Coming up, John Law, Alex Hutton: two piano trios in Bath – and more!

Basic policy here is to point to John Law for gig of the week whenever he’s playing somewhere in reach of Bristol. Here’s why.

This time, the gig is extra-special as there are two trios for the price of one. As Law says,

It’s a double bill entitled The Contemporary British Jazz Piano Trio and will feature my trio and that of young, exciting pianist Alex Hutton. Both of us happen to use the same rhythm section of Yuri Goloubev (astonishing Russian bass virtuoso) and Asaf Sirkis (my sensational Israeli drummer I’ve played with now for nine years), so it’s a chance to contrast and compare two different, yet similar trios.

Sounds enticing. The gig is at Chapel Arts Centre in Bath on Weds 24th, and advance tickets, astonishingly, are only 8 quid. Box office here.

Having said which…  After what has seemed like a bit of a lull, music is breaking out all over in the next few days/weeks – it must be Spring or something. If you can’t make it to Bath, Alex Hutton‘s trio have another date on their tour at the BeBop Club (which hasn’t had big crowds lately, apparently) on Friday, the Pushy Doctors are at The Fringe, Clifton on Thursday, although I’ll be going to St George’s to marvel again at June Tabor, this time with Huw Warrern and Iain Ballamy in Quercus – really looking forward to that one! – there’s a remarkable line-up of improvisers at Colston Hall on Saturday for Mopomoso, and the World Service Project are playing for Ian (Jazz at the Albert) Storror at the Hen and Chicken on Sunday. (Pause for breath – see the venue links list on the right for details of all these). Then St George’s have another more or less compulsory gig on Thursday May 2, with Marius Neset, and the Cheltenham Festival gets under way at the same time (Dave Douglas, Gary Burton, Mike Gibbs, Ravi Coltrane, and many more…). It will be hard to keep up, and we won’t manage it, but hope all these great gigs find their audience!

New York Standards Quartet, Colston Hall, April 11

Another cracking gig from visiting Americans. The review from Oxford cited in the previous post proved a good guide – they play old tunes, “distorted, but with respect” as Lol Coxhill always used to say – although you need good jazz ears to know which tune it is with these guys. Fellow blogger Mike Collins was blown away by the Bristol gig. John Fordham was there too, for the first set, and also rated it highly.

We enjoyed it too, though there was a bit of a problem with volume in the middle part of the hall – below the discomfort threshold, but only just. The same was true at the Damon Brown gig a little while back – seems to be policy at Colston to mike up the drums and then crank up everything else to “balance” them. Not nice, and a shame when the music is so finely detailed. For me, that detail comes across better on the band’s new CD…

Off on a trip so haven’t looked up what’s on this week. But two jazz-with-string-players gigs coming up shortly at St George’s in successive weeks – Neil Cowley and Dave Stapleton, the latter with Marius Neset, so plenty to look forward to.

 

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Damon Brown’s Ugetsu, Colston Hall, March 6

Tony Benjamin has reviewed this one for Venue, and was well tuned in, as usual.

Like he says, sometimes hard bop seems very rule-governed for music that features improvisation. I mean, these guys were good, but I often think nowadays that if I never hear a drummer exchanging fours with the band before they take the tune out again I really wouldn’t mind…

The crowd was pretty small, probably due to  a combination of the best-known-piano-player-in-this-style-in-Japan not pulling in the punters and maybe a Tuesday night – who knows?

Would have been a shame to miss, though, for the sparkly piano solos from Yutaka Shiina, Damon Brown and Ed Jones’ digging deep into the changes and, perhaps the most ear-catching when he took the spotlight, the prodigious bass playing of expatriate-Austrian (now resident in Seoul) bass maestro Martin Zenker.

We were told the band was named Ugetsu after an earlier ensemble of Zenker’s, which was confusing as I’d linked it with the Art Blakey album – and Cedar Walton tune – of the same name. But maybe Zenker’s band paid homage to them. The music tonight certainly did…

Anyway, there’s a bunch of wallet-lightening gigs coming up, but Ian Storror’s next date at Colston, on March 27th (Tuesday again) is unmissable. Not only do we get the maker of one of the recordings in literally every critic’s best of year lists for 2011, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, but also the remarkable Robert Mitchell’s piano trio: has to be one of the nights of the year.

 

Two piano gig(s) – St George’s Oct 13th, Colston Hall Oct 16th

The first of two piano gigs this week was actually a two-piano gig. John Law and Gwilym Simcock addressed twin Steinways as a first jazz entry for Bristol’s piano duo festival.

