Byas’d Opinion

Recital Room, Glasgow City Halls, Saturday 14th November 2009

I don’t do star ratings on this blog. If I did, most gigs I review would probably get three or four stars out of a possible five. Empirical’s concert on Saturday night was unequivocally a five-star performance.

The pre-gig publicity for this gave the impression that the line-up would be a quintet, but on the night it turned out to be an alto sax, vibes, bass and drums quartet. Alto player Nathaniel Facey and drummer Shaney Forbes are founder members of Empirical and played on their debut album, while bassist Tom Farmer and vibes player Lewis Wright joined more recently. Their set was made up of music inspired by Eric Dolphy plus three pieces by Dolphy himself (two in the main set, one as encore).

The band weren’t imitators, though. The music came from the mid-60s Blue Note vibes-plus-horns freebop school which included Jackie McLean and Grachan Moncur as well as Dolphy: it wasn’t a case of them being “Still Out to Lunch”. I thought it was a clever touch that the two pieces they played from Out to Lunch itself (“Hat and Beard” and “Gazzeloni”) were ones on which Dolphy played bass clarinet or flute rather than alto. The encore, “245″, originally used piano rather than vibes, so again there was no risk of the band playing pale cover versions of the original.

Lewis Wright’s playing had some of the chiming sound and plentiful pauses of 1960s Bobby Hutcherson, but he wasn’t simply a copyist. That style of playing works really well as a background for a horn player to solo over. If I’d to single one soloist out, it would be Nathaniel Facey, whose alto playing always gripped the attention, but as with Mark McKnight’s group a week or so ago, the most impressive thing about Empirical was the way they played together as a unit. It wasn’t a case of Intro – Solo One – Solo Two – Outro. All the parts of each number flowed together organically. You were aware that, say, the sax had been taking the lead but had now stopped playing, while the vibes player who had been playing mainly chords was now playing more melodic lines. There wasn’t the sort of jerky stop-start feeling you sometimes get in less integrated performances. As a result, there wasn’t much applause for individual solos: but this was a tribute to the way the musicians worked as a group, not a criticism of the soloing.

The sound was very good, with none of the problems with the Recital Room’s echoey church-like acoustics which affect some performances.

Unfortunately, there was a worryingly small audience. I spotted an unusually large proportion of local musicians among the listeners: I hope this was an indication that those in the know realised that Empirical were a band not to be missed and not an indication of a lack of work for them elsewhere in the area.

To sum up: quite superb. One of the gigs of the year. You should have been there. But, alas, you almost certainly weren’t.

Recital Room, City Halls, Thursday 5th November

Whether it was the rival attraction of the Portico Quartet elsewhere in town, Guy Fawkes Night, a Celtic European game being shown live on TV in some pubs, or winter having well and truly started this week, I don’t know, but the attendance at this concert was woefully poor. But if you like jazz and weren’t there, you missed out.

The line-up was:

• Mark McKnight guitar. He’d a lovely clean sound: from the lightly-amplified Joe Pass / Jim Hall school, but making subtle use of effect pedals from time to time.
• Will Vinson alto. One of the most expressive-sounding young players I’ve heard for a long time.
  I thought there was the odd hint of Johnny Hodges in some of his playing, although overall he didn’t sound like Hodges at all
• James Maddren drums.
• Ross Stanley Hammond organ.

They were all very good individually, particularly McKnight and Vinson, but what they excelled at was playing as a group: this wasn’t just four guys on stage at the same time, it was a band. Three passages exemplified this: Maddren’s drum solo which built from nothing over repeated figures from the band during the coda to one piece in the first half; the long drum and alto duet in one piece in the second half; and McKnight and Vinson playing guitar and alto solos in tandem towards the end of the set.

If I’m vague about the titles of the pieces, it’s because McKnight didn’t use a mic when speaking to the audience, and I couldn’t always make out what he was saying. They played three standards: an excellent “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”; “Solar”; and one of those Charlie Parker tunes whose name always eludes me. The rest of the set was McKnight originals.

I didn’t make a conscious decision to go to this rather than the Portico Quartet. I’d simply bought my ticket for this before discovering the other gig was on. But based on Rob Adams’ review of the Portico Quartet’s Edinburgh concert, I seem to have made the right decision. He was at this one too, but I haven’t seen his review yet. Euphbass certainly enjoyed it.

I had planned to go to Claire Martin’s concert with Gareth Williams on Saturday night, but circumstances prevented me. The press reviews I’ve seen suggest it was slightly disappointing.

• Herald review of the Glasgow gig
• Scotsman review of the Edinburgh show

Would anyone who was at the concert like to confirm or disagree with these assessments?