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Bebop Spoken There

Quincy Jones: ''What's great about coming from a little town is that you're a big fish in a little pond and it gives you the confidence when you get to New York to be able to really compete''. (Jazzwise, December 2024/January 2025).

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

17586 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 860 of them this year alone and, so far, 5 this month (Dec. 2).

From This Moment On ...

December

Tue 03: Customs House Big Band @ The Masonic Hall, North St., Ferryhill DL17 8HX. 7:00pm. Free.
Tue 03: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Dean Stockdale, Paul Grainger, John Hirst.
Tue 03: Bold Big Band @ Cluny 2, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Wed 04: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 04: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 2:30-4:30pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Wed 04: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 8:00pm. Concert. Free. .
Wed 04: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 04: Kat Eaton @ Hoochie Coochie, Newcastle. 8:15pm. Soulful vocals, excellent band.

Thu 05: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 05: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘George - named musicians, vocalists & composers (Chisholm, Duke, Lewis, Shearing, Benson, Melly, Gershwin et al)’.
Thu 05: Jools Holland’s R & B Orchestra @ Newcastle City Hall. 7:30pm.
Thu 05: Indigo Jazz Voices @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:45pm. Free.
Thu 05: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. Guest band special with the Middlesbrough Jazz and Blues Orchestra 8pm. Free.

Fri 06: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 06: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 06: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 06: Sue Ferris Quintet @ The Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.

Sat 07: New Century Ragtime Orchestra @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Sat 07: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. £25.00. Tutor: Steve Glendinning. Enrol at: learning@jazz.coop.
Sat 07: Hot Club du Nord @ St. Cuthbert’s Church, Shadforth DH6 1LB. Tel: 01429 823400. 7:30pm. £15.00. (inc. refreshments).
Sat 07: NUJO Jazz Jam @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 07: Bellavana @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 7:45-9:45pm. Free.
Sat 07: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.

Sun 08: The New ’58 Jazz Collective @ Jackson’s Wharf, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free. A ‘second Sunday in the month’ residency.
Sun 08: Learning & Participation Showcase @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Free. Multi-genre event followed by a jam session. All welcome.
Sun 08: Zoë Gilby Quintet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 08: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 08: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 08: Jason Isaacs @ Hoochie Coochie, Newcastle. 5:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Sun 08: Paul Skerritt @ The Black Candle, South Shields. 6:30pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 08: Redwell @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 08: Durham University Big Band + Durham University Jazz Orchestra: Jazzy Christmas @ Sir Thomas Allen Assembly Rooms Theatre, North Bailey, Durham DH1 3ET. 7:30-9:30pm. £7.00., £6.00. concs., £5.00. Durham Student Music member. Durham University Jazz Ensembles’ annual charity event.
Sun 08: Jools Holland’s R & B Orchestra @ The Globe, Stockton. 7:30pm.
Sun 08: Mick Beck, Dominic Lash, Paul Hession @ the Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm (doors 7:30pm) JNE. £10.

Mon 09: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 09: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Wheatsheaf, Benton Sq., Whitley Road, Palmersville NE12 9SU. Tel: 0191 266 8137. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 09: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 6:30-8:30pm. Free.
Mon 09: James Birkett Trio @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00.

Tue 10: ???

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

Tuesday, November 05, 2024

Album review: Bill Frisell, Kit Downes, Andrew Cyrille - Breaking The Shell (Red Hook Records)

Bill Frisell (electric guitar); Kit Downes (organ); Andrew Cyrille (drums); Lucy Railton (cello on El)

What do you expect from an instrumental line up like that? Guitar, organ drums – a classic organ trio. Surely, a bit of the old funked-up electric boogaloo is in store? Not this time kids. This is less predictable, more stripped back, though not laid-back. It’s intense, angular and unlike recent works by Frisell and Downes. For a start, the organ isn’t electric; the album was recorded using the Church organ at St. Luke in The Fields in Greenwich Village, New York.

It opens with an ominous low drone and some delicate tracery of notes on the organ, little more than aural scratches; the drone fades and Frisell steps into the gap whilst Cyrille skirts around the proceedings, adding some propulsive skitterings. Second track, Untitled 23, is all angles from Frisell, ably supported by rolls and crashes and more skittering from the drummer. Frisell’s voice on the guitar rises and stops with a melancholy fall, he questions and probes and Cyrille fills in the colours in between.

Kasel Valles is a wide, dark screen of deep, deep drones from the organ with brief snatches of a human pulse; Frisell scratches and claws his notes to the front of the wall of sound. El, with the added cello is more human music. Filigrees of notes from Frisell slide over Cyrille’s marshalling of the group. The fact that he is low in the mix seems to set a context within which the others work. Railton’s cello is restrained but adds depth in a piece that affords more space to the players than some of the previous tunes.

Southern Body is a piece to fall into; intense and spare; Cyrille is more muted on this one, rolling his mallets around his drums whilst Frisell again plays very delicate isolated notes. It’s almost as if it’s an exercise in seeing who can be the most controlled and the most subdued. Cyrille is further up in the mix for Sjung Herte Sjung (Sing Heart Sing), covering the whole drum kit, but again, eschewing the cymbals. Downes provides a higher toned wash and occasional flourishes on the organ which leaves Frisell to provide some melodic, single-note runs under Cyrille for much of the track, such is the drummer’s prominence.

Two Twins is the first piece on the album that approximates to an identifiable organ trio groove. Beneath Cyrille’s frantic drumming and Frisell’s angular voicing a weak, but recognisable, pulse is present. Cypher is, IMHO, the best on the album, mainly for the clarity and elegance of Frisell’s playing. Cyrille, too, is more graceful, his cymbals shiver in between his drum rolls, which are more like conversational phrases than his continuous soloing on other tracks. Proximity is a Cyrille ballad on which he plays brushes in support of Frisell’s ringing, but broken, melancholic lines. It’s a bit further ‘in’ than the rest of the album. Downes adds hope with an optimist line that has more than a hint of Caledonia about it.

Final track, Este a Szekelyeknel (Evening in Transylvania), despite being of Hungarian origin has more of a sound and feel of something from further East, such as an Indonesian Gamelan and a Japanese Samisen about its sparseness and delicacy.

And there you have it. A short term project, in 2022, for these three before they moved onto other things (Downes, notably, has recorded with Seb Rochford and Norma Winstone, since Breaking The Shell was created). It will at least be a project that pushed Downes and Frisell up against new barriers and it has been a joy to listen to Cyrille, a drummer to whom I haven’t listened much before. Good cover art as well, (Vernal Equinox by Sam Winston). Dave Sayer

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