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I'm finally close to getting my head around the idea of actually using this blog to write some new reviews and things, which will mean leaving my flat and going to some gigs, to which I look forward.

Anyone who has stumbled here in the time being a may be wondering, in the absence of any up to date jazz info, what the little logo is in the top right. If you are, then I'm flattered. It is in fact some kind of scientific diagram of the waveforms on a hang drum, as used by the Portico Quartet, so now you know.

Review: Misterioso

This review was done for Broadway Baby during the Edinburgh fringe 2008:

Misterioso – A Journey Into the Silence of Thelonious Monk

Assembly @ The Queen’s Hall. 14th – 17th August. 22:00 (1h30).
Theatralia

Jazz is a study of madness, perhaps. And no other artist in the music’s history has mapped the geometry of anguish and madness so eloquently as Thelonious Monk. It is Monk’s own personal madness that is the main subject of Misterioso, a cabaret show of music, projections and monologues adapted and translated by the singer Filomena Campus from a series of poetic works by Stefano Benni.

Monk spent the final seven years of his life, until his death in 1982, in near total silence, not speaking or playing a note to anyone. Misterioso explores the possible causes of his descent, through a series of monologues in the guises of his friends and contemporaries, through Monk’s own words (recorded by singer Cleveland Watkiss), and through the biggest clue of all: Monk’s music, which is performed by an all-star band of London musicians.

Byron Wallen leads the group. Wallen is fast becoming one of the most respected trumpeters on the scene, and it is easy to see why. The ease and force of his playing, and his natural affinity with Monk’s compositions, shine light straight from the heart of the music. He embraces the theatricality of the setting, indulging in Monk’s weirdnesses and eccentricities, playing to the crowd.

Benni’s text points the finger at the indignities Monk and other jazz musicians suffered at the hands of McCarthyism as a key cause of his descent into silence, and Campus uses this as a jumping off point for a wider exploration of McCarthyism, employing text by Allen Ginsberg, and a powerful monologue in the character of Billie Holiday. Frustratingly, Holiday does not sing (though Campus does, beautifully), and her connection to Monk’s story is tenuous and a tad confusing, making perhaps too general a point. More sharp are the speeches by Pannonica Rothschild, Monk’s friend and eventual landlady, played with class and sass by Tamsin Shasha, which give us a fragmented, jigsawed picture of Monk’s highs and lows.

Though the production is at times confusing, it seems only to mirror the confusion which we can only imagine existed in Monk’s mind. The narrative is scattered, many sources and media are used, and the argument (if it is indeed that) that McCarthyism led to Monk’s evident mental illness is unconvincing and never forcibly made. One hour in, and people are dancing in the aisles, but by the end, all is subdued, and Pat Thomas (masquerading as Monk throughout) plays a lonely and bittersweet Introspection on piano, having brought us several profound steps closer to the uncomfortable, dark silence within, and having made just an intangible little bit of sense out of Monk’s madness.

Review: Jazz at Lunchtime, Edinburgh August 2008

This review was done for Broadway Baby during the Edinburgh fringe 2008:

Jazz at Lunchtime
Ian Millar & Dominic Spencer
Radisson SAS Edinburgh Hotel – Dickson’s Bar. 3rd – 25th August. 12:30 (1h30).

The duo of Ian Millar on tenor and soprano saxes and Dominic Spencer on (electric) piano play a standards-based set at the Radisson Hotel every lunchtime (though, 12:30 is breakfast time for most fringe-goers surely?). In the darkened cellar bar, the music is accompanied by projections of Scottish landscapes, which they have filmed themselves.

Ian Millar is a saxophonist with a light tone in the cool-school mould of Mulligan, Getz and Desmond, and a gift for melodic improvisations that emerge organically from the written material. On soprano his microtonal inflections are particularly controlled and expressive, rendering In a Sentimental Mood, a highlight, affectingly dry and unsentimental. His two original compositions in the set are sophisticated pastoral affairs reminiscent of Andy Sheppard, and fit in neatly among the Monk, Rollins, Ellington and Porter standards.

