Album review: Betty Accorsi Quartet - The Cutty Sark Suite

Elizabetta Accorsi (soprano sax); Finn Carter (piano); Andy Hamill (bass/elec. bass); Scott MacDonald (drums).

Apart from being a fine blended whisky, Cutty Sark was, long before that, an English clipper operating the tea trade route between London and China over a period of 85 years before being retired in 1954. She, the ship, is now dry-docked in Greenwich and is still a big tourist attraction.

Accorsi spent a year living in Greenwich during which time she formed an attachment to the "local monument" which led her to compose and perform the music we hear here. It's an impressive work with each movement representing a stage of the return journey from Shanghai via Indonesia, South Africa and, finally, London.

The soprano sax playing is wild and captures the varying moods of the different places driven all the way by MacDonald's forceful drumming with piano and bass solos offering an occasional break from the storm.

Shanghai is represented with The Golden Wave, a piece inspired by the traditional Chinese stringed instrument the Erhu.

The inspiration for The In Between is Indonesian Gamelan music that somehow evolves into a tribute to Jaco Pastorius (you couldn't make it up!) which bizarre as it might seem really works. 

At the Edge of the Wave draws inspiration from warrior Zulu dances with a a funky nod to saxist Basil Coetzee in the middle

The arrival back home is unusual. An arrangement of a traditional English Folk Song - All Things Are Quite Silent composed by R.V. Williams in 1904. It's the lament of a woman whose husband is press-ganged into the navy. 

It starts as the title implies with Accorsi reading a couple of stanzas from the original lyric:

            All things are quite silent each mortal at rest,

                   When me and my true love lay snug in one nest,

                   When a bold set of ruffians burst into our cave,

                   And they forced my dear jewel to plough the salt wave.

                   Through green fields and meadows we oft times have walked,

                   And sweet conversation of love we have talked,

                   With the birds in the woodland so sweetly did sing,

                   And the lovely thrushes' voices made the valleys to sing.

The pace changes as the action switches to the husband forced to face a hostile and treacherous sea. It's now all hands on their instruments with everyone wailing over frenetic Latin rhythms - perhaps the ship has gone off course - whatever it brings the piece to a glorious and dramatic climax. 

Compulsive listening!

Lance

Released on Dec. 11 Promo video.