Tom Bancroft Orchestro Interrupto: The Ballad of Linda and Crawford October 25, 2009
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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.
Two Festivals: Lockerbie and Skye October 20, 2009
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There are a couple of interesting jazz festivals on in Scotland this weekend. They both run from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th.
Lockerbie
The Lockerbie Festival, which started in 2006, has now established itself on the Scottish jazz scene.
My pick of this year’s concerts would be:
- Gigs by Tony Coe, one of the greatest UK reed players, who’s capable of playing straightahead swing, free improvisation, and anything in between. He plays in the opening gala concert on Friday, and in a quartet with American pianist Bill Carrothers the next day.
- Three shows by the aforementioned Bill Carrothers, a marvellously lyrical pianist with a gift for digging up old tunes and doing something inventive and contemporary with them. On Saturday, he’s doing a trio set at lunchtime and an early evening quartet set with Tony Coe; on Sunday he’s playing in a quartet with Scott Hamilton.
- A gala opening-night concert in the Town Hall, where Tina May and American trumpeter and singer Duke Hietger will be performing a set based on the Ella Fitzgerald – Louis Armstrong collaborations of the fifties. They’re backed by a band which includes Tony Coe on clarinet and Ronnie Rae on bass. The support acts are Rossano Sportiello playing stride and swing piano, and Tipitina playing New Orleans-style rhythm and blues.
Scott Hamilton and Duke Heitger pop up in a selection of different line-ups across the weekend, the Temperance Seven play the main Saturday night concert, and Paul Towndrow plays a lunchtime Sunday show in a band lead by Dumfries drummer John Lowrie.
Full details of these and the other concerts on the Lockerbie Jazz Festival site.
Skye
This is a new event to me, although it’s apparently been going since 2007. Nigel Hitchcock’s Quartet, Sophie Bancroft, the Rhythm Kings, and Gina Rae with the Euan Burton Trio are all playing a series of gigs across the island between Friday and Sunday, ending up with a Sunday night jam session in the Royal Hotel in Portree. Details on the Skye Jazz Festival web site.
Marilyn Crispell and the Burt/MacDonald Quintet October 14, 2009
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Recital Room, Glasgow City Halls, 13th October 2009
An odd concert, in that it managed to be simultaneously excellent and disappointing. What disappointed was that there wasn’t enough of Marilyn Crispell, one of the masters of avant-garde jazz piano. This was very much a performance by a Burt-MacDonald Sextet rather than by a Marilyn Crispell group.
This was particularly true of the first half. It opened with a solo piece by Crispell (if it wasn’t based on a Coltrane ballad, it certainly sounded as if it was), and then the rest of the band joined her on stage. She was slightly more prominent in the second set, which opened with a piano and sax duet between her and Raymond MacDonald, followed by a trio piece played by Crispell, George Lyle on bass, and Tom Bancroft on drums. Lyle and Bancroft aren’t quite Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, who were the rhythm section last time Crispell played Glasgow, but they acquitted themselves well.
The Burt-MacDonald Quintet get better every time I hear them. They’ve always gone in for a unique combination of catchy, almost middle-of-the-road, melodies and free improvisation. This had made them one of the most distinctive outfits on the Scottish scene. What they’re now better at is blending the two seamlessly: there was no sense of “that was a tune, now here’s a noisy bit”, for the two elements of their style came together seamlessly. Nicola MacDonald mainly played melodica, only singing on a couple of pieces. George Burt, playing a Les Paul style electric guitar, somehow always looks as if he’s about to launch into a power chord and start duck-walking across the stage, but never does.
Overall, a very enjoyable evening, although I was disappointed that Marilyn Crispell wasn’t featured more. It’s nine or ten years since she last played Glasgow. Let’s it hope it’s not as long before she returns.
A couple of final observations: there seemed to be a much higher proportion of women in the audience than is normal for Glasgow jazz gigs. Is there an untapped female audience for free improvisation, or do female musicians attract female listeners? And in his introduction to the set, Todd Gordon announced that it was being recorded. An album to look forward to.
Update, 15th October
Beer! October 11, 2009
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Deuchar’s IPA
I’ve long known that there’s a Deuchar’s IPA. And very good it is too. Listening to Jazz Record Requests last night, I discovered that there’s also a Deuchar’s IPA Special. It was written by Dundee’s Jimmy Deuchar, and recorded by a Ronnie Scott group on the album “Presenting the Ronnie Scott Sextet”. And very good it was too.
Lager
OK, I realise that the erratic bar turnover at the City Halls and Concert Hall means that the bars there are never going to be places where you get a fine selection of well-kept cask ales. In the circumstances, I’ll settle for a reasonable lager.
These bars used to have Tennent’s lager on draft. It was okay: not great but not awful. But since the summer, they’ve been stocking Carlsberg. It’s not an improvement. More to the point, it means that these venues, run by an offshoot of Glasgow City Council, have deliberately moved away from stocking a beer brewed here in Glasgow to stocking one which is no better and is made elsewhere. Why withdraw their support from Glasgow workers like this? And if there’s some particular issue with Tennent’s, why not get in one of the lagers brewed by West Brewery, just a few hundred yards from the City Halls?
Claire Martin October 5, 2009
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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.
Would anyone who was at the concert like to confirm or disagree with these assessments?
