filled the last slot. Already the audience had diminished a little (it was close to 5pm anyway)but those who stayed *stayed the whole duration* to witness a fine display of improvisational musicianship. What made this slot even more interesting (for me anyway) were the brief interludes between the pieces when each performer said something about their background.
Their shared background in fact, as they had played and busked in Glasgow together many years ago (too many to mention here) - but this gave an interesting insight into their development and how they are able to think and play in such synchronism and read each others next steps, emphasising my previous comment when Dennis and Stockdale were playing together with superb interplay.
So, five distinctly different duos over five hours. Such high quality music for free, and providing a wonderfully warm atmosphere in the Jazz Cafe on a grey and sometimes wet Saturday afternoon. Ken D
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