September Songs August 30, 2009
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I’m going to be otherwise engaged for a couple of weeks, so don’t expect any posts for a while.
Here are some of the jazz events which are coming up in the first half of September.
Glasgow gigs
NYJOS Collective.
3rd September, Recital Room, City Halls
Small group consisting of members of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland. Part of a tour to mark the release of their first CD. NYJOS Collective web page.
Scottish National Jazz Orchestra with Gary Burton
12th September, RSAMD
A concert of music by Wayne Shorter. See this post for more details.
Michael Janisch Quintet featuring Clarence Penn
13th September, Recital Room, City Halls
The US-born, London-based bass player on tour with a what looks like an excellent band: American trumpeter Jason Palmer, the fine vibes player Jim Hart, and Paul Booth on tenor. The drummer is another American, Clarence Penn, who has recorded with, among others, Betty Carter, Joshua Redman and David Sanchez. There’s an interesting interview with Janisch on the London Jazz blog: he’d an unlikely career before deciding to become a full-time musician.
Islay Jazz Festival
This year’s Islay Jazz Festival runs from Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th of September. As usual, it features a selection of musicians working not only in their regular bands, but in some one-off combinations. Among this year’s performers are Trygve Seim, Laura Macdonald, Alan Barnes, The Bachelors of Jazz and Trio AAB (it’s good to known they’re back in action). I’ve never been, but apparently it’s always a fun weekend. If you don’t like the bands, you can always go bird-watching or sample a few of the local malts. Mine’s an Ardbeg.
Sigh Joe August 30, 2009
Posted by byased in Live reviews.add a comment
No, this isn’t an In Memoriam piece for saxophonist, clarinettist, pianist and teacher Joe Maneri, who died this week. “Sigh Joe” is how the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra (SYJO) refer to themselves.
Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra
RSAMD, 28th August 2009
There were actually two bands playing at this concert. In the first half, we got the SYJO Jazz School band, made up of children of secondary school age who are just beginning to learn about playing jazz and improvisation. They had an unusual sound and line-up: lots of saxes, particularly alto saxes, and very little brass. I suspect that everyone on the course was in the band, rather than the organisers decreeing “we need two altos, two tenors, and a baritone”. One of the alto players sat next to the trumpet player, and seem to be playing from the same music. The solos were all improvised and made good musical sense, rather than just being strings of licks. Given that the musicians involved are basically beginners, they were very good indeed.
The main SYJO came on after the interval. They consist of youngsters aged 16 to 24 with a bit more instrumental skill and some experience of jazz improvisation. In practice most if not all of them were students on Strathclyde Uni’s Applied Music course. They were much closer to the finished article: a good tight ensemble sound, and some pretty decent soloing. Singer Debbie Davis joined them for several numbers in the middle of the set. She has a good jazzy Ella Fitgerald – Peggy Lee style voice, but was occasionally drowned out by the band in its louder moments.
Two bits of trivia caught my eye. Four out of the five saxophonists were female, but there were no other women in the band. The SYJO had a standard big band line-up, but had to draft in a couple of players from outside to bring the trumpet section up to the right number. So, boys and girls, if you want to be a jazz musician when you grow up, buy yourself a trumpet.
The SYJO play at the West Brewery on Glasgow Green on the 1st Sunday afternoon of every month.
Matthias Schriefl: Shreefpunk Live in Köln August 28, 2009
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Post-free electric jazz from Germany, released as part of ACT’s “Young German Jazz” series. Twenty-something trumpeter Schriefl uses techniques – mutes, extreme voicings, and what are generally referred to as “little instruments” (or simply “toys”) – which suggest a familiarity with free improvisation, but applies them to music with structures and melodies. What he does is hardly straightforward post-bop, though, rather a melange of various styles which generally hangs together well.
The first two-thirds of the album, from a Cologne club date, is by a trumpet, guitar, bass and drums quartet which can switch effortlessly from lyrical ballads to amps-up-to-eleven riffing to a fusion of a New Orleans marching band and a German oompah band. The overall sound is at times reminiscent of Peter Evan’s excellent ! from a couple of years ago, but the actual music is very different. On the other hand, there are times when it’s superficially more like The Dog Faced Hermans. The final three tracks, from a different concert, add a string quartet and Django Bates on keyboards and tenor horn. They make the sound a bit fuller, but the essential character of the music remains the same.
Live in Köln isn’t flawless: at times there is one abrupt juxtaposition of idioms too many, and it slips from wittily inventive polystylism* into irritatingly smartarse zaniness. In general this is a very fine album, though.
It’s also one which suggests that, for all their undeniable technical excellence, Schreifl’s Scottish contemporaries are by-and-large musically a fairly conservative lot.
*Hello Alfred Schnittke.
Biography of Matthais Schriefl from the ACT site.
Two other reviews of Live in Köln:
And here’s a clip of them in action. There’s a version of this piece on the album..
… but Some Guests are More Special than Others. August 24, 2009
Posted by byased in Concerts, Local Musicians, U.S. Musicians.1 comment so far
Details of the Autumn concert schedules in Glasgow are beginning to emerge. I’ll take a more general look at them later. For now I’ll just mention a couple of projects involving major American musicians working with local bands. It’s traditional to refer to temporary collaborators as “special guests”, but these guests are more special than most.
Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra are bringing Smith’s former employer Gary Burton to Scotland to do a short tour. They will be playing music by Wayne Shorter in specially-commissioned arrangements by a variety of people including Mike Gibbs, Florian Ross and Michael Abene (who runs the WDR Big Band in Cologne). They are at the RSAMD in Glasgow on Saturday 12th September. Tickets are available from the RSAMD web site. Details of the other concerts, in St Andrews, Edinburgh, Stirling and Gordonstoun(!), can be found on the SNJO site.
The Burt-MacDonald Quintet have a history of collaborating with other musicians from the free-er areas of jazz, including recording with Lol Coxhill and Keith Tippett. They pull off something of a coup in October, when they are performing with the great American improvising pianist Marilyn Crispell. According to Crispell’s web site, the concert will consist of a solo set by her plus a set with the band. She’s playing a few other concerts in the UK, notably at the On The Outside festival on Tyneside, but this Glasgow performance (City Halls Recital Room, October 13th) is the only one to feature the Burt-Macdonald group.
Crispell is one of the major figures in contemporary improvisation: whether she’s playing in a dense dissonant style, or more lyrically, she’s always worth hearing. I have fond memories of her 2000 gig with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian at the CCA (when it was in its temporary home at the Maclellan Galleries). It will be interesting to hear how well this collaboration works: Crispell’s intensity isn’t the most obvious match for Burt-MacDonald’s distinctive blend of catchy melody and free improvisation.
Paul Towndrow in the Guardian August 21, 2009
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Paul Towndrow’s recent album “Newology” gets a favourable review from John Fordham in today’s Guardian. I haven’t heard it yet, but he’s certainly put together an impressive band: Towndrow himself on alto and soprano, Mike Walker on guitar, Ryan Quigley on trumpet, both Steve Hamilton and Paul Harrison on piano and keyboards, Mark Hodgson on bass (a new name to me), and Alyn Cosker on drums.
Other reviews:
- Rob Adams (in the Herald)
- Kenny Mathieson (in the List)
There’s a video of the recording of one of the tracks from the album on YouTube.
