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Bebop Spoken There

Art Blakey: "You [Bobby Watson] don't want to play too long, because you don't know they're clapping because they're glad you finished!" - (JazzTimes, Nov. 2019)..

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

15848 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 855 of them this year alone and, so far, 53 this month (Sept. 18).

From This Moment On ...

September

Thu 21: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 21: La Malbec Orchestra @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Thu 21: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.
Thu 21: Linsday Hannon: Tom Waits for No Man @ Harbour View, Sunderland. 8:00pm. Free.
Thu 21: Ray Stubbs R & B All Stars @ The Schooner, Gateshead. 8:30pm. Free.
Thu 21: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 9:00pm.

Fri 22: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 22: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 22: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm.
Fri 22: Brief Encounter @ Bardon Mill Village Hall, Northumberland. 7:00pm. Tickets: £10.00. adv from 07885 303166; £12.00. on the door. Chris & Veronica Perrin improvising to a screening of the 1929 'Jazz Age' silent film Piccadilly (Dir. Ewald André Dupont).
Fri 22: Paul Edis & Graeme Wilson + Three Tsuru Origami @ Jesmond United Reformed Church, Newcastle. 7:30pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 22: Crooners @ Tyne Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Fri 22: Abbie Finn's Finntet @ Traveller's Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.

Sat 23: Tyne Valley Big Band @ Tanfield Railway, Gateshead. 2:00-4:00pm. Free. A '1940s Weekend' event.
Sat 23: Jason Isaacs @ Stack, Seaburn. 3:30-5:30pm. Free.
Sat 23: Andrew Porritt & Keith Barrett @ Cullercoats Watch House, Front St., Cullercoats NE30 4QB. 7:00pm.
Sat 23: Michael Woods @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig. Country blues.

Sun 24: Musicians Unlimited @ Park Inn, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free.
Sun 24: More Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.

Mon 25: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Mon 25: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 7:00pm.

Tue 26: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.

Wed 27: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 27: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 27: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Thursday, July 08, 2021

Album review: Daniel Herskedal - Harbour

Daniel Herskedal (tuba, bass trumpet; Eyolf Dale (piano, celesta); Helge Andreas Norbakken (drums, marimba)

Freshly caught from an island off the coast of Norway, the latest programmatic imagined-landscape fantasia from the tuba wizard and his talented compatriots, with publicity photos looking like a flier for a new, moody Scandi crime drama.  This is the core of the band who graced Sage 2 in 2019 and have been rightly lauded for their trilogy of albums Slow Eastbound Train, The Roc and Voyage.

Harbour is an extension of this musical line with Edition Records, rather than Herskedal’s austere 2020 solo lockdown offering “Call for Winter’, which won the Spellemann Award (Norwegian Grammy). Here we have a continuous cinematic vision, blending folk, jazz, classical and Arabic strains – an uninterrupted line from Persian Gulf to Norwegian fjord – by sea of course.  

This version of the band omits the lush viola playing of Bergmund Waal Skaslien, and initially I feared this would be a noticeable loss. While Skaslien is hardly a soloist in the mould of Mahavishnu’s Jerry Goodman, or the remarkable more contemporary Adam Baldych, he augmented the band’s sound perfectly with swooning legato lines. Interestingly, I hardly missed him here, as Herskedal effortlessly takes on both lead and bass lines to compensate, and Eyolf Dale steps up a gear with achingly wholesome melodic lines echoing and inter-weaving with the tuba.

Herskedal’s tuba mastery and extended techniques (singing, puffing, swooping) seem to have reached an even higher plane - literally sometimes, at pitches some trumpeters would be pleased with! But he never strays beyond artistry into showing off, and the composition, sound and orchestration are so well executed that you forget the unusual instrumentation.  Supporting and enhancing the virtuoso tuba and piano is the restless and atmospheric force of nature emanating from percussion maestro Norbakken, who starred on the recent excellent LAN Atlantico (link).

Standout tracks include The Lighthouse on the Horizon, scion of The Lighthouse on the 2019 Voyage, with gorgeous call and response between piano and tuba.  Hunters Point Drydocks is a delightful syncopated romp in fivewith light as a feather tuba bass figures.  Dancing dhow deckhands is an Arabic romp, an intricate and multi-dimensional adventure in the eastern soundscapes beloved of Yazz Ahmed.

Herskedal has pulled off the difficult trick of further developing and extending his line of conceptually similar albums with another significant work sitting on the Nordic classical-folk shoreline of jazz.  Very highly recommended – a marine treasure chest of subtle melody, emotion and rhythmic intrigue, which yields fresh delights at every listening.

Chris K

 Release date: 02.07.21 CD, LP, Digital at Edition and Bandcamp.

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