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Bebop Spoken There

Spasmo Brown: “Jazz is an ice cream sandwich! It's the Fourth of July! It's a girl with a waterbed!”. (Syncopated Times, July, 2024).

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!"

Simon Spillett: A lovely review from the dean of jazz bloggers, Lance Liddle...

Josh Weir: I love the writing on bebop spoken here... I think the work you are doing is amazing.

Postage

17421 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 695 of them this year alone and, so far, 100 this month (Sept. 30).

From This Moment On ...

October

Fri 04: Satoko Fujii @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. £8.00. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & Lit & Phil.
Fri 04: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 04: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 04: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 04: Amirtha Kidambi w. Manon McCoy @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 6:20pm. £8.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. Gem Arts, JNE & Lit & Phil.
Fri 04: Ziv Taubenfeld/Olie Brice/Kresten Osgood + Andy Champion + Izumi Kimura & Gerry
Hemingway @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 7:20pm. £10.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & Lit & Phil.
Fri 04: Maggie Nicols & Tim Dalling: As I Sing & Breathe @ The Tute, Ridley Terrace, Cambois NE24 1QS. 7:30pm. Free. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com. ‘Songs & Improvisations’ - Nicols, Dalling & guests.
Fri 04: Jeremy McMurray & the Pocket Jazz Orchestra @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm.
Fri 04: John Rowland Quartet @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sat 05: Maggie Nicols & Tim Dalling: Musical Boxing Training @ The Tute, Ridley Terrace, Cambois NE24 1QS. 2:30pm. Free. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com. ‘A workshop for musical improvisers’. An event in a boxing ring!
Sat 05: Lewis Watson Quartet @ Wylam Village Institute, Church Road, Wylam NE41 8AP. Doors 7:00pm. Tickets £15.00. + £1.50. bf, available from: www.gigantic.com.
Sat 05: Joseph Carville Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 05: Bright Street Big Band @ Washington Arts Centre. From 7:00pm. £12.00. Bright Street Big Band on stage at 7:30pm, preceded at 7:00pm by a swing dance taster session.
Sat 05: J.A.M. String Collective + Tara Cunningham + The Flame @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 7:20pm. £10.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & Lit & Phil.
Sat 05: Heavy Drunk @ Anarchy Brewery, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £15.00. + £1.50. bf. ‘Mississippi Delta Blues Experience’ feat. Heavy Drunk, Watermelon Slim & Leonardo Giuliani.
Sat 05: Maggie Nicols & Tim Dalling: Musical Boxing Night @ The Tute, Ridley Terrace, Cambois NE24 1QS. 7:30pm. Free. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com. Nicols, Dalling ao. An event in a boxing ring!
Sat 05: Milne-Glendinning Band @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free.
Sat 05: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 05: Ian Millar & Dominic Spencer @ Swarland Village Hall NE65 9JG. 8:00pm. £12.00.

Sun 06: Smokin’ Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm (12:30pm doors). £7.50.
Sun 06: Luis Verde Quartet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 06: Sax Choir @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 06: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 06: Catriona Bourne Quartet + Heather Ferrier + Emma Johson’s Gravy Boat @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. £10.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & The Globe.

Mon 07: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 07: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 6:30-8:30pm. Free.

Tue 08: ???

Wed 09: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free. Wed 09: Jason Isaacs @ St James’ STACK, Newcastle. 5:00-7:00pm. Free.
Wed 09: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 09: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 09: The Tannery Jam Session @ The Tannery, Gilesgate, Hexham. 7:00-9:00pm. Free. A ‘second Wednesday in the month’ jam session.
Wed 09: Shunya, Dudù Kouate & Seb Rochford @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 8:30pm (7:30pm doors). £21.00.

