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Playlist 01.05.22 (03.05.22)
Requests.
Lewis Watson: Chu Berry, Sonny Rollins Quartet.
Lit & Phil: Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis.
Scofield Trio.
Gordon Webster, Henry Allen/Dixiecats.
Hot Club du Nord: Pat Metheny, Charlie Christian, Gunnar Larsen.
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| (© M. Sinclair) |
Zoe Rahman (piano, compositions); Byron Wallen (trumpet); Rowland Sutherland (flute); Flo Moore (bass); Cheryl Alleyne (drums).
The last time I saw Zoe Rahman was at the Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music where she delivered a terrific solo set. I've also seen her in the past in duos and trios – but this was the first time I have seen her leading a quintet – and a very fine quintet indeed.
This was also the first time this band had appeared anywhere, and as Zoe said – the first time she had heard the music for real, although she wrote it all. The whole event had a playful atmosphere of friends just coming together to make music.
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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
After seeing Joel Frahm many times leading various groups at New York venues such as Smalls and Mezzrow online I knew this was a gig I didn’t want to miss. The Seven Arts is a great venue situated at 31 Harrogate Road, Chapel Allerton LS7 3PD and if you need any information regarding jazz events their web site is www.jazzleeds.org.uk. The last time I went there was to hear the Al Wood Big Band and that was a concert that I will always remember.
The upper room of the Bridge Hotel was packed
with wall to wall bodies. Social distancing a thing of the past. The SSBB were
back with a bang!
Gordon Goodwin's Hunting Wabbits featuring Summers on curved soprano and Parnaby on 'bone got things moving. It's an odd number with some unusual twists and turns not unlike some of those George Handy arrangements for the great Boyd Raeburn Orchestra and there's no greater compliment than that for Goodwin and, ultimately, SSBB.
Ms Grace stepped up to sing Something's Gotta Give and Willow Weep For me. Alice was in good voice.
Dave Green (double bass); Iain Dixon (tenor, clarinet, bass clarinet), Gene Calderazzo (drums); Evan Parker (tenor, soprano)A special 80th birthday CD release for the versatile British doyen of bass, Dave Green, drawn from a one-off 2004 BBC session. BSH Editor-in-Chief landed me in it with this review, perhaps thinking I need to broaden my horizons, as it’s a double challenge for me! (1) – the album is very much at the free end of the business (2) three of the “tunes” are Monk – who apart from the well-known and accessible “bangers” - is still a bit of a work in progress for me.
All things being equal, it’s neither six nor two threes but a triple double at play here with the idea being that the baton is passed from one player on an instrument to a colleague playing something similar, so it’s pairings that matter, rather than two trios playing against each other.
I've got so many CDs waiting for a review that I have reached the stage where it's just pot luck whether or not I listen to them, pass them on, or just add them to the other 400 headed for the skip. With this one I hit lucky - its survival is secured.
In actual fact, this isn't exactly a CD (well it is because I've got it right here in front of me) but, in reality, it's two EPs who have mated and this is the offspring! You're confused? I'm confused! However, the gist of the matter is that the first four tracks were let loose as G2 and You whilst the last four originally saw the light of day as Bright Days.
Read on ...
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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
This band took me back to those days when I first got interested in jazz when I was about fourteen years old and all you could buy were 78 rpm records. There were certain musicians who were popular with the fans of popular music but also held the interest of jazz fans. I’m thinking of Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Ramsey Lewis, Louis Armstrong and of course the subject of tonight’s show, George Shearing who became a big name on both sides of the pond with his unusual sound of pairing piano with vibraphone.
(Press release)
Top traditional
musicians Phil Cunningham, Julie Fowlis, Megan Henderson, and Michael
McGoldrick join the internationally acclaimed Scottish National Jazz
Orchestra in an exciting new adventure bringing Scotland’s myths and legends to
vibrant musical life.
Dragons, mermaids, fairy queens, ghosts, giants, goblins and sorcerers roam the Scottish soil and seas to a soundtrack composed by the orchestra’s director, saxophonist Tommy Smith and drawing on Scotland’s rich musical traditions.
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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
The last time Robin Sunflower played the Railway he had a different line-up with no drummer but, for tonight's gig he did have a drummer one whom I had not seen before, Rick Weedon.
As on his previous visit, and playing the house piano, was Robin Dewhurst who reminds me a lot of the late Junior Mance. The bass man, Matt Owen, I have previously seen in various bands although I don’t recall seeing him at this venue. The sound balance was excellent and the quartet were all positioned close together on the small bandstand.
Three amazing musicians! Arguably, technically as proficient and on a par with any three improv musicians who have played at the Globe.
The first set consisted of one untitled dollop of free improv that had the audience spellbound although probably did nothing for the bar sales. Admittedly there were fleeting moments - a couple of notes here, a few bars there - that bore some resemblance to the music I love but not enough to hurt the sensitivities of the pro-improv audience.
(Press release)
TICKETS: https://theglobenewcastle.bar/.../apr-24-binker-golding.../
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Requests: Art Farmer/Jim Hall, Grant Green.
Request from Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society in memoriam: Dave Brubeck Quartet.
We said 8pm but the Sage Gateshead website and the tickets said 7:30pm so we guaged our alcohol consumption for the latter time. However, come 7:30 the queue at the bar seemed to stretch across the Swing Bridge almost to the Haymarket so it turned out we were right the first time! Yes it was busy and deservedly so. Although not totally sold out, all three levels were well occupied for what was a rip-roaring sock it to 'em show.
This was a happening, an experience, a never to be forgotten event.
