The final two concerts in the Parabola Arts Centre (PAC) that I wish to discuss present pianist/composer Nikki Yeoh with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) (Friday 3rd May at 9pm) and the Birmingham/Sienna/Hamburg Exchange (Saturday 4th May at 11am).
Nikki Yeoh is a wonderful pianist and composer; she was commissioned by the festival in 2009 to write a group that also featured saxophonist John Surman, and this year she returns with NYJO to present an expanded version of Speechmik X-ploration, a piece originally commissioned by the BBC and Bath Festival. It is a composition inspired by the amazing Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal and dedicated to global justice and equality; it is arranged around a poem that is repeated six times in six different languages. The concert will also feature Nucleus, a composition dedicated to the late trumpeter Ian Carr, who led the very influential Nucleus group and who taught Nikki as she started in jazz.
The Birmingham/Sienna/Hamburg Exchange involves students from the jazz courses in those cities working together to form small groups and present a short set from each group. The students from Sienna and Hamburg travel to Birmingham a few days before the festival where they meet the Birmingham students, and form mixed groups. They work together and prepare material for the Cheltenham concert and then travel down to Cheltenham for the gig. The Exchange has been going for many years and the PAC concert is one of the most popular in the Cheltenham programme; it started with Norwegian students on the jazz course in Trondheim and this lasted for nine years. Since then we had a year with students from Paris, but now the relationship with the courses in Sienna and Hamburg is well established. This concert is already almost sold out, so book now at https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/jazz/whats-on/2024/birmingham-conservatoire-and-siena-and-hamburg-exchange
Listening to the music on the latest discovery of two sets by Tubby Hayes found in Ron Mathewson’s tape collection brings back strong memories of listening to Tubby in London in the early 60s. It was interesting to hear Evan Parker talking, in the short interview he gave at the beginning of last week’s concert celebrating his 80th birthday, of his time at the University of Birmingham where he spent the two years ostensibly studying Botany, but in fact playing and running jazz gigs. Similarly, I spent the first year of my university life at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of London University, listening to jazz at Ronnie Scott’s – at that time in Gerrard Street, Soho – and running two concerts in SOAS. After that year I decided to concentrate on my studies, whereas Evan went on to become a world famous musician.
At that time Ronnie Scott’s was mostly programming British musicians, and on many Saturday nights there would be a double bill of the Tubby Hayes Quintet and the Ronnie Scott Quartet, the latter often featuring Stan Tracey on the piano. It was the time when the club was just beginning to be able to bring in American soloists, and I remember hearing Al Cohn with a British rhythm section, and later Zoot Sims, also with a British rhythm section. I did, however, get to hear Tubby quite often, and really got to know his playing. So when I started promoting – in the unlikely setting of the SOAS Main Hall – I booked Tubby’s quintet with Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet, Freddy Logan on bass, Ronnie Stephenson, on drums and possibly Gordon Beck on piano. I don’t remember whether it was Gordon or Mike Pyne, but many years later Gordon assured me that it was him!
Listening to this latest discovery recorded in 1972 of Tubby Hayes’ music brings strong memories and also some reflections on how the music has changed since then. The thing that is immediately apparent is the regular pattern of a set in those days; there are two sets on the double Cd and each set follows the pattern of those days, starting with two medium to fast up tempo numbers, followed by a slower number, usually a ballad, and concluding with another medium to fast up tempo number. In fact, we only hear an extract of the final numbers as Ron Mathewson’s tape clearly ran out! Each number in the set also falls into the pattern of statement of the tune followed by solos all round up to the closing re-statement of the tune. If this sounds critical of the format, it is only a mild criticism as the actual playing within it by all members of the quartet is excellent. Mike Pyne’s piano solos really stand out for their swing and elegance, Ron Mathewson plays very interesting lines on the bass, Tony Levin, although rather distant in the mix, adds punchy interactions with the soloists’ lines, and Tubby himself reveals a more reflective and melodic approach to his solos as compared to his rapid fire playing of the 1960s . Two tracks feature Tubby on flute, and it is fascinating to hear how fluent and inventive he is on that instrument; in many ways his flute solos are, for me, the highlight of the set. Some of the repertoire is taken from the the Mexican Green album which is generally regarded as Tubby’s finest recording, but this material is mixed in with some standard material drawn from the American songbook. As Simon Spillett notes in his very informative sleeve notes, this was a direction that Tubby was taking in this later period of his career.
