Category Archives: Thoughts

London Jazz Festival 2018 – impressions of Punch Brothers and Mariza

18/11/2018 Mary James Leave a comment

When you haven’t seen a band or artist for years, there is a sense of anticipation that you try to control. But when you sit in the Barbican and the hollers and whoops that greet a band as they step onto the stage are loud and long, then you know you can let your hopes off the leash because you KNOW you will not be disappointed. This was the case with Punch Brothers on 16 November 2018 at the Barbican, opening night of the EFG London Jazz Festival. A band that can make a virtue of tuning “I have eight strings, you only have five”, that clusters around one microphone, that jokes about their country being a circus, that looks like they are actually enjoying themselves, this band could sing the phone book and I’d be happy. It is hard to take your eyes off Chris Thile whose extraordinary falsetto vocals and mandolin, nimble movements and facial winks and contortions reminded me of a court jester, and as bitter. The sound man must have had a heart attack when they walked away from the microphone, walked to the edge of the stage and played their encores acoustically.

Absolutely every minute was perfect but I will never forget their title track All Ashore. When it finished, I was choked with tears (as usual) and I am sure Chris Thile had a lump in his throat. There was a nano second of silence before the applause. “Momma cuts like a man-of-war through the fog of an early morning with nothing more than a coffee filling up her sails.” This is why we go to live music, to feel overwhelmed by beauty and artistry in the presence of other people.

Seeing fado star Mariza on 17 November was moving for different reasons. Another set close to two hours, it never felt that long. She also attracted like a magnet, her voice hard to describe, strong yet vulnerable, her presence commanding, her band providing a gorgeous backdrop with the delicate sound of the Portuguese guitar and accordion magic-carpetting us to Lisbon. When she stepped off the stage into the audience, slowly singing her way to the back of the stalls, then worked her way back shaking hands and receiving genuine thanks and appreciation from the many Portuguese people in the audience, I found myself moved again, by her warmth and humility. Look at her face and those near her in the picture below, they are spellbound and happy and she is the real thing.

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Jazz venues, Promoters, Thoughts

Article: 10 things I learned as a tour manager

07/12/2015 Mary James Leave a comment

© 2015 Robbie Elford. All Rights Reserved.

Recently, guitarist and composer Maciek Pysz completed an 18-date tour of England and Wales. I arranged most of this tour and helped out with PR and tour management. Here are 10 things I learned, they were published in London Jazz News on 7 December 2015.

http://www.londonjazznews.com/2015/12/feature-ten-things-i-learned-as-tour.html

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Gigs I've enjoyed, Quick reviews, Thoughts

Impressions: The Necks: 3 November 2013 – Birmingham Town Hall

04/11/2013 Mary James Leave a comment

The series was called Risk. Enticing. So I took a risk and didn’t do my ‘homework’, I didn’t listen to anything by The Necks before their gig at Birmingham Town Hall. The organisers had taken a risk and turned the almost overwhelmingly cavernous Town Hall into a cosy venue – we sat on all sides of the band, on the same level. No lofty stage. We sat so close I could almost gently nudge a sliding cymbal back into place. They captivate by their stillness, slight figures in black, only the occasional gentle glance at the audience by the drummer indicated they knew we were there. Everything about them is spare, taut and precise. Painters with a blank canvas, surgeons ready for an operation but unsure what they might find after the first incision. In profile the pianist Chris Abrahams reminded me of an intaglio, an engraved gem of precious stone, frozen in time. Only his fingers moved, gently, so gently the keys seem to depress themselves by thought not action. Could a piano be played so quietly?

Did the drummer touch his drums at all? Instead we heard tiny sounds and scrapes, a cymbal ticked and tapped delicately for what seemed like hours. The bass player toying with the idea of using his bow, putting it away thoughtfully and returning to his few insistent notes. After just a few minutes I realised I was not hearing anything that reached back to the European tradition I was familiar with. This was Australian impressionism, its own tradition, unapologetic and unique. In my mind’s eye I sensed huge empty spaces, felt scorched by heat, strained after trains clanging in the very far distance (leaving without me, oh, nightmare), was suffocated in a dust storm, dodged hissing rattle snakes, gasped for air as they built up the emotion so intensely I wanted to cover my ears, to block the waves that crowded my brain. How would they end, how could they end? How did they take us from minimal notes to this vast canvas?

Then it slowed, some imperceptible sign, and just the drummer was left. They became human, arms moved from instruments, they straightened up, eyes refocused and the spell was broken. But we dared not applaud, not yet, not for a very long beat. It seemed almost wrong to break the silence. And we went into the night bewitched, shaking our heads at the distance we had travelled.

The Necks

Chris Abrahams, piano

Tony Buck, drums

Lloyd Swanton, bass

Mary James, 4 November 2013

Jazz venues, Thoughts

In praise of regional jazz clubs… revisited October 2013

23/10/2013 Mary James Leave a comment

It is three months since I first sang the praises of regional jazz clubs and their vital place on the jazz scene as platforms for all levels of talent. I have been thinking, and I admit, worrying, about their future. Neil Yates announced the end of Jazz at the Cayley in Rhos on Sea in October. Personal phone calls and texts to regulars could not save it, numbers declined and so it closed. I have often asserted that jazz holds itself far too cheaply, that some people wince at paying £12 for a ticket yet will spend nearly that on two glasses of wine whilst there. I am coming to the conclusion that if we are going to save our small jazz clubs then we all need to band together to help each other and be more vocal about the good things we offer.