Vocalist Alice Grace is the special guest on the latest edition of Jazz on the Tyne. She’ll be talking about the new album by the Strictly Smokin’ Big Band, celebrating the music of Ella Fitzgerald.
As well as tracks from this album, presenter Colin Muirhead will feature tracks by House of the Black Gardenia, Arun Ghosh, Louise Dodds, Matt Carmichael, the Ben Haskins Quartet, Charles Mingus and the Riviera Quartet.
Tomorrow night's eagerly awaited concert at Sage Gateshead by Post Modern Jukebox stomps off at 7:30pm not, as previously listed, 8:00pm!
A rare appearance by Lewis Watson (duplicated tonight at Opus 4) saw the fans queuing outside in eager anticipation of what promised to be a great gig. The room soon filled to capacity and the potential was looking good.
However, it had been a long time since I'd heard Lewis in a jazz capacity - his Rat Pack jaunts with Jason don't count - and I wondered: Would he be ring rusty? Would he be living on past glories like his favourite football team?
The answer to both questions was an emphatic no! He came out, not like a greyhound in the slips but more like Liston when he took Patterson out in the first round.
The more perceptive amongst you will
have worked out from the title that this is a pandemic lockdown album and I am
advised that 7 of the 8 tracks were composed for online livestreams during
various lockdowns.
Trish Clowes is one of an ever expanding bunch of still fairly young composers and performers who are doing things in the UK that keeps jazz interesting and evolving. I feel that much of this music has left behind most of what is coming from the American colonies that doesn’t sound too far removed from the sounds of the 1960s. Within the financial constraints of the British jazz scene she has been a regular recorder and her tours have usually included a date in the north east. I fondly recall a date in the Northern Rock Hall at the Sage when she was touring one of her albums, probably In The Night-Time She Is There or Pocket Compass.
As has been said, he was a close friend of devout jazz fan Randolph Heads and as Blaydon got established in the 1980s, Randy was instrumental in getting John to the jazz club. He then came many times and it was always a privilege and delight. Sometimes he stayed over with Randy, sometimes with Marion and myself.
His gutsy playing, particularly on baritone sax, enabled him to be considered by many as the doyen of British mainstream practitioners of that instrument. The news of his passing has come just under a month of what would have been his ninetieth birthday. The above September 1981 photo was taken on one of his many appearances at the Corner House, Heaton. Sadly missed - Lance
I was down in that Big Fancy London a couple of weeks ago and paid my usual visit to Ray’s Jazz in Foyles on Charing Cross Road. The new shop is all bright and light and separated by a floor or two from the new café. I always preferred the old space in the shop next door at number 84. You could order your coffee and cake and then carry out a bit of crate digging, leaving an unattended briefcase full of top military secrets to bagsy a window seat from which you could later watch the buses go by. (Sometimes, you had to take the top secret files out to fit the LPs in.) They do, however, still have an excellent selection of new and second-hand CDs and they can still lay an aural trap to snare the unwary punter, unused to the big city ways.
Another whiz-bang jam with players, often flying by the seat of their pants as is the norm at jam sessions, popping up with such regularity and in various combinations that it was nigh impossible to keep track of who played what with whom!
Some were regulars, some irregulars and some were showing their face for the first time.
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| (© Graham Hardy) |
For the second week in a row Jazz North East at The Globe hosted a band with a heavy string presence. James Mainwaring’s Mycorrhiza, just like Sean Noonan with the Legeti Quartet the previous Sunday, boasted several stringed instrument in their ensemble. A larger (and younger) than normal crowd showed that they were prepared to give strings a chance and were well rewarded for their attendance with this fascinating, creative and thought provoking, performance.
What do you get when you when you cross a guitarist with a trumpet player? An organ/piano combo of course!
At least that's what's happened here. Zaitz left his guitar in the boot of his car (hope it's still there) in favour of giving his 1961 C3 a work out. Kavuma didn't take any such chances, as a precaution, he brought his horn into the studio. Will Cleasby set up his kit and they were off. Both guitarist and trumpet player seemingly equally at home on their respective doublers.
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| (© R. Veitch) |
The photo, taken by myself on June 6, 1982, at Jesmond Dene shows Mike on trombone along with Bill Smith (tenor sax); Peter Gascoigne (trumpet; Ray Brown (drums); Mike Gilby (bass guitar) and Roy Willis (guitar) - The Saratoga Jazzmen. Lance
BSH:
Art, what a fantastic story! Is it a Mk Vl?
Art: No,
it is a Selmer Super Balanced Action, which immediately preceded the probably better-known
Mark 6 and was manufactured in 1953.
BSH:
Do you play a Selmer yourself and, if so, have you detected any differences
between what you're blowing now and Ronnie's tenor?
Art: Yes. Apart from a brief flirtation with a Borgani saxophone I have always played a Selmer. I even started on an Adolphe - Adolphe Sax of course invented the saxophone and his firm was taken over by Selmer at the beginning of the 20th century.
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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
On April 7 I reviewed Gaz Hughes’s latest album entitled Beboperation which was also the name of the opening track. I referred to the tune as a Fats Navarro composition but I was incorrect as in fact it is an original number by Andrzej Baranek who Gaz chose to feature on the first number of tonight's session. Talking to Gaz before the gig started he told me he was looking forward to taking this group on an extensive tour of the UK and Europe commencing March next year. He has already secured fifteen dates and is hoping to fix a total of sixty engagements.
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Easter Playlist 17.04.22
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Carla Motis & Sant Andreu Jazz Band, Wynton Marsalis/Eric Clapton/Taj Mahal, Oscar Peterson Trio, Duke Ellington featuring Cootie Williams, Mahalia Jackson.