Dominic Spencer however, without the support of a bass player, remains tethered by the left hand to an unadventurous lounge piano style; background jazz basically, which is a real shame considering the quality of his partner. The lack of a real piano doesn’t help either.

The projections don’t add much, and there is no attempt at any synthesis between them and the music. This is far from a Scottish suite or a multimedia artwork; as a concept it is in fact strikingly glib: nice music and nice pictures.

I had fishcakes with hand-cut chips and mayo, which were damn-near perfect, and maybe deserve their own entry in the Fringe programme. Also on offer are fresh soup, toasted sandwiches and pasta, and there’s a well-stocked bar. I expect a lot of people will come here for the food and the atmosphere, and on these at least, Jazz at Lunchtime cannot be faulted.

Three Jazz Albums for People Who Don’t Like Jazz

(I was asked to write this for a magazine some time last year.)

There are certain classic albums in every genre that everyone could benefit from owning: those greats made universally appealing by the sheer weight of their genius. In jazz these might include Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme or any of Louis Armstrong’s sublime All-Stars recordings to name a few. But here are a few lesser known greats, albums you’re unlikely to have heard if you’re not a dedicated jazz fan, but which you might just find yourself liking, even if you decided long ago that jazz just isn’t your thing.

“Choice Cuts” Screaming Headless Torsos

A compilation of tracks from a unique group, comfortably straddling the borders into rock and funk. Led by guitarist David “Fuze” Fiuczynski, the Torsos take on Hendrix, Miles Davis and Beatles tracks, originals, and a few taken from lesser-known repertoires. James Blood Ulmer’s “Jazz is the Teacher (Funk is the Preacher)” takes on the role of scripture. Essentially a rock trio, with added percussion and the soul-style vocals of Dean Bowman up front, they play a kind of organic fusion of visceral, funky sounds and high-minded musicality, demonstrating a change in what jazz-fusion means that’s come about since the seventies: no longer a marriage of styles, this is in fact fusion’s mongrel offspring, sophisticated and raucous in uncompromising measures.

“Companion” Patricia Barber

Patricia Barber does a good impression of a sultry night-club singer, but in this beautifully recorded live set, you’re likely to find a lot more. Her piano and organ playing is strident, stylish and funky; her voice is a carcinogenic, guilt-ridden bonfire. She writes bitter, poetic dirges, sung between haunting versions of songs you’ll know already (all of them post-1965). One reason jazz musicians recycle the same standards so much is that you’re actually supposed to know the tune: you begin the journey at the same point as the musicians. Barber’s choices of covers have the same effect. The album’s climax begins by unexpectedly luring you into an arrangement of “Black Magic Woman” and conveying you out the other end with an extraordinary guitar solo, followed by a barrage of percussion, perfectly crafted to leave you wondering how it ever managed to take you so far.

“The Atomic” Count Basie

Rated as something of a classic by Basie fans. In the doldrums of his career, in the mid-fifties, as bebop was becoming modern jazz’s lingua franca, Count Basie, idiosyncratic daddy of Kansas-city swing, pulled this one out of left-field. The arrangements by young protégé Neal Hefti are for a large part Muppet-show wacky, spurting and clowning like hyperactive children. Even on the slow numbers the energy level teeters gleefully on the brink of explosion. The cover’s got a big mushroom cloud on it which might offer insight: this could be the most delirious artistic reaction imaginable to the imminent possibility of mutually assured destruction. For those who take their nihilism with sugar and E-numbers.

F-IRE collective feature

(An article I wrote a while ago for for an online magazine.)

Part One : Out of the Frying Pan

Up a concrete staircase, without a signpost, above a snooker hall on a residential and downtrodden street, you’ll find one of London’s most exciting and unlikely arts venues: The Others, Stoke Newington. I’m here to see “arthurs.høiby.ritchie”, a trio consisting of Tom Arthurs on trumpet, Jasper Høiby on bass and Stu Ritchie on drums.

