 |
| (Screenshot by Ken Drew) |
(Jazz North East/Jazz Co-op promotion)
Normally, a tenor, bass and drums trio would have me less than enthusiastic about what lay ahead - Sonny Rollins and Joshua Redman being notable exceptions. However, having reviewed Josephine Davies' recent album How Can we Wake? I knew what to expect - or so I thought!
That album was very much Indian related and perhaps the thinking was that even a jazz Indian variant might deter the punters or, more likely, it was due to the fact that bass and drums were different to the players on the album.
Whatever, as it was, we were fed a superb set of modern jazz that moved effortlessly from relatively straight forward hard bop to excursions into the freer areas but, at no point were the Fire Brigade or the RSPCA called in!
The Dancing Saint paid tribute to Coltrane.
Something Small saw bass and tenor playing the theme in unison before both embarked on lyrical solos with Smalley making sure that lyricism didn't turn to schmaltz - as if!
Mudita (Joy) drew the first whoops and hollers of the night - there would be more.
In the Corners of Clouds and The Yips (?) brought us up to the interval.
If I thought the first set was good - and it was - the second set was out of this world!
Ask Me Now just happens to be my favourite Monk ballad and this was as good a version as I've heard outside of the Five Spot Café. The bass and tenor solos would have had the composer dancing around the piano! Take a bow Ms Charlotte Rouse.
Paradoxy, Josephine explained, was based on Sonny Rollins' Doxy which made it a contrafact. Now, as Doxy itself was a contrafact of Ja-Da this was in fact a contrafact of a contrafact - any advance?
Daya (compassion) made for a more sombre mood but Ornette's The Turnaround swung like crazy and Josephine's own composition Lady was another blast.
No comments :
Post a Comment