They proved wonderfully compatible. Both are classically trained, now steeped in contemporary jazz, and fond of resonant themes and mainstream harmonies. Simcock, in particular, likes to play a lot of notes, so there is the obvious problem that two people with 88 keys in front of them will get in each other’s way, but they mostly avoided this. Law began the first half solo, Simcock the second, then they joined forces for the main business. Together, they were impressively seamless, rather in the way that Gary Burton and Chick Corea are after 30-odd years of duos in concert. That seemed remarkable when, toward the end of this exuberant evening of mutual admiration they pointed out that they had only met for the first time at 4.00 in the afternoon, to audible disbelief from the rapt audience. It wasn’t quite as simple as that. Law has just released a superb duo recording, with his brilliant student Mark Pringle, and quite a few of the arrangements, including Lyle Mays affecting Chorinho, Metheny’s Lakes and Laws’ own intriguing piece Triadic Ballet came from there. The Mays is particularly nice, and made me feel warnly towards a musician I’ve never particularly enjoyed.

The two playing this evening were clearly also enjoying themselves a lot, and that feeling spread to everyone else in the best possible way. Highlight for me was a new notion of Laws’, who said that he had realised just the previous evening that the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s requiem makes a perfect lead in to Don’t Explain. So it was, and the bitter-sweet standard produced some of the most restrained, and effective playing of the night from both pianists. Superb.

Down the hill at Colston Hall on Sunday we had a more conventional piano trio gig, with a welcome return visit for Jonathan Gee, with Larry Bartley on bass, Shaney Forbes drums. As they came along on Gee’s last Bristol gig around 18 months ago I’d assumed they were his regular working trio. Not so – in fact this second Bristol date was only their second meeting. All the more impressive then that they tore through Gee’s quite complex compositions with such aplomb.

The mix was familiar (see note of their last gig), with some of the leader’s own tunes, a few from Bartley, a handful of songs actually sung from the pianist to lead into the second half – more getting in the mood to play some more than striking in their own right you’d have to say – and three by Monk. These, like most of the rest, were taken at a fast clip – which made them sound more like everything else. Even Round Midnight got a thorough workout rather than a “ballad” treatment. The small hall at Colston didn’t quite generate the atmosphere of the lamented Future Inns club, nor match it for sound quality – though Forbes’ superbly supportive drumming came across very well. But they gave us another uncompromising evening of serious music-making to round off a trio of gigs for Ian Storror in this venue. With luck, there will be more of those in the New Year. The decent sized, appreciative crowd makes that more likely, I hope. We clapped lots.

Gig of the week – Jonathan Gee, Colston Hall, Oct 16th

There’s a fine piano duo in prospect at St Georges’s on Thursday, with Gwilym Simcock and John Law having what I think is a first encounter. But I’m going for the more conventional piano trio – largely because Jonathan Gee’s last appearance was so fine.

Here’s how it seemed at the time according to this blog’s archive- which I hope explains why it is so good to see them come back to Bristol after a year and half.

Gig of the week – Mark McKnight, Sep 18

Autumn music getting under way properly now with the new season at the BeBop club in Hotwells beginning on Friday (though I have a date with some poetry that night, dammit). But gig of the week has to be this one at Colston Hall. Don’t know anything about these guys* except what it says there, really, but they have endorsements from all the right people. And it is an Ian Storror promotion, a guarantee of quality in itself, as Marius Nest proved again the other day…

*except for James Maddren, of course, always good to see in action.

Impossible Gentlemen, Colston Hall, June 16th

As expected, a brilliant gig. Pretty good crowd, too, which was a slight relief after recent jazz events at this venue. There has been a real buzz about this band, and it obviously got through. The reasons are well explained by early reviewers – Chris Parker, John Fordham, and Tony Benjamin. Consensus there, I think!

It would have been even better in Bristol if Colston 2 could deliver better sound. It was muddy, even allowing for the fact that Swallow’s feline suppleness on electric bass more often delivers a purr than a growl these days, and much of the piano detail was lost, especially in the first half – not really good enough these days, and reason to spend more time with the (tremendous) CD.

But a live show can deliver things a recording can’t. In this case, the particular pleasure of seeing people who play together superbly, but are still stimulating each other with surprises which come from not having played together all that much.

There are lots of reasons not to envy the life of musicians on the road, but surely enviable is the feeling when a band that you never expected to be in – in this case an Anglo-US quartet ranging in age from Simcock (30) to Swallow (71) – works so beautifully. As well as all the very good music, the lovely thing about this evening was enjoying seeing them all enjoying each other at work. Collective music making at its best.

p.s. Mike Collins liked it too (natch)…   and reaches for the same adjective for the Colston Hall sound.

Gig of the week – Impossible Gentlemen (Simcock/Swallow/Walker/Nussbaum), Colston Hall

If you take any notice of upcoming jazz goodies, chances are you’ve spotted this already. Still worth mentioning though. The last couple of (great) contemorary jazz gigs in Colston’s smaller hall had woefully small audiences. This one ought to be as good, or better. A world class collaboration reunited for a CD-promoting tour, I can’t wait to see them. If this lot don’t pull a decent crowd, Bristol could just drop off the jazz touring circuit (as far as there is one) altogether…   They’re in town on Wednesday.

