Scarborough Jazz Festival: Sunday Evening - Sept. 26

By Sunday evening my mounting ailments were making me feel all of my newly arrived at sixty years. Sunday evening is an early finish with only two shows, but a two hour drive ahead and work on Monday, and with Mrs T all but  jazzed out, latte and a residency near the back of the hall was the order of the day.

The Phil Robson Trio were one of the bands that drew me back to the Scarborough Jazz Festival this year. Barnes introduced them as three virtuosos and Robson as one of the best guitarists in the world – no doubt about that. Ross Stanley was back, having circumnavigated the globe twice since Friday, in the world's only flying Hammond B3 Organ, playing thirty seven gigs across eight continents. Drummer Gene Calderazzo completed this incredible small group.

 

A couple of Robson originals: Second Thoughts and Ash Astral, the latter a tribute to Canadian born but mostly UK resident, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler.

 

Robson is a master guitarist in all departments, with little flash or chops for the sake of it, though this can be summoned when required. The best guitarists create space, mood and colours, with subtlety and understatement just as effective tools.    

Chomping at the Bit was based on I Got Rhythm and was followed by Never Let Me Go by Roy Harper by way of Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, from an album Robson has apparently played to death and I’ve come across many times, and it sounds like I need to bag one.

 

King Canute got funky and Thief was based on three Herbie Hancock pieces he’d stolen from.

 

Robson has recently moved from New York to Western Ireland, reflected in two new pieces: a ballad called Re-Valley and an up-tempo piece Callow Freeway, which apparently runs near his house, in Ireland not NYC.  

 

It was fitting that festival organiser Mike Gordon introduced the final act since it was a band led by Alan Barnes, who’d introduced all the bands up to that point, and in a way only he can. My wife claims that I automatically go into hysterics every time he opens his mouth and it’s true I find him hilarious even when I can’t hear his jokes. I love the way his regular side-wo/men – people like trumpeter Bruce Adams and multi reedsperson Karen Sharp (back for the third set of the weekend) -  keep a straight face through his tirades, even when they’re the target of his wit.

Had I turned seventy or eighty this weekend, instead of sixty, I would have no doubt described this as more really real jazz; it was the most ‘trad’ of all the sets I caught across the festival, and very welcome at that.    

 

By now I wasn’t really taking any notes but the idea was that each of the guests in the octet would feature on one track. Bruce Adams got Escapology, trombone legend Mark Nightingale did a bossa nova with a French title, reedsperson Robert Fowler’s was I believe called Nostalgic, and so on. It was a fine way to end a splendid festival but hardly my centre of gravity in jazz so we decided to beat the traffic and grab an early exit.  

 

For the final session we found we were sat near a chap we’d been talking to on Friday, just as things were getting started. Nice chap and I asked him which bands he’d enjoyed the most. The first two that afternoon he said: Fergus McCreadie and Tony Kofi. I’d tried to do two bands from each of the six sessions but only managed eleven from a possible total of seventeen. I think I enjoyed O’Higgins/ Luft, Hans Koller, Jean Toussaint and Tony Kofi the most, but it was all good; the best all-round line-up since I started going whatever year it was Tony Kofi paired up with Allan Barnes.

 

An intoxicating blend of many styles of jazz from almost all eras at a brilliant venue in my favourite seaside town. Next year I’ll be another year older. Bring it on. Steve T