Scarborough Jazz Festival: Saturday Afternoon - Sept. 25

Having over-indulged in gypsy jazz a few years back, Djanco featuring violinist Andy Aitchison signified my return after a couple of years rest. Gypsy jazz seems to have a community which thinks it’s the greatest style of jazz, or even the only style of jazz, while others find it passé and a bit of a novelty, which may be why it has a general appeal to jazz muggles. I’m somewhat agnostic but think it adds variety to a festival, though I think a Saturday afternoon slot is about right.

A standard setup of two guitars, violin and bass, these were great: great guitarist, great guest violinist, witty banter from the leader, who also played pocket trumpet (or at least a very small trumpet) and some flamenco influence to add to the standard gypsy fayre. Swing for Nanine, Kurt Weill’s September Song, apparently the signature tune for an old sitcom ‘From May to December’; not one I remember/ed.

 

Inevitably Minor Swing, which seems to have become the national anthem of gypsy jazz - or maybe it always has been – before a singalong to end; I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, perhaps giving some credence to those who think it’s all just a bit of fun, or maybe that’s no bad thing.

 

The Karen Sharp Quartet were already onstage when I got back to the hall and I was delighted to see her playing baritone, though having seen her several times with Alan Barnes, perhaps I should have known. Nor perhaps should I have been surprised to see Nikki Iles beside her at the piano. A solid saxophonist and is there a more reliable pair of hands at the piano? A dream team with a couple of men keeping their end up at the back.

 

A few of their favourite tunes she promised, correcting herself to say they were some of hers - she being the leader – including Bill Evans’ Interplay, Monk’s Pannonica, Clare Fisher’s Pensativa and John Scofield’s Not You Again, a reworking of There Will Never be Another You.

 

A fantastic way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but the best festivals always involve choices (and I was facing a bigger one in the evening), but with an accomplice who has come round to jazz but within limits, some time was needed in the late summer Scarborough sun, in anticipation of the most promising Saturday night at the Scarborough Festival in years. Steve T