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Bebop Spoken There

Sullivan Fortner: ''I always judge it by the bass player: If the bass player is happy, it's going to be a good night". (DownBeat, February 2025).

The Things They Say!

This is a good opportunity to say thanks to BSH for their support of the jazz scene in the North East (and beyond) - it's no exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for them many, many fine musicians, bands and projects across a huge cross section of jazz wouldn't be getting reviewed at all, because we're in the "desolate"(!) North. (M & SSBB on F/book 23/12/24)

Postage

17777 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 17 years ago. 98 of them this year alone and, so far, 23 this month (Feb.8).

From This Moment On ...

February 2025

Sat 15: Joseph Carville Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 15: James Birkett & Emma Fisk @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 7:30pm. £15.00. at the door; £14.35. (inc £0.35 bf) online, in advance.
Sat 15: Elkie Brooks @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 7:30pm. ‘The Long Farewell Tour’.
Sat 15: Milne Glendinning Band @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sun 16: MOBO Song @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 12 noon. Free, performances on the concourse. Line-up inc. Jazz Attack (on stage time TBC) & Jambone (12:20pm).
Sun 16: Jason Isaacs @ STACK, Exchange Sq., Middlesbrough. 1:00-2:45pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Sun 16: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 16: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 16: MOBO Awards Fringe 2025: BBC Introducing NE X MOBO Showcase @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 6:00pm. Free (ticketed). Line-up inc. Jambone, Knats, Rivkala, SwanNek.
Sun 16: The Shayo Experience @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 16: Gerry Richardson Quartet @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm. .

Mon 17: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 17: Matt Forster Quartet @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 1:00pm. £9.00. at the door; £8.20. (inc £0.20 bf) online, in advance.
Mon 17: Russ Morgan Quartet @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00.

Tue 18: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Alan Law, Paul Grainger, John Hirst.

Wed 19: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 19: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 19: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.

Thu 20: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, Holystone. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 20: James Birkett & Emma Fisk @ King’s Hall, Newcastle University. 1:15pm. Free.
Thu 20: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. Subject: Jazz Milestones - 1975.
Thu 20: Renegade Brass Band @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors).
Thu 20: Orange Claw Hammer + Peony @ The Globe, Newcastle.7:30pm. Orange Claw Hammer play Captain Beefheart.
Thu 20: Jeremy McMurray & the Pocket Jazz Orchestra @ Arc, Stockton. 8:00pm. Featuring special guest Zoë Gilby.

Fri 21: JazzMain @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 21: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 21: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 21: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 21: Joe Steels Trio @ The Pele, Corbridge. 7:00pm. £10.00. TBC.
Fri 21: Emma Rawicz w. Strictly Smokin’ Big Band @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 8:00pm.

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

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Cécile McLorin Salvant @ Queen Elizabeth Hall (EFG LJF 2023) - Nov 15

Cécile McLorin Salvant (voice); Sullivan Fortner (piano); Yasushi Nakamura (bass); Weedie Braimah (percussion); Savannah Harris (drums)

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a storyteller in song with a wide-ranging songbook that gives voice to her appeal as a luminous communicator. The Miami-born American singer is a child of Haitian and French diasporas, and sings with an immaculate bel canto in English, French and even Occitan. A passion for language and a crisp articulation combine with eclectic musical influences and make for a rising reputation in this three-time Grammy-winning singer’s magnetic performances. It was no lesser than Wynton Marsalis who said, "You get a singer like this once in a generation or two.”


She and her collegial group, performing at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, brought an exquisite seventy-minute set of songs judiciously picked from her seven albums to date. These include the Grammy award winning second and third collections For One To Love and Dreams and Daggers, and last year’s Ghost Song. Salvant's seventh album Mélusine recounts the European folk legend of Mélusine with songs in French and Haitian Creole. Her catalogue imbues a unique identity beginning in jazz and blues, reaching out through pop, musical theatre and art music of the avant-garde, and even lachrymose Renaissance madrigals. 


Introducing Flow Not So Fast Ye Fountain by the late-16th early-17th century composer John Dowland, an audience member nominated him “the Jimi Hendrix of the lute!”—  a welcome heckle she responded to with thanks. A meeting of music separated by centuries is exactly the kind of encounter that she specialises in. Our lad the moderately famous Sting is a Renaissance man who has also recorded Dowland, and whose amazing song Until is one of many beautiful treasures among her selections that she just makes her own with customary respect for both source and audience.


These selections ranged from barnstorming familiar opener Don’t Rain On My Parade into deep cut classics Wives and Lovers by Burt Bacharach (and Hal David at his most Sonheimesque), twinned with Frank Loesser’s sardonic Never Will I Marry, certainly developing a theme of gently perplexed fascination at the foibles of relationships, most deliciously unpacked in her own song Obligation. A cappella, she sings "Expectations are premeditated resentments" — a gut punch to lead into her what’s almost an art piece, a scabrous conversation between R.D. Laing and Diamanda Galás. 


Throughout her work is a very serious social and political commitment, realised in her readings of Weill and Brecht (and his uncredited collaborator Elizabeth Hauptmann, as she valuably reminds us) of The World Is Mean as well as her chillingly beautiful setting of a poem by  Léo Ferré called Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent? The set’s climactic moment is in Build a House a powerful political blues by Grammy Award-winning musician, MacArthur recipient and Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens. She transfers herself into a sterner, harder blues singer of tradition of strong female genius, another shade of her astonishing range.


The encore is of course her spacious delivery of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, shorn of its chart topping bombast, and richly augmented with appropriately Celtic vocal ornamentations that show a deep understanding of her source. It always seems too short, but now segues into another Bush classic to close, Breathing about Bush’s mother’s battle with terminal lung cancer. Without any of the usual manipulative tricks we associate with the diva role, she had me properly sobbing, as she closed out with a fragile but firm a cappella as the air momentarily left the room. Out, in, out, in, out…


She is direct without being confrontational. Whether in close companionship with the superb band including a special rapport with the wizard-like pianist Sullivan Fortner, or leaning out from the front of the stage and into your soul from hers, she portrays a vivid intimacy and a sense that she, of all divas, is somehow supernaturally present — there and real, abidingly modern, yet timeless and everywhere. A.J. Dehany

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