Phil Bancroft Quartet December 16, 2007
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Recital Room, Glasgow City Halls, 8th December 2007
The first thing to say, in case what I go on to say is taken as unduly critical, is that I greatly enjoyed this. But there’s something really odd about Phil Bancroft’s career. He’s a fine player, and writes better tunes than most contemporary jazz musicians, but somehow there’s a sense of unfulfilled potential about him.
When the now-legendary (in Scottish jazz circles at least) John Rae Collective burst on the scene in the mid-80s, it was initially Phil Bancroft who stood out as the individual talent within the band. However, twenty-odd years on, it’s Brian Kellock and Colin Steele who have gone on to have the most successful careers. Perhaps Bancroft’s problem is that he’s almost too versatile: he writes particularly good themes, but plays fairly freely a lot of the time; he can play in a swinging “American” style, but goes in for more austere pining-for-the-fjords “European” playing as well; he uses elements of Scottish folk music some of the time, but at other times he doesn’t. Despite a couple of decent solo albums and a stint as one-third of the excellent Trio AAB I still get the feeling that he’s not quite worked out what to do.
What he was doing this time was fairly straightforward modern jazz, with an excellent quartet which also included Paul Harrison, who’s quietly developed into a very fine pianist indeed, Aidan O’Donnell, back from New York from the occasion, on bass and Stu Ritchie on drums. There was still a slight sense of there being “David Murray” pieces and “Jan Garbarek” pieces, but it generally held together fairly well. A few more gigs and this could develop into a very fine band indeed. They’re apparently going to make an album based on this material in the New Year. One to watch out for.
Brian Kellock Trio featuring Jakob Fischer December 2, 2007
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Recital Room, Glasgow City Halls, November 29th 2007
Not much to say about this one, except that it was excellent. Brian Kellock and Danish guitarist Jakob Fischer last played together in Glasgow as part of a Jan Allan group. A strength they share is that they are not only virtuoso soloists but know how to accompany well. They rarely fall back on simply playing the chords behind the solo, but at the same time never play so much that they steamroller over the soloist in the way that someone like Art Tatum was prone to do at times. Kenny Ellis played bass, laying down a solid support while keeping out of the way of his partners.
It’s noticeable that this sort of mainstream jazz seems to get a different, older, crowd than a lot of the more modern stuff. Glasgow definitely has several different jazz audiences: the trick for any promoter must be to put together a season which appeals to them all.
Sonny Rollins December 1, 2007
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Sonny Rollins has been played a lot on Radio 3 over the past few. He’s the subject of a couple of episodes of Alyn Shipton’s excellent Jazz Library, one of them broadcast on November 23rd, and the other due for transmission on December 14th. There was also a performance of his version of “We Kiss In the Shadows” on Jazz Record Requests recently.
The latter is a key track for me. It wasn’t until I heard the album it comes from, East Broadway Run Down, for the first time a few years back that I truly appreciated how great Sonny Rollins is. Up to then I’d always thought of him as a really good tenor player, on the same extremely high level as someone like Dexter Gordon or Joe Henderson, but not one of the all time greats. Listening to East Broadway Rundown changed my mind. Although he’s not changed jazz history in the way that Young, Hawkins or Coltrane did, Rollins’ playing is of the same quality.
I still haven’t worked out if it’s something special about this album, or if it’s just that my tastes have changed and matured to the point where I fully appreciate what he’s doing. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t bothered buying it, but had simply decided to give my copy of Newk’s Time another spin?
His best period was the late 50s and early 60s, but he’s still capable of producing top class work. If an album like This Is What I Do had been released by some young whippersnapper, people would be raving about it, whereas because it’s yet another Sonny Rollins album, the tendency is to say “It’s not bad, but it’s not as good as The Bridge or Saxophone Colossus or Our Man in Jazz or….”
