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Bebop Spoken There

Abbie Finn: "Even though there's a lot of great work being done to promote women in jazz, I still come up against some attitudes! I pulled up at a recording session with my drums in the car and the studio owner said, 'I'm sorry, this space is reserved for the drummer!'" - (Jazzwise April 2023).

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Postage

15245 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 264 of them this year alone and, so far, 77 this month (March 25).

From This Moment On ...

March

Wed 29: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 29: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 29: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 7:00pm.
Wed 29: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Thu 30: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Gateshead Central Library. 2:30-4:30pm. £2.00. All welcome.
Thu 30: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. Back to 1:00pm stomp off. Free.
Thu 30: Castillo Nuevo @ Revolución de Cuba, Newcastle. 5:30-8:30pm.
Thu 30: '58 Jazz Collective @ Hops & Cheese, Hartlepool. 7:30pm. Free.
Thu 30: Lindsay Hannon: Tom Waits for No Man @ Harbour View, Sunderland. 8:00pm.
Thu 30: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 9:00pm.

Fri 31: Lewis Watson Quartet @ Bishop Auckland Town Hall. 1:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 31: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 31: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 31: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm. CANCELLED! Back next week (April 7).
Fri 31: Castillo Nuevo @ Revolución de Cuba, Newcastle. 5:30-8:30pm.
Fri 31: Jasmine Myra + Waclaw Zimpel @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm.
Fri 31: The Revolutionaires @ The Shack, Boldon Colliery. 7:30pm. £10.00. The Revolutionaires' big band (horn section) line-up.
Fri 31: Andrew McCormack @ Maltings, Berwick. 8:00pm. £20.00.

April
Sat 01: The Big Easy @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm.
Sat 01: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Tutor: Steve Glendinning - In a Minor Key. £25.00. Enrol at: www.jazz.coop.
Sat 01: Abbie Finn Trio @ The Vault, Darlington Covered Market, Darlington DL1 5PN. 6:00pm. New venue, live jazz!
Sat 01: Boys of Brass @ Stack, Seaburn. 7:00-9:00pm.
Sat 01: Hot Club du Nord @ Pleased to Meet You, Bridge St., Morpeth. 8:00pm. £79.00. A charity fundraising event.
Sat 01: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00. RESCHEDULED to next week (Sat 08).

Sun 02: Smokin' Spitfires @ The Cluny. 12:45pm.
Sun 02: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 3:00pm.

Mon 03: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.

Tue 04: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.
Tue 04: Jam session @ Black Swan, Newcastle Arts Centre. 7:30pm. House trio: Bradley Johnston (guitar); Paul Grainger (double bass); Abbie Finn (drums).

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Three Piece Suites? Triptych @ Gosforth Civic Theatre - May 10

Paul Susans (bass); Rob Walker (drums); Paul Edis (piano/clarinet).
(Review by Jerry)
A very agreeable venue: easy to find, free parking, tables set out in jazz-lounge style and a good bar featuring Pennine Pale on draught. That made me feel at home!
We were promised a splendid set of “genre-busting tunes” and Triptych served up just that. Montage – an Edis original, from his solo CD, Just Like Me, – was first up, and very different in trio format. Louder and more dramatic here: it would still work well in a film but a different kind of film! Sketch 69A was penned by bassist, Paul Susans, resident of Hexham and familiar with the A69 after which the piece is named. A sonorous bass intro then a driving, rhythmic tune helped along, at first, by Walker’s brushes then intensified later when he switched to sticks and cut loose.

Walker’s drumming – I should really say percussion, as so many effects were created not only with the hands, at least two different kind of sticks, brushes and mallets but also with less expected kit such as producing a metallic saw-like “zing” by running a bow across the edge of high-hat or cymbal and, for a long spell in one of the suites, producing rhythms on an udu drum which featured in my notes as “a pot-thingy”! I wasn’t actually that far wrong, “udu” being the word for vessel or pot in Igbo (Nigerian). Being next to the drums isn’t always ideal but here it was a pleasure.

The name, Triptych, is most apt: not a front man backed by two others but three equals working together to make one compelling and varied sound – brilliant!
Paul Susans started on upright bass, as in a conventional trio with brief solos gaining applause in Montage and Moonlight in Vermont, for example. About half way through the set he switched to electric bass and did amazing things with a foot-controlled gizmo which moved the group from standards into funk and beyond, almost to prog-rock. We were promised genre-busting and we got it in spades!

Edis, not content with scintillating piano, gave us clarinet in Moonlight in Vermont and in both of the suites. And all three are composers – numbers by the two Pauls including bassist Paul’s 12th.Moon of Venus being capped by Rob Walker’s Mr. Blister: rousing enough to be an encore and funky enough to be categorised in my notes as “all about the bass”!

Fragmented Suite consists of 3 parts: Murmuration (Edis); Dr. Gonzo (Susans) and Dark Ages (Edis again?).  Murmuration, as with Montage earlier, is so different to the CD version. Here, loud bass and noisy cymbals make the birds less starlings, more Hitchcockian crows! Bass, appropriately, linked us into Dr. Gonzo featuring the aforementioned hand drumming, then we arrived at the most memorably atmospheric “fragment” of the evening, The Dark Age. Plaintive clarinet against resonant bass (bowed sometimes like a wailing wind) with Walker’s udu drum adding weird rhythms all make this dark indeed: think Glencoe (when mallets and loud piano ramp up the volume later it sounds like a battle is in progress), think Macduff’s line: new widows howl, new orphans cry” – it’s powerfully evocative. It quietens briefly as Walker deploys his zinging bow then builds up to a deafening crescendo at the end. No wonder Edis announces: “Now for something completely different” before launching into the two “moon” tunes!

73 is another three-piece, incorporating Cerebral, Beer for Breakfast and 73 Rhythms (?) by Edis, Susans and Walker respectively. Electric bass provided a loud opening and at times, in Cerebral, carried the melody too. At one point (we may have been into Beer for Breakfast now, I’m not sure) Susans was playing so high it sounded like a 6-string lead guitar before reverting to funky bass. Walker with mallets and cymbals held the fort solo while bowed double bass and clarinet reappeared. A low double bass note was indefinitely sustained by the gizmo while its player walked over to his electric bass and the two sounds merged, Edis, meanwhile, was (loudly) back at the keys and from here it was all about the drums with Walker conjuring up a big, crescendo finish!

I had not seen Triptych for about 18 months. I will not leave it as long till the next time: as my grandson would say: “It was awesome!”
Jerry.

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