Christian Alderson (d), Pol Belardi (b), Maxime Bender (p, sax), Manu Codjia (g), David Fettman (sax), Niels Engel (d), Jerome Klein (p, d), Sascha Ley (v), Faye MacCalman (sax, clarinet), Laurent Payfert (b), John Pope (b)
(Review & Photos by Ken Drew)
For the third consecutive year Jazz North East kicked off their new programme with an all-dayer focusing on the jazz musicians from a single European country, Luxembourg, which is one of the smallest countries in Europe yet contains a rich mix of musical talent based on the evidence we saw today.
Whilst following a similar format to JNE's French showcase in 2016 which centred around young Paris musicians, and last year’s Netherlands extravaganza which drew heavily on the free jazz scene centred on Amsterdam, this year saw an even bigger mix of musicians across the 10 sets across the day. This included an opening set by our local Archipelago who kicked things off for the 2pm start, but would re-appear in various combinations later on as part of a mission to build creative links between Jazz North East’s ever-growing European connections. The Luxembourg musicians then further demonstrated the available array of jazz talent assembled for the day, starting with the witty interplay of vocalist Sascha Ley & bassist Laurent Payfert, followed by Pol Belardi's 'Force' with David Fettmann on Alto sax, Jerome Klein on piano, Pol Belardi on bass and Neils Engel on drums.
In between these 'main' performances were interleaved carefully selected duos and trios who played short 20 minutes sets to demonstrate the true universality of music across regional boundaries. First to open up the Luxembourg groupings were Maxime Bender (switching from piano to sax, then to finish, back to piano), David Fettmann and Jerome Klein, then a new working partnership of Faye MacCalman and Manu Codjia. These worked superbly well, with not a musical boundary in sight, the joint playing getting stronger by the minute as they established common ground to explore.
Overall this was a truly successful melting pot of musical talents producing a diverse range of styles and free jazz of very high quality. Even more diversity of styles was to follow in the evening session .......... but by 5:50pm it was time for a musical rest and to savour the anticipation of what was to follow.
Ken Drew
Photos.
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