Rest in peace, Dave Brubeck

05/12/2012 Mary James Leave a comment

Rest in peace Dave Brubeck, 6 December 1920 – 5 December 2012. You probably ignited my love of pianists in general, and jazz pianists in particular, many years ago. My Mother had a vinyl copy of Time Out, the beautiful cover was my introduction to modern art. It was as modern as our new home, furnished in the colours, fabrics and shapes of the Festival of Britain, a time of optimism after hardship. As for the music, Take Five was part of my childhood. It will always conjure up happy times and later I would come to appreciate the subtlety of his compositions like the one below. It was the benchmark from which I discovered the sublime in music. It was perceptively used in Tim Hunkin’s magical Secret Life of Machines and later became the music Radio 4 listeners would choose as best encapsulating “Radio Guardian“, how Guardian readers would describe themselves if they were a piece of music. I wish strength and peace to his widow Iola, theirs was a very long marriage. He leaves us a wonderful catalogue of beautiful music.

This is gentle and exquisite:

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

Review: Phronesis, The North Wall Oxford, 1 December 2012

02/12/2012 Mary James 1 Comment

The penultimate gig of 2012 for Phronesis was held in the North Wall in Oxford on 1 December, a good venue for listeners with excellent sight lines, comfy seats and lovely mellow brick walls. Old fans were probably hoping for some new material and were well rewarded with at least three new compositions which were not attributed – perhaps a symbol of a new Phronesis, utterly confident in each other’s presence. As I sat there I thought back briefly to seeing the Brad Melhdau trio just two weeks ago at the Barbican, and it hit me – this trio has exactly the same confidence on stage as that well-established entity, only with more equality.

This evening felt daring – old and new were mixed, leaving us to guess which was which – all sounded fresh, deeper, matured like good wine. We heard material from all four Phronesis albums. The sense of continuity in sound and concept, despite changes in drummer and pianist, is amazing, and a tribute to Jasper’s vision. It’s not that the sound is static, it has evolved so naturally that you are unaware that you are learning, that you are adapting to their increasingly complex deep sound. So we started with a tune from the first album Organic Warfare, called Untitled#2 which sounded very stately on the Yamaha piano, five years on, it still worked and sounded new. From their second album we had Love Song and Happy Notes – the latter an ironic commentary on an unwitty heckler. Passing Clouds (from Walking Dark) had an Oriental feel, the gentle movements of Tai Chi made manifest in majestic, floating, billowing sounds with darker clouds evident at the close.

The new material has the gorgeous lyricism we have come to expect. Nomads had me holding my breath, it was so beautiful. Ivo has hit a rich seam of tunes lately – his That Syncing Feeling from Yatra is one of my pieces of the year. Another new piece started with a simple melody on bass that I was still humming in the morning – had I heard it before? No, it just comes naturally.

One of the joys of seeing this trio live is that you never know how Anton will create new sounds. At one stage, I thought he was striking the stands of his drums, perfectly in tune – actually he had cymbals on the floor I think. But the fact that I thought he was hitting his drum supports did not strike me as odd. Sometimes he plays silently, hitting the air for several beats, always he is mesmerising. You have to see them to really appreciate just how tightly they play now, with such empathy for each other.

So I felt very hurt for the band when a woman heckler demanded new, unrehearsed material. It may be Oxford but it was just plain rude to Jasper, it broke the moment. It was extraordinary, to me anyway, that the heckler could have thought that she was not listening to new material when we were. The fact that new material sounded well rehearsed when perhaps it was not is a tribute to the skills of this perfect trio.

Sadly, fans in the UK now have to wait until Phronesis’ next performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on 5 April 2013 when we are promised some guests including the singer Olivia Chaney. It’s a big venue but they can fill it, physically and mentally, they are at the top of their game.

http://www.phronesismusic.com/

Albums I really like, Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Gigs I've enjoyed

Gigs and albums of 2012, a fan’s eye view…

28/11/2012 Mary James Leave a comment

I have tried in my mind’s eye to visualise an order to my list of gigs and albums of the year, and I can’t do it! There is no way of rationally ranking the many hours of sitting in theatres, halls, tents and pubs. All are precious to me.

Here are just a few of my happiest memories of gigs this year, in no particular order:

Gregory Porter at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival – a glorious voice and a performer who genuinely reaches out to the audience with an almost child-like pleasure.

Marius Neset standing on the stage at St Georges Brandon Hill during the first performance of Flight by Dave Stapleton and visibly relishing the wonderful acoustic.

That same gig, the buzz of the audience in the interval, no-one talking about getting a drink, everyone saying “This is amazing”. It was.

A very hot day in May and the launch of Phronesis’ Walking Dark at Kings Place. Such a joyful, relaxed evening in a lovely hall and shared with friends.

And albums of the year that mean the most to me?

Oddarrang Cathedral, absolutely magical
John Law’s Congregation Three Leaps of the Gazelle for its great beauty

Tracks that keep going through my head:

That Syncing Feeling from Yatra by Ivo Neame
Holland from Where do you start? by Brad Mehldau

People seen for the first time who made a big impression:

Tigran
Josh Arcoleo

Bands I want to see next year:

World Service Project – all credit to them for their pioneering pan-European collaborations and their sense of fun!
Roller Trio – have heard so much about them, now want to see them

My last jazz of 2012 will be Phronesis at Oxford on 1 December. They are my favourite trio and I thank them for the joy and richness they bring to my life.