I am at the same time working my way through the 5-CD box set of Ahmed recorded in Stockholm in 2022. Having heard one night of their recent four night residency at Cafe Oto in Dalston London, it is very interesting to listen to one CD per day and observing how their music changed over the five sets. Each set focuses on one tune, here all taken from the repertoire of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and the music is strongly rhythmic and high in energy in the ways that it gradually changes over the set. I hestitate to call it minimalist, but it does develop though repetition and shifting rhythms in ways similar to the music of Steve Reich and La Monte Young . The music created and recorded on this box set shows the value of a group working intensively together over a period of days and really growing the music. Ahmed is PatThomas, piano, Seymour Wright, alto saxophone, Joel Grip, double bass and Antonin Gerbal, drums.
CDs discussed
Tubby Hayes Free Flight The Ron Mathewson Tapes Vol 3 Jazz in Britain
أحمد [Ahmed] Giant Beauty 5-CD Box Set fönstret 9 – 13
As part of the wonderful concert at mac last week celebrating Evan Parker’s 80th birthday, Evan gave a short interview at the beginning of the concert. He talked of his time as a student of Botany at the University of Birmingham when he spent most of his time playing jazz in various venues in Birmingham, the basement of the Guild of Students’ chapel which was set up as a jazz club, the Grotto pub in the city centre and The Elbow Room out in Aston. He told the story of how he could claim that he had accompanied Shirley Bassey because the staff at The Elbow Room did not like what his group was playing, so kept on the television on which Shirley Bassey was performing at the time. He spoke of his early influences, notably from John Coltrane who he heard play live when the Coltrane Quintet with Eric Dolphy toured the UK in November 1961. He went to state that the early inspiration for the free jazz movement in Europe, particularly in the UK and Germany, came from players such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and Coltrane in his late period, and was not a movement that developed independently of the US scene. The distinctive European approach to free jazz, e.g. the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the UK, or the Globe Unity Orchestra in Germany, emerged from those early influences from the US scene.
One of the most interesting things that came out of the interview was Evan’s opinion that free jazz and improvised music, although still an underground movement, has had a strong influence on contemporary jazz, especially in Europe. There are many excellent free players who make improvised music their main activity, but also many players and groups that incorporate an element of free playing into a more stuctured approach. Here I am thinking of a group such as Let Spin whose music features their original compositions, but they move in and out these tunes spontaneously and in the moment. I am also thinking of a young player such as Binker Golding who is very much part of the young UK scene in the Binker and Moses group, but also enjoys playing free jazz with John Edwards and Steve Noble; he has also recorded with Evan. Furthermore, many groups in Europe follow a pattern established by the original recordings by Ornette Coleman’s groups (The Shape of Jazz To Come and Change Of The Century) in which a composition, often quite abstract in nature, is followed by freely improvised solos after which the composition is repeated, an approaoch often referred as ‘time no changes’. I could also mention the Ahmed group, heard at Cafe Oto last week, who concentrate on one particular composition in each set, and create intense, high energy rhythmic improvisations based on the composition.
It strikes me that any player learning to play jazz today needs to develop skills in free improvisation as well as skills in improvising over the harmonic changes. This is not to suggest that free improvisation skills are more important than the more traditional harmonic approaches to improvisation; rather that a young musician needs to have the experience of playing in a free context or incoporating elements of free playing into a structured situation and to develop skills in that area of the music.
This is the third of the pieces I am writing about the programme in the Parabola Arts Centre (PAC) at this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, a programme that has been curated by Alexandria Carr and myself. It is a programme that presents a cross section of all the interesting things happening in contemporary jazz with a particular focus this year on the creative British scene.
Sam Eastmond and John Zorn’s Bagatelles Sunday 5th May 2.30 to 3.30
Sam Eastmond is a young composer/arranger who has worked closely with John Zorn, the iconic New York composer ansd saxophonist who has been at the centre of the New York creative jazz scene for many years, also spending time in Japan where he has a very large following. The Bagatelles are 300 tunes that Zorn composed between March and May 2015 and which have been collected under the title of Bagatelles. These tunes have been described as ‘clever, intriguing and bewitching‘ (the Free Jazz Collective) and ‘wonderful innovative music’ (Jazzwise). Sam Eastmond, in partnership with Zorn, has arranged a considerable number of the Bagatelles for the large British ensemble that he leads, a 12-piece band which features great young players such as saxophonists Asha Parkinson, George Garford and Chris Wiliams, trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe, guitarist Moss Freed, pianist Olly Chalk and drummer Alasdair Pennington.
