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Bebop Spoken There

Kurt Elling: ''There's something to learn from every musician you play with''. (DownBeat, December 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

17630 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 904 of them this year alone and, so far, 49 this month (Dec. 20).

From This Moment On ...

December

Fri 20: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 20: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 20: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 20: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 1:00-3:00pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Fri 20: Baghdaddies @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Smokin’ Spitfires @ Platform 1, East Bedlington Community Centre. 7:00pm.
Fri 20: Pete Tanton’s Christmas @ 1719, Hendon, Sunderland. 7:30pm. CANCELLED!
Fri 20: Alligator Gumbo @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Abbie Finn’s Finntet @ The Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Fri 20: Brass Fiesta @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 10:30pm. Free.

Sat 21: Lindsay Hannon Quartet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £15.00. ‘Swinging with Christmas Songs’.
Sat 21: Jason Isaacs @ Seaburn STACK, Seaburn. 3:30-5:30pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Sat 21: Jackson’s Wharf Xmas Party @ Jackson’s Wharf, Hartlepool. 7:00pm. Free. Featuring the New ’58 Jazz Collective.
Sat 21: Brass Fiesta @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 10:30pm. Free.

Sun 22: Hot Club du Nord @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:00pm. £15.00. + bf. Xmas party. SOLD OUT!
Sun 22: Red Kites Jazz @ Gibside Chapel, nr. Rowlands Gill. 1:00pm. Admission charge applies.
Sun 22: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 22: Ruth Lambert Trio @ The Juke Shed, Union Quay, North Shields. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: Revolutionaires @ Tyne Bar, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. Superb rhythm & blues outfit.
Sun 22: Laurence Harrison, Paul Grainger & Mark Robertson @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Line-up TBC.
Sun 22: The Globe Xmas Party @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Free. Live music (musicians TBC).
Sun 22: Ray Stubbs R & B All-Stars @ Zerox, Sandhill, Newcastle. 7:00pm (doors).

Mon 23: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 23: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Wheatsheaf, Benton Sq., Whitley Road, Palmersville NE12 9SU. Tel: 0191 266 8137. 1:00pm. Free. CANCELLED!
Mon 23: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 4:00pm. Free.
Mon 23: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 4:00-6:00pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Mon 23: Milne-Glendinning Band @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.

Tue 24: Lindsay Hannon & Mark Williams @ Ernest, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 11:00am-1:00pm. Free.
Tue 24: Paul Skerritt @ Mambo Wine & Dine, South Shields. 1:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.

Wed 25: Wot? No jazz!

Thu 26: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free. TBC.
Thu 26: The Boneshakers @ Tyne Bar, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. The 17th annual Boneshakers’ Shindig.

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Album review: Esbjörn Svensson - HOME.S.

Esbjörn Svensson (piano)

These recordings do, of course, come with more than a tinge of sadness as they are hitherto ‘lost’ solo pieces recorded by Svensson at home before he died in a swimming accident in 2008. He’d recorded them, digitally, onto a hard drive and after his death the hard drive had been left in a bag at the back of the cupboard and lain undisturbed until this year. We have to consider the ‘rightness’ of releasing them. I’ve called them pieces already but some feel more like aural doodles or sketches rather than finished works. 

On the scale of what’s right and wrong they are not as bad as a World Cup in 'Catarrh' but the question remains to be asked. There have been posthumous releases by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio (Leucocyte, 301 and Live in London) but in those cases the other two members of the Trio (Dan Berglund and Magnus Ostrom) were able to make the decisions about their release.

On the other side of the scale are the facts that posthumous releases of possibly unfinished works is no rare thing (just look at the catalogue of Jeff Buckley, who died in a similar swimming accident 11 years before Svensson) and the quality of the work. If these were just sketches and noodles the standard of playing is very high.

So, we have here 9 tracks, named after the first 9 letters of the Greek alphabet clocking in at 36 minutes and change. From these humble beginnings follows a concert, an online event and, next year, a book as well as the album (more details can be found on Esbjörnsvensson.se ).

And to the music. The pieces display much of the flare for which Svensson was famous, both his pensive Evans-ish delicacy and his Tyner-esque percussiveness. The quieter pieces draw you in; Alpha opens with an almost quote from Evans’ Peace Piece that flows into something more powerful as it closes. Beta is all delicacy.

Delta opens with trills like something from a Regency ball before that percussive left hand comes into dominate and left and right dance around each other in a quest for domination. Epsilon is, simply, imperious. Beautiful, intricate, knotty melodies are worked through rising time and again to climaxes and then flowing into further intricacy. Listen closely and you can hear Svensson humming as he plays. (That’s humming, not Jarrett-esque grunts).

Zeta is a romance for a film and Eta is a folk dance, again with that solid left hand foundation under melodic frills and thrills. The closer, Iota, really encapsulates, in its two and a bit minutes, all that went before. We have that delicacy and intricacy and a rolling thunder central passage that fades away leaving a simple melody that takes us to the close.

Is it right that this should have been released? On balance I think so. The recordings were completed in the months just before Svensson’s accidental death and they show the range of his ambition at that stage in his career, suggesting further classical and folk influences. Some pieces may have stayed as solo works and others may have been worked up by the Trio but, sadly, we’ll never know which and how.

HOME.S. is released this Friday Nov. 18, through all the usual channels. Dave Sayer

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