Thu 10: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 10: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘Collaborations - it happened all the time’.
Thu 10: Indigo Jazz Voices w. the Little Big Band @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:45pm. £5.00.
Thu 10: Side Cafe Orkestar @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 10: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. With guests Donna Hewitt (sax); Bill Watson (trumpet); Graham Thompson (keys); Ron Smith (bass). Free.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Album review: Matthew Stevens - Pittsburgh

(Press release)

He may not have known it before, but Toronto-born, New York-based guitarist Matthew Stevens, prized for his forceful, distinctive electric sound on Esperanza Spalding’s groundbreaking “Emily’s D+Evolution”, “Exposure” and the GRAMMY-winning 1’2 Little Spell’s, was an ideal candidate to make an album fully devoted to solo acoustic guitar: the intimate, unadorned, straightforwardly titled Pittsburgh.

Stevens’ previous two outings, Woodwork (2015) and Preverbal (2017), made use of steel-string acoustic as a vibrant textural contrast, notably on “Brothers” and “Our Reunion” (featuring Spalding as guest and co-composer). Still, a solo acoustic album seemed to Stevens like a ‘maybe someday’ prospect, if that. Then came the convergence of two major events — the COVID-19 pandemic and a fractured elbow.

By September 2020, Stevens was hunkering down in his wife’s family’s hometown of Pittsburgh, still busy with adjunct teaching (virtually) at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute while navigating his way through the crisis. He had with him a vintage Martin 00-17, a small-body mahogany guitar that he bought not long after recording Exposure with Spalding (the studio had a different one in its possession and Stevens used it fairly extensively on that album). Practicing daily on the Martin, he began generating a series of short song “starts” — ideas and sketches he thought might lead somewhere. With the help of his friend, go-to drummer and producer Eric Doob, he made preliminary versions of some of the Pittsburgh material for The Jazz Gallery’s virtual “Lockdown Sessions” video series, and the vision started to take on a more concrete form.

Then one rainy Pittsburgh day, Stevens’ bike slid out from under him and he broke his right elbow. Rather than getting derailed musically, he became immersed in a creative process that led straight to Pittsburgh: a document of those short song ‘starts’ from the notebook, now hatched as completed compositions. “Playing this music became a big part of my rehab,” Stevens recalls. “My aunt is a physical therapist, so I was doing sessions with her online. She said that what we do as guitar players is so specific, it uses muscle groups we’re not even aware of. She told me I needed to start playing as soon as I could, so those things don’t seize up and you don’t lose strength. She said, ‘I know you can’t lift a shopping bag, but if you feel like you can play at all you should play.’ I really could have been flailing, but the solo project offered me a different path: I had material to work on and I could just lose myself in it because it required so much repetition, such close attention to things that are slow and deliberate. It spared me from a lot of mental anguish.”

As the album took shape, it became clear to Stevens that he was headed in
the direction of a wholly unaccompanied recital, with no overdubs or sound layering of any kind. Just him and this special Martin, two Neumann U89 mics and enough peace of mind across two separate sessions to make Pittsburgh the triumph that it is. “I’ve always felt that playing acoustic is a great way to develop a touch and a connection to an instrument,” Stevens comments. “There’s no apparatus that helps you be expressive, play dynamically, or create ambience on an acoustic guitar. So when you develop that, it’s something you can carry with you into playing electric.”

Compositionally, there are discernible families of songs on Pittsburgh: the rapidly flowing, intricately arpeggiated pattern pieces such as “Purpose of a Machine,” “Can Am” (named in honour of Stevens’ recently acquired American citizenship) and “Cocoon” (a thorough reworking of a piece first heard on Preverbal); the tranquil, hymn-like songs “Foreign Ghosts,” “Ending Is Beginning” and “Miserere”; and the grittier, more timbrally “outside” inventions such as “Ambler” and “Northern Touch.” Throughout, we hear a rich resonance and immediacy in Stevens’ touch, a flavour all his own, even as he draws inspiration from John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Marc Ribot and other jazz guitar greats who’ve made acoustic exploration a significant part of their legacy.

Release date October 8, Whirlwind Recordings WR4779. YouTube link.

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