So I was heartened to read about the recent creation of the Jazz Promoters Network (in the UK). I will join and will state on our application that we can offer the network decades of experience (between us anyway), boundless enthusiasm, genuine love for the music and its musicians, and the desire to learn – learn how to grow our audiences, learn how to offer opportunities for new work to be commissioned, learn how to support other jazz clubs and not compete with them, find sources of funding.

And then I look at our schedule at Stratford Jazz for early 2014:

Alan Barnes on 8 January to blow away the cobwebs;
TG Collective on 22 January, guitar-led ensemble;
Bryan Corbett Quartet on 12 February, a local trumpeter with a haunting sound;
Duncan Eagles/Mark Perry Quintet on 26 February, exciting young saxophonist and trumpeter, making waves in London;
John Law’s BOINK! on 12 March. This is John’s move in electronica, subtle and clever as ever; and
Maciek Pysz Trio on 26 March, my favourite guitarist with his life-enhancing, stunningly good trio of Asaf Sirkis and Yuri Goloubev, playing compositions from his very well -received album Insight.

I would travel, and have travelled, to London to see these bands and here they are, gracing our small jazz club! Our evenings have two sets – great value for the audience and an opportunity for bands to experiment with new material, safe in the knowledge they have two hours of performance time. We have an attractive venue with a bar, nice subtle lighting, decent sound, a big screen on which artists can project their own films or images, so adding another visual stimulus. Sadly we have no piano. But we are a place where you can hear exciting new work in a very intimate environment. We listen, we are appreciative.

Take the example below by John Law – his Boink! project – we are so lucky to be able to present John Law’s latest project next year. This is a sound that will project as well in our small room as in a larger venue and I for one am already wishing the time away til his gig.

If you have listened to the clip and enjoyed it as much as I do, then maybe you will see regional jazz clubs in a new light – as places where you can see boundaries pushed, which don’t just rely on a diet of standards. We are as hungry for new music as fans in cities. Where world class artists seek us out. Time to stop bemoaning our lot and time to shout very loudly ‘We are a great night out, come and join us, hear fabulous music close up, pay a little bit more – because we are worth it!’. Do you agree?

http://stratfordjazz.org.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/stratfordjazz.org.uk

https://twitter.com/StratfordJazz

http://www.shakespearestreet.co.uk/

Mary James

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Gigs I've enjoyed, Thoughts

Brecon Jazz Festival roundup: 10 -11 August 2013

12/08/2013 Mary James 3 Comments

On Twitter a few days before Brecon Jazz Festival, Mercury Prize nominees Roller Trio promised they would be playing all our favourites at their gig at the Guildhall on Saturday night. So they started with Deep Heat, Roller Toaster and The Nail That Stands Up and then played us a few new tracks that had no name but had been saved by their recording engineer as Doris and I hope their new album has a track called Doris, there is something direct and no-nonsense about this band. My notes refer to Dalek music. This is music that Daleks would like if given half the chance. It is exciting, edgy, overwhelming, physical and above all, tuneful. They are fabulous, like a workout with no effort.

No old favourites for Phronesis earlier that afternoon. An excited full house at the Theatre (the queue to get in snaked for several hundred yards) were mesmerised by a set of new compositions, at least five of which had never been heard before outside of rehearsal. The set list included the sinister Urban Control, the haunting Lost Nomads, Life to Everything, the affectionate Herne Hill, Fraternal, Behind Bars, Fly on the Floor, two others with no name and an encore of Suede Trees. If we were guinea pigs for new sounds, we passed the test, the buzz afterwards was ecstatic. There were unmistakable signs of the wisdom and confidence gained from world touring, a vast auditorium-filling sound produced with seemingly minimal obvious effort, so relaxed is their partnership. Did I detect more arco than previously from Jasper? It felt very lyrical at times. There was an almost pastoral feel to one of the compositions. Now we all have to wait, patiently, til November when these gems will be recorded at the Cockpit and released on Edition Records.

The contrast between well estabished and new continued on Sunday – trumpet player Laura Jurd gave us a very complex and confident set at the Cathedral. The Cathedral’s acoustics provided the ideal place for her clear sound and for John Surman who followed. The John Surman Trio – a supergroup comprising Chris Lawrence on bass and John Marshall on drums – treated us to a largely improvised set of compositions inspired by the Cathedral and sunshine. The jewelled light from the stained glass and the cavernous space prompted huge, dark and sometimes scarey sounds, like vast flocks of birds speeding across a dark sky. The compactness of John Marshall’s technique (ex Soft Machine and Nucleus) produced lots of noise with minimal movement, an interesting comparison with powerful drummer Luke Reddin-Williams of Roller Trio whose theatrical gestures were as eye catching as they were effective.

My festival ended with another supergroup, the Anglo-American The Impossible Gentlemen, whose confidence and good humour provided the perfect prelude to leaving Brecon. We heard tracks from their upcoming album Internationally Recognised Aliens. I preferred their quieter compositions, notably the beautiful Ever After by Steve Swallow and Gwilym Simcock’s bluesy Barber Blues. which I had heard before, with Lighthouse in the same venue last year. If anyone can play a piano and make it look as if he is skimming across hot coals it is Gwilym. He is quite breathtaking and very engaging. And that was the magic of Brecon.