I’ve nicked the Guardian Guide preview below. Link to equally enthusiastic CD review at the bottom.

The Impossible Gentlemen, On tour

The Impossible Gentlemen. Photograph: David Forman

A year ago, a Welshman, a Mancunian and two Americans formed a postbop supergroup which balanced their individual and collective talents, leaving audiences savouring the possibility of its longer-term life. The Welshman was celebrated pianist Gwilym Simcock, and the Mancunian was guitarist Mike Walker, whose mix of raw power and melodic spontaneity has made him the overlooked sibling of John Scofield or Pat Metheny. Bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Adam Nussbaum completed the lineup, and now bearing the name of the Impossible Gentlemen, the group returns. Walker was sensational in last year’s gigs, combining raw rock and blues with understated swing, chiming delicacy, and sparing use of effects. Simcock’s piano improvising injects a McCoy Tyner-like urgency, and Swallow’s slinky basslines elegantly mesh with Nussbaum’s restrained groove-power.

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Three piano evenings – April 20-24

A fine trio of gigs in the last week or so, starting with Freddy Kempf’s Beethoven concert at Colston Hall. This was the second of his three dates devoted to the complete piano concertos, and confirmed that No 4 is indeed the best (discuss). It certainly came across as brilliant-in-spite-of-total familiarity, which seems a good test to me. These have been absolutely straight, standard repertoire gigs, although he daringly played the second of his two concertos at the start of the second half this time, consigning the not especially interesting filler to the end – which made sense. I’ll miss the final date, which I rather regret. It will be a while before I want to sit still in a hall long enough to hear these live again rather than slump on the sofa listening to a CD, but it would have been good to hear the full set.

That was the first of another trio of piano gigs, sort of. Next up was Kit Downes’ sextet in the small hall at Colston. This was a great gig for anyone interested in what Britjazz can offer that is fresh, interesting, and beautifully wrought. Downes is unusually crafty in his choices and augmenting his regular piano trio with two reeds and a cello is a good example of his acuteness. Cello and bass means this still small group has a string section, when he wants, a reed section also, and a great sound when the cello doubles the bass clarinet. All allow him to realise the terrific compositions on their new CD to great effect. No surprise that a pianist should think orchestrally – he has an orchestra in front of him all the time. But Downes has a nice orchestral touch to go with his alternately probing/exuberant piano style. The music was sometimes melancholy and reflective, sometimes grooved heavily, but was unfailingly absorbing. Shame so few came to hear it – but Colston and jazz just don’t seem to go together at the moment. What is wrong with this city?

(Mike Collins was there too)

Smallish but appreciative crowd again the next night to hear an equally accomplished piano player – Jim Blomfield – who draws his inspiration from a similarly wide range of sources and styles. It was great to see him play a classic trio gig in a nice venue down at Future Inns Cabot Circus with a sensitive rhythm section and a good piano. He likes to play a lot of notes, but also delivered ballads with real feeling. And his own writing is vivid and varied – an old piece, Lullaby of Wasteland (which you can listen to here) was especially affecting. As local stalwarts go, Blomfield stands out as someone whose work compares with anyone in the UK but whose career has not led to a national profile. No reason why that couldn’t still happen though. This trio should really record, for starters.

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Gig of the week – April 18th – KIT DOWNES

A small departure. Let me explain. I’ve not been tempted to do previews before. The blog started simply for me to record concerts I’d heard and appreciated, for my future reference. Lately, though, some of those have had pretty small audiences (always a risk with jazz, but seems to happening more, maybe.) Combine that with the imminent repackaging of Venue magazine, and its disappearance as a news-stand weekly, and perhaps a quick notice of what’s coming is worthwhile. The number of visitors here is small, but then so is the jazz constituency…    I won’t try and do a run-down of the week: too time-consuming. But I will highlight one Bristol jazz date to look out for each Monday from now on. Any encouragement in the comments would be welcome.

So, to begin. There’s an interesting outfit called the Magic Hat Ensemble at the Bebop club on Friday,  who certainly sound worth sampling, and Jim Blomfield has a welcome piano trio gig at Future Inns on Sunday.

In between, though, there’s the enticing prospect of Kit Downes’ new sextet at Colston Hall on Saturday 23rd. His recent CD launch was pretty fab, according to the wise ears of LondonJazz  and I can confirm from a brief sample at the London Jazz Festival freestage and now from listening to the recording that Downes’ augmented trio is moving in a fascinating direction. Can’t wait to hear them live again. Here’s hoping for a better turnout than the hall attracted for the fantastic Storms/Nocturnes gig the other week.

Kit Downes Sextet, Colston Hall (in hall 2), April 23, 8.00

The hall’s own rather half-hearted promo is here,

More usefully, you can listen to some of their music here

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