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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
After a slightly delayed start due to football related matters, Mike’s quartet went straight into the Latin intro that Charlie Parker used on his version of Star Eyes, a tune written by Gene de Paul and Don Raye in 1943 for the film I Dood It. Mike’s set list contained an interesting mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar including material by Horace Silver, Michel Legrand, Fran Landesman, Bruno Martino, and Jimmy Rowles.
I liked Mike’s treatment of Estate, a tune I first heard on a Woody Shaw LP that he made with Canadian pianist Fred Hemke. Another tune that Mike really got to grips with was the great Jimmy Rowles' number The Peacocks that made me wish I still owned the LP that Rowles did with Stan Getz. Mike got some unusual sounds on his sax during his solo and Dan Wheildon gave him great support on this as he did throughout the evening. Dan was getting a great sound on his Yamaha keyboard and he had no difficulty in handling the trickier tunes that Mike had selected.
It was good to hear two of Horace Silver’s lesser-known compositions tonight and I liked Mike’s use of a microphone to announce the tunes and to explain the origin of certain numbers. I thought that Ed Harrison and Eryl Roberts were on top form and once again Mike had put together a superb group of musicians and I am sure that everyone in the room was highly appreciative of his efforts and will wish him a speedy return. At the end of the gig Mike gave me a CD that he recorded with Dan Wheildon which I look forward to listening to and which I’ll review shortly.
The next jazz night at the Railway will be on Tuesday May 9 with the West Coast Jazz Octet. Mike Farmer
Star Eyes; Estate; Bennie's Pennies; Gregory is Here; The Peacocks; Alone Together; The Jody Grind; If I Were a Bell;What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?; You Stepped Out of a Dream; Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most; Ornithology.
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