Tonight’s gig is one of a regular series of jazz nights put on every Tuesday at The Others by the London based F-IRE Collective (that’s the Fellowship for Integrated Rhythmic Expression), a tightly knit but stylistically diverse caucus of improvising musicians. The nights, entitled Out of the Frying Pan, are organised by saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and guitarist Jonathan Bratoëff, who are often to be found joining in with the bands. For joining in is an important part of the special ethos of Out of the Frying Pan. What generally happens is that the band on the billing play a set of their own music for about an hour. After a short break, they return, but this time invite fellow musicians to join in. Some are invited, familiar associates; others just turn up. “It’s a mixed bag,” says Arthurs.

The place is nothing if not bohemian – used as an art gallery and rehearsal space, as well as hosting regular comedy, world-music and party nights, it contains (I took notes): two dilapidated leather armchairs, a leather three-piece suite in a similar condition, some soft benches, a table-football table, a makeshift bar, a disco ball and a barber’s chair.

The room slowly fills up, and peaks at around forty people. They are mix of students and arty types; the male/female ratio is about four to one. It has the feeling of a gathering rather than a party. The concert begins.

The music the trio is playing here could leave some feeling like a stranger at a wedding: well aware that something beautiful may be happening, but not quite feeling a part of it. For me there is a mixture of pleasure and frustration, as periods of lucidity in which the many complex talons of the music grab and lift me give way to periods where I feel a little left behind. But it is tangibly different, new and inspiring, full of ideas, and rewarding of a little concentration.

Sitting on one of the sofas, squashed among a crowd of UCL students, I hear someone greet his mate beside me and say with ironic understatement, “it isn’t easy listening is it?”.

I talked to Bratoëff before the gig.

“I definitely believe that F-IRE has created a buzz – people are thinking improvised music or modern music is cool. And it’s for young people and not just for grannies. There’s a whole new generation, it’s really happening now, more and more. These college guys they have F-IRE [fire?] in their minds.

“The F-IRE sound started with the rhythm: lots of rhythmic modulation, rhythmic inflection, just working with rhythm. Putting rhythm into some kind of architecturally interesting form, not just like chi-boom-boom chi-boom-boom-chi or y’know... But then – that’s how it started – I think really in a way it’s more like being on the edge of anything you try to do, rhythmically or harmonically or melodically, try to find new ways, new sounds. I think for me that’s the F-IRE sound. To move forward, and not play a tradition. Not playing something that’s been done already, but moving forward, using the tradition.”

The second half begins, much as the first, with another of Arthurs’ spiky, energetic trumpet compositions. He gives a nod to Bratoëff who casts an eye around the room for musicians. With a big French grin, he sees there’s nothing else for it, so he ambles up, straps on his guitar and starts playing himself. The music shifts up to an aggressive vamping funk.

After a solo or two, a man in a velvet jacket strolls casually to an electric piano and seems to enter the melee mid-bar. By now every time someone rises and heads outside to smoke, I get a little excited – are they about to play?

A slideshow of curious artsy photos and images projects onto the walls behind the musicians. In genuinely free improvisation, these apparently random photographs acquire significance. The musicians can see them too – they, like the room and the night and everything else, provide a shared context for musicians and audience.

The music shifts tempo and style organically until suddenly a man gets up with a clarinet, once again, totally unannounced. The musicians hush, the clarinet plays solo, setting out his ideas. Someone whoops. The piano takes up the clarinet’s melody, and tries to reproduce the feel. The clarinet player then completes the exchange, sympathetically accompanying the pianist’s interpretation of his own melody, a melody which did not exist until a few minutes ago.

An alto saxophone enters, and, on someone’s signal, the band begin playing a sparse arrangement from a chart which Arthurs has apparently left behind, having slipped away in the commotion. Over the next hour, new pianists and guitarists take over, the drummer changes and the various horn players take their entrances and exits as they see fit. The music continues almost without interruption. It winds down around 11.30 and Bratoëff thanks everyone for coming.

The Out of the Frying Pan nights are a kind of a playground. They attract enough of an audience to make the events worthwhile, but more than this, they allow members of the collective to get together in an atmosphere that inspires total creative freedom. What you’ll hear there may not be the finished product that you’ll hear on albums put out by the collective – albums which include two Mercury nominees (Polar Bear’s “Held on the Tips of Fingers” and Basqiat Strings’s self-titled debut) and countless jazz awards – but it will give you the chance to see some of London’s best improvising musicians at work and at play, in a free exchange of musical ideas that is an integral part of arriving at their musical conclusions.