Gigs I've enjoyed

Review: John Law Trio, QEH,17 Nov 2012, London Jazz Festival

20/11/2012 Mary James Leave a comment

When I reviewed John Law’s Three Leaps of the Gazelle earlier this year I really hoped I could see him live so I could thank him for his beautiful music. So it was a no-brainer to book to see him, even in a festival where we were faced with agonising choices, where so many acts clashed in the schedule. John’s performance at the London Jazz Festival goes down as one of my highlights of the festival. He joked that he had performed at the Purcell Room, now the QEH, would it be the Royal Festival Hall next? Well, why not? He has a stellar trio with Asaf Sirkis on percussion and Yuri Goloubev on bass. Yuri was the surprise to me – his diffident seated stance disguising absolutely extraordinary command of his bass, particularly in Three Part Invention and Finger on the Pulse.

The trio played compositions from Three Leaps of the Gazelle but deepened them with more obvious and daring electronics, making the most of the perfect piano and the vast space. So Insistence which starts gently with crickets (the insect) quickly became darker and sinister. It is easy to take John’s wonderful playing for granted, the tunes flow so naturally, the colours and pace are so varied, it looks effortless. Three Part Invention allowed Asaf to play full blast with a stunning solo. This was a lovely contrast to his earlier delicate brushwork sounding like a small animal running in the snow in Counting Snowflakes. By now the full house was gripped, the twiddly electronics, the piano like an irregularly dripping tap, the magical sounds of the glockenspiel and the beautiful tune had us all remembering childhood Christmases when we did indeed watch individual snowflakes. And it wasn’t only the audience who were moved – several times Asaf or John waved a hand at Yuri as if to say ” Oh my goodness, just listen to this guy tonight, he is inspired”. And yes, he was, they all were. The electronics really made it – they weren’t just another extraordinary piano trio (we had that with Brad Mehldau earlier in the week), they were being daring, and it paid off. If the audience had just come to see Egberto Gismondi then they came away with having seen an amazing set from John.

I have a feeling that Three Leaps of the Gazelle is going to be in my top 5 albums of this year and this live performance convinces me of this. This was a gig where I would have welcomed a second set.

Gigs I've enjoyed

BBC Radio3 Jazz Line-Up 10 Nov 2012 – being there…

12/11/2012 Mary James Leave a comment

Three gigs in one, could you ask for more? Jazz Line-up at the Clore Ballroom, Southbank Centre offered us three very different short sets, each giving us an insight into the creative process that you don’t usually get in a live performance. The first, from Aruán Ortiz, a Cuban pianist whose quintet included Michael Janisch on bass and Greg Osby on saxophone was a fairly uncompromising upbeat set which felt very New York to me with its hard driving grooves. Just the thing to warm us up. The band keep in touch by Skype which must be an interesting way to rehearse when you are on different continents.

Then came pianist Tigran Hamasyan who divides his time between New York and Paris. His La Petite Esperance moved me greatly, I was captivated in an instant, sat forward in my seat holding my breath, I heard his home country of Armenia, gentle folk melodies, mourning for a lost way of life. It wasn’t just technique, there was such depth of feeling. I knew I had just heard a pianist who will be as great as Brad Mehldau. The busy Clore Ballroom went silent, rivetted by this slight figure hunched over the piano. Then he played an improvised piece with piano, voice, xylophone and electronics. Then What the waves brought combined piano, whistling and voice. Babies squealed in the crowd but we were transported to his native land-locked country for just a few minutes. He tried to get us to clap in the most difficult rhythm imaginable, we all failed dismally, raising my already soaring respect for drummers. He told us that he had a great respect for Armenian poetry which certainly added to the romance of La Petite Esperance.

Finally, Oddarrang from Finland, part of the Sound of Finland series. I reviewed Oddarrang’s Cathedral earlier this year here and I was really keen to see how their beautifully mixed, subtle sound with electronics would hold up in the ballroom. I need not have worried, the mix of instruments – guitars, cello, trombone, voice, drums and piano, and electronics stood up perfectly, the quiet bits silenced the crowd near the bar. We were treated to the UK premier of Self Portrait which started so quietly and then became very loud. It’s about a film called Self Portrait. Olavi explained that Finland is a quiet country, where silence is the default so it was inevitable that his music would have lovely delicate long spaces. People stayed in their seats for the 6pm set with Oddarrang, there was a real buzz of anticipation – Finland no longer seemed a gloomy country if it could create such magical sounds. We had loud sounds too – a rather frightening, menacing new track that they played in the 6pm set. There were noises like nails on a blackboard (ouch), deep rumblings and ghost-like sounds, and at one stage all the musicians appeared to be twiddling with knobs on gadgets! It bodes very well for their next album which will be released on Edition Records in August 2013.

We knew we were at a recording for radio as we had to applaud on request for sound levels. That wasn’t hard as we’d had an extremely good afternoon. After the gig I heard Kevin LeGendre tell a friend that he thought Olavi’s piano trio of ten years ago was one of the best he’d heard in Europe! And this was just my first gig of the London Jazz Festival 2012. It’s already top-notch, it can’t get better than this can it?

only jazz