Byas’d Opinion

This is the debut album as leader from drummer Cosker, although he’s already got several recordings as a sideman under his belt. It’s largely Scofield-y jazz-rock, with Cosker’s regular trio of Ross Hamilton (electric bass) and David Dunsmuir (guitar) frequently augmented by various permutations of Tommy Smith and Paul Towndrow (saxes), Ryan Quigley (trumpet), Jason Rebello (piano) and Maureen McMullan (vocals).

It suffers slightly from the debut album syndrome of trying to show off too wide a range of styles: there are several pieces with a piano- rather than guitar-based sound which break the flow a bit (although they’re excellent in themselves). But there’s plenty to enjoy, not least the drumming.

The title, incidentally, is apparently a typo for “Alyn’s Tune”.

John Fordham’s review in The Guardian.

In 2004, Tom Bancroft’s big band, Orchestro Interrupto, played a series of concerts with special guest Geri Allen on piano. This album is a belated release of material performed on that tour: it was recorded in 2005 but only released a couple of months ago.

Slightly disappointingly, Geri Allen doesn’t play on the CD. But it’s only a slight disappointment, as her place is taken by Chick Lyall who handles the role very well indeed. I don’t know how much of the piano part was written in advance, how much was improvised by Lyall, or how much he’s trying to recreate what Allen played, but the results are excellent. However it was done, he sounds like the right pianist for this music, and the piano part, a mixture of straight jazz and more classically-tinged passages, sounds just right for him.

He’s not the only soloist, though. Laura MacDonald is on particularly good form on alto: like Lyall, she seems exactly the right player for this music. Dutch trombonist Joost Buis is a new name to me, but he too is excellent, producing some splendidly Ellingtonian playing on the closing “First Steps Last Steps”. Other solos come from John Telfer (baritone), Colin Steele (trumpet), Phil Bancroft (saxes), Mischa Kool (bass – and what a great name!), Kevin MacKenzie (guitar), and Tom Bancroft himself on drums.

Highlights of the album, for me, are “Linda and Crawford’s Theme”, where sinister dark orchestral sounds well up behind and eventually overwhelm a lyrical piano theme, and the call and response section between the various soloists and the full band towards the end of “Ornate Bessie”.

In the past, I felt that Tom Bancroft’s work with large ensembles suffered from the sporadic nature of such projects (as hinted at by the name of the band). They had lots of good ideas, but they didn’t all come off. It sounded like the early draft of something very good, rather than the finished article. The material here sounds fully played in, though. It’s a big step forward from his earlier big band release “Pieology”. There are a fair number of big bands in Scotland today, but Orchestro Interrupto is, as far as I know, the only one playing nothing but original compositions. Let’s hope the favourable reviews this CD has been getting make it easier for Tom Bancroft to get a big band together on a semi-permanent basis.

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:

• John Fordham in the Guardian
• Ian Mann in his The Jazzman blog

And here’s a clip of them in action. There’s a version of this piece on the album..

My list of the best albums of the year is very much shaped by the erratic local availability of CDs: if it’s on a medium-to-small US label it’s difficult to get hold of in Glasgow. My favourites of 2008 all involve British musicians, but that’s a reflection of what I’ve actually heard rather than down to chauvinism. They’re all fairly straightforward contemporary jazz rather than free improvisation or jazz/funk/folk fusion. For some reason there’s a preponderance of alto players.

Martin Speake, “Generations”. Inventive reworkings of standards. Speake and his band are able get something fresh and inventive from the material without distorting it out of shape. If I’d to single out one record as my best new release of 2008, this would be it.

Martina Almgren and Laura Macdonald, “Open Book”. “Women play jazz – music world in shock!” – the album of the headline. Both leaders write well above-average melodic compositions, and the band work really well as a unit.

Chris Biscoe, “Gone in the Air: the music of Eric Dolphy”. Recreates the spirit and general style of Dolphy without simply copying his playing. Tony Kofi is the second horn player

Brian Kellock featuring Julian Arguelles, “The Nine Mile Burn Sessions”. Mainly standards. Half solo piano, half duets. This is apparently the first of a series of releases on the new Thick-Skinned label, but it’s not clear from the way the sleeve note is worded if it’s a series of Kellock – Arguelles recordings,  a series of recordings by Brian Kellock in different settings, or a series of releases by different artists.

I haven’t heard the Andersen/Smith/Vinaccia CD or the Norma Winstone’s Distances yet, but having heard both groups in concert recently they’re definitely on my shopping list.

Most frustrating CD of the year has to be Kenny Garrett’s “Sketches of MD”. Much of it is absolutely first-rate, but it’s spoiled by long passages where Garrett tries to get the audience to clap along and tell him if they are Happy People. It sounds as if it was a great gig, but the audience participation stuff is pretty tedious to listen to at home.