I heard the band at Cafe Oto in London last year and was blown away by the wonderful energy and swing of the music. I wrote a review for London Jazz News which you can read here. The concert was also reviewed by Tony Benjamin in Jazzwise. I particularly like his comment that the music could ‘any time evoke the power of Mingus’ big band, the swoon of Ellingtonian orchestration, the witty non-sequiturs of Sun Ra and the cartoonish irreverence of Spike Jones’.
This is without doubt the my gig of the festival!
Julien Durand’s Dreamscapes Sunday 5th May 12 to 1pm
Dreamscapes is the attractive name for another great young band, this one coming out of the jazz course at Birmingham Conservatoire. It’s a five-piece band, led by guitarist Julien Durand and features the voice of Lucy-Anne Daniels, a fine young singer who recently toured with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) performing the songs of Amy Winehouse. She has a beautiful voice that Julien Durand uses very effectively in the ensemble passages to create the ‘floaty’ atmosphere that is implied in the name of the band. The band also fine soloists in saxophonist George Garford, pianist Cenk Esen and Durand himself, and makes use of gentle electronics in creating the group sound. Jack Robson completes the band on drums.
I don’t review concerts that I have organised myself; it would seem unprofessional to do so. So I am very pleased to publish this review by James Tartaglia. James is a philosopher at Keele University and a saxophonist. He occasionally plays with Steve Tromans.
Steve Tromans’ Howl: The 20th Anniversary Concert
Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 24/03/24
Review: James Tartaglia
Photo by Garry Corbett
Jazz pianist Steve Tromans has been a driving force on the Birmingham jazz scene for decades, especially the progressive and experimental edge of that scene, and he has recently been receiving some of the national attention he is due, or rather, is long overdue. This concert was a special one for him: the 20th anniversary of his first big commission, received when he was 30 years old. Back in 2004, then, he was asked to compose something based on the literature of the Beat Generation, as he explained to the audience from the piano stool. He told us how the young Tromans had considered the options very carefully before deciding on Allen Ginsberg’s Howl – perfect for a jazz treatment, since jazz is one of the poem’s explicit themes, and more importantly, its basic impetus, its soul. The commission was a success and Tromans has since been performing Howl on-and-off for 20 years with a variety of different line-ups – if more cultural attention was paid to jazz it might even be sensible to describe it as a legendary composition. Anyway, this was the big celebratory iteration, and to mark the occasion, Tromans welcomed back two thirds of the original band – the other third was the saxophone section, consisting of Xhosa Cole on tenor and Chris Young on alto, both looking very focused and respectful, professionals who were there to get an important job done. Of the original crew, there was Sid Peacock reading the poem, Mike Green on one of those electric ‘stick’ double basses (wearing a Slayer T-Shirt and sporting a big skull ring, that’s his style) and swaggering drummer Miles Levin looking and sounding just as much jazz as his name would suggest.
It was Levin who kicked off proceedings with some jingly percussion before the saxophones entered with a basic melody line made to sound glitchy with “false fingerings” – a quirk of the saxophone, which jazz musicians like to exploit, is that you can change the way a note sounds by using non-conventional fingerings. Tromans made his entrance with some bright Township-style harmonies, reminiscent of Keith Jarrett, his hero. The sunlight flooded in through the huge glass wall of the attractively modern Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space, as the saxophone improvisation began to open up a little, and the atmosphere became reminiscent of the swirling spiritual grooves of one of those great Pharoah Sanders albums, such as Tauhid or Thembi.