In the second part of this article, I talk further with members of the F-IRE Collective about their unique and creative approach to music making.

www.F-IRE.com

The Others
Top Floor, 6 to 8 Manor Road
Stoke Newington N16

Part Two : The F-IRE Collective

The F-IRE Collective began, says Barak Schmool with a pride in his own folklore, with a roomful of musicians drumming in his living room on the 1^st January 1995. Today they run ten international samba courses annually, have two African drum orchestras, run jazz courses for serious pros, have two dozen or so bands working under their umbrella, and have released nineteen albums and counting on their own record label. But more than this: it is the quality of what they do that is astounding; F-IRE are consistently producing some of the most innovative and accomplished music being played in the UK today, both within and beyond the bounds of the jazz scene. It’s very tempting to believe that the blueprint for all of this was somewhere in the air, present but unformed in Schmool’s mind, back at that first drumming session.

The idea then was simple – it seems so self-evident to Schmool that he takes no credit for it – musicians studying African rhythm together as part of a “collective learning process”, and applying this know-how in playing their own instruments. The band that emerged from those sessions was called Timeline (almost all of the F-IRE bands have abstract names like rock bands, as opposed to the less democratic so-and-so trios more common in jazz). Little by little the collective, with its special way of doing things, expanded.

It provided a community for its members, the drumming providing a common language through which they could learn from each other. Schmool, the unfaltering ideologue, speaks always of a bigger picture, greater than the music itself. “The music was a means to the inter-personal.” It borrowed from African culture out of necessity. “To empower people to make themselves happy, we need to be more open, more non-English.”

It seems ironic to me that a collective on this scale could only happen somewhere like London, and yet it thrives, like so much in the city, on attitudes and ideals that are seldom found indigenously. The collective have flocked here to create something Londoners never would have themselves.

By 1998 they had found the name F-IRE. They began teaching drum classes, mostly to music students who wanted to know how to play like Timeline. Schmool must have seemed like Yoda: “Here’s an egg shaker. Learn to communicate.” But they kept coming back.

The musicians played at weddings and funerals within London’s African community. In 2000 they ran their first week-long course in rhythmic creativity, enlisting the assistance of Ghanaian master musician Nana Tsiboe. Schmool recalls the first class on musical meaning and communication. Tsiboe’s native culture’s reliance on music was a revelation for many there: it is the physical experience that consummates the bonds of society. Likewise Schmool explains, “if you’re from New Orleans, then you hear music everywhere: church music, marching music, jazz and blues, but it’s all part of one perspective.” The F-IRE collective was Schmool’s attempt to replicate that sense of community for musicians in London.

Not everyone in the collective that I spoke to is equally idealistic, but remarkably, almost all have played communal samba or African drumming with Schmool, as teachers or pupils, and all of them stick together, financially and creatively. It’s hard to know the cold economics of it, but I believe it when they say they pool their resources to get each other’s records made. They play on each other’s records; they promote themselves and are promoted under the same banner at festivals such as the Ealing Jazz Festival and Rhythmsticks and on weekly residencies that have run at the Jazz Café and the Vortex.

I wonder if audiences are ever taken aback by the diversity of music they are presented with under the one banner. Barak responds, “you know, if you like the dance music, then you’ll probably like the listening music. If you like Ingrid [Laubrock] playing free stuff, then you’ll probably like her Brazilian stuff as well.” I instantly agree. “Some audiences come because they think F-IRE is a samba thing, but are always pleased to discover that it covers much more.” Needless to say, their audiences are seldom narrow-minded to begin with.

The lack of a definitive F-IRE “sound” is something all members seem to agree on. Trumpeter Tom Arthurs, a former student of Schmool’s, says “it’s about people going and checking out a whole bunch of stuff in actually quite a lot of depth, and that coming through in a way which is quite personal. I think that’s the thing that unites it: not one kind of sound, but one approach. In a way that’s something just necessary about just being an artist and in London in the time we live in. There’s so much stuff, so many experiences, both musically and otherwise that’s available to us and in a way not to get involved in those wouldn’t make sense. That’s the unifying direction.”

