Albums I really like, Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Quick reviews

Brief thoughts – Roberto Olzer Trio: Steppin’ Out

29/07/2013 Mary James Leave a comment

I first heard the Roberto Olzer Trio play the Sting cover Every Little Thing She Does is Magic and bought the album on the whim that any trio containing bass player Yuri Goloubev was worth listening to. My hunch was justified. This is a lovely album of jewelled lyricism by Italian pianist Roberto Olzer. The jaunty Sting cover is not typical of the album, it is memorable but then so are the other nine tracks. Roberto studied the organ and I think this shows in the delicate layers of sound that hang around like the echo of an organ in the fan vaulting of a cathedral, you look up and feel wonder. The album is very visual, each track seems to tell a story, from the unsteady Madman of the opening, to FF (Fast Forward) which seems to want to trip up each musician. Especially beautiful is tragic Gloomy Sunday where the bass is intent on wallowing in misery. The sound swells and falls, like good ideas dismissed out of pessimism. You almost need to listen to each track on its own, they are exquisite short stories you want to savour.

It was recorded and mixed by Stefano Armerio in June 2012 (he also recorded Maciek Pysz’s Insight). Deserves a wider audience, especially in the UK.

Roberto Olzer, piano

Yuri Goloubev, double bass

Mauro Beggio, drums

http://www.robertoolzer.com/

Jazz venues, Thoughts

In praise of … regional jazz clubs

25/07/2013 Mary James Leave a comment

I want to sing the praises of regional jazz clubs in general and one in particular that is now close to my heart – Stratford Jazz. That’s Stratford-upon-Avon, not East London or Ontario. Many times I have sat in the cosy upstairs room at The Chapel No 1 Shakespeare Street, enjoyed the gigs, discovered new sounds, loved old ones, made new friends and never once thought about how it all comes together, the hard (but enjoyable) unpaid work that goes into making a gig happen. Well, now I have an idea. Stratford Jazz has been in existence since 1986, its gigs since 2003 set out here. The most cursory glance at this list reveals people who are now established, such as Andrew McCormack and Michael Janisch, the latter now running a record label. Which brings me to the point of this post. Regional jazz plays a crucial role in an artist’s development. By all means live in London, record in London, play most of your gigs in London, but small jazz venues exist to provide you with an appreciative audience and we don’t forget you.

Stratford Jazz is at a crossroads. Our mainstay, Roy, is planning to hand over the running of the club. An open meeting conjured up volunteers to set out chairs, man the door, take money, produce flyers, man the sound deck, run the raffle, help with the website and social media. I have the latter role. We still need help with booking bands and paying them, running a membership system, drafting press releases etc etc.

So if you would like to help us please follow us on Twitter @StratfordJazz, please “Like” us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stratfordjazz.org.uk and best of all, please come to our gigs. In the next few months we host Chris Bowden, Marco Marconi, Casey Greene, Tom Hill, Greg Abate, Ben Markland, Ed Jones and Alan Barnes. We are a small club but each event is special. People travel from miles. You won’t forget it.

And anyone with ideas of how we can attract young people, please let us know via our Facebook page or tweet to us. We want to survive for at least another 27 years.

Stratford Jazz

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Thoughts

Some thoughts on Rothko, megalithic architecture and jazz…

12/07/2013 Mary James Leave a comment

I felt at home in the 6000 year old Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, Paola, Malta. The shapes were familiar, I had seen them in Rothko. These mysterious underground chambers, majestic burial places, were excavated by hand using tools of antler and flint, the limestone smooth as silk. Their perfect proportions of aperture and lintel thickness struck me as timeless. These softly lit caverns awed us to silence. In our mind’s eyes, we heard the scrape of flint on stone, the drip of rainwater in winter, the quiet conversation of the workmen eons ago. In a museum in Valletta we saw some offerings to the dead taken from these chambers. A tiny sleeping woman, fashioned from stone, her winter skirt of sheepskin-like stone gently crinkled at its hem, her best skirt. Such humanity touches us across the millennia. Move forward to the 20th century, and Rothko. His Red on Maroon could overwhelm you. Those huge vertical columns and apertures look like windows or doors, the sombre tones shift as you gaze at them, making you feel uneasy. But there is nothing there.

Maroon by Maciek Pysz on his album Insight was inspired by this same Rothko. It’s contemplative, and unlike the other compositions on this album, this one is not sunlit, it is permeated by loss and reflective sadness. As I stood in one of the chambers of the Hypogeum I heard Asaf Sirkis’s gentle udu drum, it could have been the patter of rainwater, or a drum from 6000 years ago. Yuri Goloubev’s delicate bass playing could just as easily have been inspired by the painting or the need to ease our passage from life to the afterlife as I experienced in those cool chambers.

All too soon, we were in a sunlit street, wondering if we had imagined all that was beneath our feet, marvelling that such beauty could have been visualised by our ancestors and then made to happen.

only jazz

Monthly Archives: July 2013