Jamie Toms & Lloyd Wright @ The Jazz Café - November 17

Jamie Toms (tenor saxophone) & Lloyd Wright (guitar)

(Review by Russell) 

A first Jazz Café gig as a duo by Jamie Toms and Lloyd Wright. They work in music education, they lead and play in a number of bands, this booking was their Friday night out, the proverbial  ‘busman’s holiday’. The Friday night gig on Pink Lane can be problematic, ie a ‘drinking circuit’ culture prevails and, as the Jazz Café is open to all, there are occasions when some are a tad boisterous, and possibly oblivious to the music. Those there to listen to the music grabbed the prime seats at one end of the bar as the seated duo opened with Lou Marini’s Starmaker.

Starmaker, arranged by Roy Hargrove, Toms on tenor, Wright playing his trusty Telecaster with pedals at his feet, the duo’s set was up and running. During the evening Toms invariably took the first solo with Wright’s chordal accompaniment a secure touchstone. The pad departed from the familiar GASbook numbers heard usually on Friday night gigs in favour of a more contemporary (1960s to the present) set list. Ron Carter, Gary Burton/Keith Jarrett (In Your Quiet Place), Chick Corea’s Windows, musicians and composers to which Toms and Wright, likely as not, studied as students. Wright made judicious use of pedal effects, looping a groove over which he improvised with consummate ease. The Toms-Wright duo should do it again, with tunes from Roy Hargrove (Liquid Streets) and Kenny Barron’s Spiral and others, it’s clear an enduring partnership is in the making.

The boisterous few aside, perhaps a more varied set list, in terms of tempi, could have captured the attention of the many transient Jazz Café customers. Toms is an assured tenor saxophonist, Wright a fine guitarist with a back pocket full of chords and sinewy solo lines, the duo made new friends from among those hearing them for the first time. 

Russell.