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Bebop Spoken There

Spasmo Brown: “Jazz is an ice cream sandwich! It's the Fourth of July! It's a girl with a waterbed!”. (Syncopated Times, July, 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

17444 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 718 of them this year alone and, so far, 100 this month (Oct. 10).

From This Moment On ...

October

Sun 13: Am Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 13: Emma Wilson @ Tyne Bar, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. Blues.
Sun 13: Catfish Keith @ The Cluny. 7:00pm. Country blues.
Sun 13: Lindsay Hannon + Eleanor Adams @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig. Note, this is a change to the previously advertised gig.
Sun 13: Dulcie May Moreno Quartet @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Sun 13: Jazz Jam @ Fabio’s, Saddler St., Durham. 8:00pm. Free. A DUJS event. All welcome.

Mon 14: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 14: Black is the Color of My Voice @ Hippodrome, Darlington. 7:30pm. Apphia Campbell’s one-woman show inspired by Nina Simone, performed by Nicholle Cherrie.

Tue 15: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Alan Law (piano), Paul Grainger (double bass), Bailey Rudd (drums).

Wed 16: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 16: Cath Stephens’ improvisation workshop @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 4:30-6:00pm. Collaborative group focusing on vocal improvisations.
Wed 16: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 16: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.

Thu 17: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 17: Olivia Cuttill Quintet @ King’s Hall, Newcastle University. 1:15pm. Free.
Thu 17: Moonlight Serenade Orchestra UK: Glenn Miller & Big Band Spectacular @ Phoenix Theatre, Blyth. 7:30pm.
Thu 17: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. Ragtime piano. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 17: Niffi Osiyemi Trio @ The Harbour View, Sunderland. 8:00pm. Free.
Thu 17: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. Guests Jeremy McMurray (keys); Richie Emmerson (tenor sax); Mark Toomey (alto sax); Adrian Beadnell (bass). 8:30pm. Free.

Fri 18: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 18: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 18: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 18: Hot Club du Nord @ St Cuthbert’s, Crook. 7:30pm.
Fri 18: Chet Set @ Seventeen Nineteen, Hendon, Sunderland. 7:30pm. Pete Tanton & co.
Fri 18: Michael Woods @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. Doors 7:30pm (upstairs). A Hoodoo Blues dance & social event. £10.00. class & social (£10.00., £7.50., £5.00. social only). Michael Woods (country blues guitar) on stage 9:00pm.
Fri 18: East Coast Swing Band @ Hexham Abbey. 7:30pm. £9.00.
Fri 18: Ben Crosland Quartet @ Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Fri 18: Durham University Jazz Society’s ‘High Standards’ @ Music Dept. Music Room, Divinity House, Palace Green, Durham University DH1 3RS. 8:009-30pm. Tel: 0191 334 1419. £7.00., £5.00.
Fri 18: Ray Stubbs R&B All Stars @ Blues Underground, Nelson St., Newcastle. 9:00pm. Free.

Sat 19: Sat 19: Paula Jackman’s Jazz Masters @ St Augustine’s Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Jeff Hewer Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 19: Howlin’ Mat @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Country blues guitar & vocals. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

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

Friday, January 19, 2024

Sebastian Rochford & Kit Downes @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead - January 18

Sebastian Rochford (drums and compositions); Kit Downes (piano).

“This “short diary (of loss)”, as drummer Sebastian Rochford calls it, is offered as “a sonic memory, created with love, out of need for comfort.”” (ECM Website)

This performance felt like an intrusion on private grief. When I told Seb later that I couldn’t believe he could play this music night after night he replied that it was cathartic.

This is not how most reviews of live jazz begin but here Rochford and Downes presented Rochford’s diary of loss that emerged following the death of his father, Gerard. As he explained at one point during the concert that after the death, he kept hearing music when he didn’t want to, but sitting and playing it on the piano in his father’s house found that it matched what he was feeling at that time.

It was an unusually structured evening with a thirty minute first ‘half’ and a ninety minute second. Rochford started alone behind a fairly small drum kit. Gentle susurrations with mallets on the cymbals were allowed to dissolve in an echo into silence. He slowly worked his way through his tool kit of light sticks, brushes onto fully fledged drumsticks.  A section of solid drumming and fractured rhythm and blues riffs gave way back to the opening fragility before Downes crept on stage like a ninja in dark clothing to add pastoral frills, very delicate and spare.

The second set comprises the song cycle which makes up the recent album A Short Diary, and opens with This Tune Your Ears Will Never Hear. Its ominous chords and heavy drumming falls into silence and then repeats. Its elegant rolling piano suggestive of both grief and a hint of hope as part of the grieving process. Rochford skitters lightly around the kit. Communal Decisions was inspired by the time following the passing when so many decisions have to be made but people still need some time alone. Rochford is one of seven sisters and three brothers and this piece, a solo performance by Downes felt like a dance of people passing each other. It opened with single notes falling like raindrops, almost a waltz.

Love You Grampa is more hopeful, suggestive of the need to keep on going. A solid groove from Rochford behind Downes’ flourishes and embellishments; cymbal crashes are controlled and restrained. It’s a beautiful, lyrical tribute.

During his introduction to Our Time Is Still Rochford comments that “When people pass it doesn’t have to be an end, just a different beginning.” It’s intense but spacious, before a thunder of bass notes on the piano is answered by fulsome, energetic drumming. Suddenly peace returns for a mournful, delicate, contemplative passage and I wonder if the concentration on Rochford’s face is his focus on Downes’ playing or on his memories. The tune builds again to a flowing duet before it breaks again and slides to a finish. The Ten Of Us is another piece of the utmost delicacy until Downes reaches into the piano to play a rumble on the bass strings and Rochford upgrades from brushes to mallets to play a slow funereal drum beat. It is the ancient music of loss. A simple melody is embellished by Downes and Rochford’s playing the drums purely with his hands is mere punctuation. Rochford’s father composed the closer, Even Now I Think Of Her, recorded it onto his phone and played it to his son. It is gentle elegant, balletic; Rochford providing no more than murmurs with his brushes on the drums.

The encore, To The Country I Was Born, is a wistful, yearning celebration of matters Caledonian and its Scottish roots are on evident display. Downes packs every bar with fills and flourishes and Rochford follows him energetically up that hill leading to the evening’s loudest cymbal crash to finish with and they’re done.

It was an intense focused, intrusive evening where the sound rarely rose above a whisper as Rochford allowed us to see him work through his very personal and private feelings about his father. “It’s cathartic’” he said. Dave Sayer

1 comment :

Chris Kilsby said...

Blimey : just reading the review is cathartic.
What a review - I felt like I was there - thanks Dave!
I'd planned to be there but Covid (remember that?) decided otherwise.
Sounds like I missed a memorable, unique, remarkable night?

Chris

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