There may however be a kind of F-IRE personality. “In music you have people who are forward thinkers. You can tell right away. When you play with people who are forward thinkers, it’s a different feel. You know that you can try things that you couldn’t try with someone who’s a little bit more in the tradition and that basically allows you to experiment more,” says Jonathan Bratoëff. Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock speaks in terms of “musicians who weren’t just the typical jazz musicians that colleges churn out, which in the end is so boring.”

For Schmool, F-IRE is a philosophy, an almost spiritual bond between the musicians. Others, like Arthurs, may be more pragmatic: “There were plenty of connections between people which weren’t really consolidated in any way. We were all kind of between genres, or the conventional places where people might file you. Even though the individual musics were quite different, the challenges were the same, so there was a certain kind of pragmatism to doing it.”

The immediate future for F-IRE sees album releases by Porpoise Corpus and Mark Donlon, both classed as friends of rather than members of the collective (representing a new development for their label). There will be a mini F-IRE Festival in January at Soho’s Pizza Express Jazz Club, and a “big one” in October 2008 at King’s Place, featuring international guests from sister collectives such as HASK in Paris, which was an early inspiration for F-IRE and the London based Loop collective, a group of younger musicians who have formed in F-IRE’s image. The festival will be headlined by Django Bates, the composer who liberated British Jazz in the Eighties and gave Schmool his first break in the industry when he hired him as his roadie. (Bates dropped a keyboard, Schmool was passing below. He caught the keyboard and the rest is history.)

Long term Schmool says “let’s get a community centre, somewhere people can rehearse, perform, record, teach, dance, bring their kids to.” He really doesn’t want much more than this. It’s a shimmering pure ethos, that seems as out of place in the music industry today as the troupe of white hippies I imagine playing drums at an African funeral. But it is a recipe for success and for growth. It has attracted some of the most innovative musicians around, and by bringing them together has paradoxically produced music that is idiosyncratic and diverse. Schmool’s attitude as much as his talent inspires the confidence to create in others, and it’s a pleasure that the fruits – on record, on stage and in the classroom – are so abundantly available.

Acoustic Ladyland, Fulborn Teversham, Luke Barlow Band - 22nd November 2007 - Luminaire

Luke Barlow’s quartet, led from the keyboard, play something like a cross between Django Bates and Frank Zappa: manic, tight compositions, sudden rhythmic shifts and shredder guitar solos. They lack the finesse of either Zappa or Bates, but they pack a good punch, and keep the listener on their toes. It was bit much for some: I had to put up with the Thought Police standing behind me all the way through, telling his friends why it was wrong to enjoy this sort of thing (they did, from what I could tell); Acoustic Ladyland are obviously not attracting a conventional jazz audience.

Fulborn Teversham is drummer Seb Rochford’s band, with Pete Wareham on sax. Acoustic Ladyland is Pete Wareham’s band, with Seb Rochford on drums. Together they make up the military wing of the eclectic F-IRE Collective. Teversham, with fellow F-IREman Nick Ramm playing an old analogue synthesiser and Alice Grant on vocals, have an indie-pop vibe. Their songs have a surprisingly sweet allure at times, which disarms the expressionist wailings of Wareham’s sax, creating music that’s full and clear, exciting and accessible. Rochford is the genius at the heart of both bands, a drummer whose mastery of all that he creates seems almost spiritual.

Acoustic Ladyland are simply incredible: sweaty (Wareham sweats a lot), fearsome punk, with a saxophone lead ripped from surf-music and honking early R’n’B. As I write this, days after the event, superlatives continue to fail me.

It may not really be jazz. I suppose it’s improvised rock, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m too young to have seen Jimi Hendrix play in this lifetime, and I’m too poor to see Led Zeppelin. Acoustic Ladyland are as close as I have come to hearing genius blazing uninhibited at full volume – pounding and screeching and baying for blood.