Now the scene was set for Peacock to begin reciting Ginsberg’s Howl. His voice was low, gravelly, Irish. He was doing the Beat Generation, Pulp Fiction voice – think John Zorn’s Spillane, if you happen to know that one. I thought it worked even better with an Irish accent than in the American original, perhaps because American contains so much old Irish and old is authentic. Peacock looked conservative with his two-tone waistcoat, black on the back, tweed on the front – I kept an eye on his brown brogues, and he didn’t move his feet an inch, they were glued. Before long he was a preacher – a surreal one with unmoving feet. As he recited Ginsberg’s philosophical, pornographic hipster verse in that low, gravelly Irish voice, his hands moved a little, then a little more, until they were the gestures of an evangelist, albeit a strangely subdued one. At one point near the end of the concert his arms stretched out like the crucified Christ, but it was still somehow a subdued, conservative gesture, his facial expression impassive as he recited Ginsberg’s verse about everything from buggery to the metaphysics of Plotinus.
So, what was Tromans doing while this was going on? It was his composition, so he was always there, but as a pianist he wasn’t terribly prominent at the level of the listener’s conscious awareness, it was deeper than that – he was Duke Ellington, controlling the band, so when you noticed his piano it tended to be for compositional effect. There was one moment when the improvisation was starting to become quite intense, and I wondered if it was going to explode into free jazz fury reminiscent of late Coltrane, Shepp or Ayler – the saxophones were up for it, but not pushing for it, and the drums and bass were certainly on the starting block. Tromans was giving it some thought, I could see it on his face, but he declined, so the intensity fell back in favour of a mellower, more beautiful mood. It was Duke Ellington raising an eyebrow to his orchestra; or the General ordering his army to show restraint. When the saxophonists weren’t playing they got into a habit of crouching down to make themselves physically inconspicuous; it was symptomatic of the discipline Tromans imposed with his presence.
There were three solos, as such, and they were all by Tromans. All three seemed designed to creep up on the listener without warning – the mesmerising jazz / poetry combination, the intensity of which waxed and waned, would subside into a Tromans piano solo before you had time to ready yourself. The first one, which was quite short, was harp-like – a virtuoso striking-downwards of the keys which sounded very unfamiliar and original:
“That sounded cool, which one of the great jazz pianists is that in the style of?”
“It’s just Steve Tromans, he’s probably never done that before.”
Part Two of Howl began with a groove in the 5/4 time signature which Dave Brubeck made famous, although this was millions of miles from Brubeck. Peacock the Preacher was proselytizing about “Moloch”, a reference to child sacrifice found in the Old Testament and which Ginsberg linked to the American capitalist war machine “sacrificing” young soldiers for money. I was expecting a solo during this dark stretch of music centred on the abstract presence of the number five, but it was not to be … Brummie General Ellington had other ideas.
The second solo happened somewhat later, after Peacock had been using his echo microphone (he had two) to ponder Ginsberg’s line: “the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal”. Tromans’ solo, with conventional bass and drums accompaniment, sounded at once romantic and classical, and as the passion rose his facial expression was at one point as if he might cry; Peacock, meanwhile, looked like he had fallen into a trance. When the saxophones and vocals returned, the band went into Sun Ra Arkestra mode for a while, ragged and wild. Tromans’ third solo was played over a hazy groove in a lilting 6/8 time signature. He sounded holy, sanctified, and it was at this time that Peacock stretched his arms out like the crucified Christ.
As mentioned before, the poem refers to Plotinus, the 3rd century Roman philosopher who revolutionised the legacy of Plato and whose rediscovery in the 15 th century was the philosophical driving force of the Italian Renaissance. I doubt Ginsberg knew much about Plotinus’s complicated philosophy, but he had no need to for the purposes of his innovative jazz poetry – he threw out suggestions about the lowest and highest elements of life, just like a jazz musician quoting and inventing on the spur of the moment, using anything that comes to mind, anything he had heard of, done, wanted to do, fantasized about. But Plotinus’s philosophy has great relevance to Troman’s Howl concert because its aim is to achieve a higher form of awareness, a higher consciousness. For Plotinus this was to be achieved through pure intellectual effort, but the most important of his successors, Iamblichus of Chalcis, known to his admirers as The Divine Iamblichus, thought it was crucial to use ceremony and ritual to achieve this higher form of awareness. Did I witness something like that? You walk in off the streets of Birmingham, 2024, where life for the non-destitute majority is a familiar mix of entertainment achieved by means of food, drink, friendships and electronics, then you are suddenly confronted with a ritual event of spiritual intensity, something which seems to belong to another world, a more powerful one.
TDE Promotions 