Tag Archives: John Law’s Boink!

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

Gig review: John Law’s Boink! Stratford Jazz, 12 March 2014

13/03/2014 Mary James Leave a comment

This was a gig I savour more in my mind 24 hours after the event than when I was actually there. I have had this feeling before: the first time I saw Brad Mehldau’s Mehliana at The Village Underground. I just didn’t get it. It was too loud, I couldn’t see. Then I saw him again at the London Jazz Festival and it clicked. This new project of John Law has the same effect. Boink! is the electronic brainchild of guitarist Rob Palmer and John Law. The press release says the idea is to explore “electronic sounds and effects over drum grooves. Spontaneous group interaction between keyboards, soprano/bass clarinet and guitar, coming out of pre-composed electronic music scores. Underpinned by propulsive drum grooves. Jazz, rock, ambient, electronic…” So we knew what we were in for. Or did we?

But seeing the project live, with a screen showing videos by Patrick Dunn which became increasingly interesting, absorbing and distracting as the evening wore on, I felt I was being overloaded with sensory experiences – I just couldn’t absorb them fast enough. Now as I unpick the experience I can see that the concept is extremely good, it just needs a bit more time to bed in as a live venture. There were so many experiences crammed in – an obscure piece of Samuel Beckett, our responses to 9/11, the challenge of being a jazz musician performing to an indifferent chattering sophisticated audience, what it’s like to be a tortoise ( yes!). I wondered what it was like on the stage – the musicians couldn’t see the visuals behind them or our expressions as we listened. Maybe in future the setup could allow visuaIs to be seen by everyone so there was true interactivity? I missed the cool clarity of Jon Lloyd’s sax (he is on the album and Laurie Lowe is on drums). But I admired the delicate poise of Lloyd Haines on drums, the quick thinking of Rob Palmer who could change mood swiftly (this was 90% improvisation after all) and as always the mesmeric skills of John Law on keyboards.

I hear that John’s next project is an animated version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Please slow down John and let us grow into Boink! The album really does grow on me, I just need to catch up.

John Law, keyboards, iPod
Rob Palmer, guitar
Lloyd Haines, drums
Patrick Dunn, visuals

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Coming up

Preview: Festival of the guitar: Stratford Jazz March-June 2014

05/02/2014 Mary James Leave a comment

I am calling it a Festival of the Guitar: It was a masterly stroke of scheduling – Stratford Jazz features some of the most exciting guitarists on the UK scene in the next few months so here’s my preview of six gigs worth turning out for. What’s thrilling for me is that we get to hear very different styles of music, guitars, guitar playing and influences.

First up we host John Law’s Boink! on 12 March. The guitarist in question is Rob Palmer who I last saw at Sherborne Jazz with Jon Lloyd and John Law. Boink! is the latest project from John Law which takes him away from acoustic pianos and into the world of electronica and interactive visuals. Intrigued? In a recent interview in Jazz UK (issue 115) Rob said that the electronic backing tracks are composed leaving the musicians free to improvise 90% of the time. It will be a combination of total freedom and totally composed music, he says.

No sign of electronics with our next guitarist, the acoustic and classical guitarist Maciek Pysz who makes his debut appearance at Stratford Jazz with his stellar trio of Yuri Goloubev on double bass and Asaf Sirkis on percussion on 26 March. Maciek is on an extensive UK tour promoting his album Insight which received rave reviews across the globe last year. He appears at Stratford the day after an important gig at Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean Street, London with a guest appearance by Tim Garland who recently signed to Edition Records. Insight was my album of 2013 so I can’t really add more other than to say that the last time I saw this trio they blew the roof off Kings Place, gathering a larger crowd in the foyer than in some of the concert halls. They filled the huge space, just as they filled the windy park at Ealing Jazz Festival last year. We can expect a more intimate, conversational evening of Maciek’s beautiful lyrical compositions, exquisite arco bowing from Yuri and sensitive percussion from Asaf. As Maciek said in an interview in 2011, ‘I do not want to be perceived only as a jazz guitarist, I’m an acoustic guitarist who mixes genres’ and therein lies his attraction. His influences are John McLaughlin, Ralph Towner and Al Di Meola yet he sounds like none of these, he has his own voice.

On 9 April we host Phil Robson with his new organ trio featuring Gene Calderazzo on drums and Ross Stanley on Hammond organ. Phil Robson’s discography contains a jazz who’s who of musicians from both sides of the Atlantic – Mark Turner, Michael Janisch, Christine Tobin (the celebrated Sailing to Byzantium), John Taylor, Liam Noble – and he brings a breath of New York to Stratford with his drummer, whose drumming John Fordham described as scalding! Listening to their demo clip on Soundcloud I was minded of Steely Dan – that was just the organ I imagine, but we can expect what Roy Stevens is already predicting will be the gig of the year at Stratford!

On 14 May we are joined by a newly formed band called The Orient Quartet. This features Dan Messore on guitar. Dan’s own quartet called Indigo Kid features none other than Iain Ballamy. Kevin le Gendre said of Dan ‘It’s fair to quote names like Pat Metheny and Frissell as references but the seam of jazz Messore is mining goes back further to such as Charlie Byrd and Jim Hall’. Combine this with Steve Waterman‘s trumpet (as heard on Carla Bley’s albums on ECM) and you can see we have a very heavyweight new band.

On 11 June we feature Nic Meier who brings his glissentar with its eleven fretless strings which provides more than a touch of the orient to the sound, a heady mix of Turkey, central Europe, Iberia and the Americas. His quartet features the artists who appear on his recent album Kismet. Look out for his flamenco treatment of Coltrane’s Giant Steps!

Our final guitarist is Jon Dalton on 25 June. Jon has been playing guitar since he was seven and cites Wes Montgomery as an influence. He brings a trio with a Hammond organ virtuoso so we can expect a vibrant set. If you like Gibson guitars then come along!

So join us for these wonderful gigs, and keep jazz alive outside London.

All gigs start at 8pm and tickets on the door are £10/£12 for Phil Robson, half price for students. We look forward to welcoming you to our jazz club and our Festival of the Guitar.

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Image by Joep Olthuis

Mary James 22 February 2014

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/

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Mary James

only jazz