Robert Carter / Andy Panayi duo performing at Twyford Church tomorrow evening. This will be interesting and will represent the second yea that jazz has featured in this Victorian church in the countryside. I will report back later but good to see jazz establishing itself in the Winchester area.
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No.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View PostInteresting comments.
On a basic and more parochial note although it is almost London, do you have any knowledge of The Woolpack in Banstead?
Is it very, very trad there - and whether it is or it isn't, is it ever worth it?
Seriously though, Lat, trad's for the fossils; S London is a bit of a desert nowadays, maybe there are places off the regular listings, but the only place I know of within (my) reachable distance for quality modern jazz is the Oval in Croydon:
Last edited by Serial_Apologist; 21-01-17, 16:14.Comment
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The club there seems to have originated from Pete Strange who was Lyttelton's arranger and is free on some Tuesday afternoons. I don't "do" Croydon and I don't "do" nights so I have been looking to see if there is anything that I might do re live music. It isn't my obvious thing but as you indicate, the options are limited. A thread about a classical duo in the classical music section relates to something I have seen about a forthcoming free lunchtime event in Caterham and questions about whether it would be worth making the effort.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostNo.
Seriously though, Lat, trad's for the fossils; S London is a bit of a desert nowadays, maybe there are places off the regular listings, but the only place I know of within (my) reachable distance for quality modern jazz is the Oval in Croydon:
https://jazzinlondon.live/2017/01/01...ern-croydon-4/Comment
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If you click the link I provided the Oval is a regular Sunday early afternoon gig. Up to you, of course. The 29th will be top-notch.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View PostComment
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Thank you and Alec Dankworth, yes. While I am just six miles south of Croydon, I think the last time I went into Croydon was 2-3 years ago. I have become steadfastly rural to the extent that it is possible here. However, looking at the map and reminding myself of once familiar locations I see that when Southern Rail is operating (!) it would be possible to get there via East Croydon station and not have to contemplate the main part of Croydon at all. Plus Sunday is the quietest day at least on paper. It is very unlikely that I will be there on the 29th but I won't rule it out in the future. What I would need to do is get used to musical events again and that would be even more local to me, whatever their quality ot not.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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Interview with Ms Jurd for those of you who are curious
http://https://www.allaboutjazz.com/...erson.php?pg=2
Interesting to read about her inspirations but aa but cautious after reading that David Stapleton is behind the record label that is promoting her work. He used to post quite a lot on the old "All about Jazz forum" and it is quite interesting how this website seems to favour particular labels as well as having a fondness for a lot of European jazz. The influences , apart from Miles, are generally cited as being white, European musicians and I suppose this reflects where her music is coming from as it eschews the bite of a lot of American stuff. I was very surprised to see her cite Kenny Wheeler too.Comment
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Business rates threat to Soho's jazz landmark
Above title is the heading to the Guy Pewsey-edited Politics, party and pillow talk, in yesterday's Evening Standard, Page 16, which I do my best to reproduce in all its accuracy for all of those whose envy of not being part of where today's life is really happening knows no bounds:
"IS LONDON'S most famous jazz club in danger? As controversy rages over the Government's revaluation of business rates, which has seen the bills for many small businesses soar, fears have been raised for the future of Ronnie Scott's.
Nestled in the heart of Soho on Frith Street, the club has hosted, among many others, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone since it opened in 1959. It counts Kate Moss, Adele and Cara Delevigne among its regular punters. But with the increased business rates set to take effect in April, could it be the next Soho landmark to close?
Simon Cooke, managing director of Ronnie Scott's says, 'It's just another way of chasing people out of bricks and mortar and putting businesses online. Soho has lost a lot of its smaller record stores and cafés; the bigger groups are coming in and the independent operators are struggling to make it all work. This is just another wallop'.
Cooke voiced scepticism about Mayor Sadiq Khan's business stragety. 'He makes a lot of noise about protecting the night-time economy and appointed a "night czar". They are running a Night Tube, they are building Crossrail and bringing in 10 million people, so you have to make sure the businesses are there on the other side'.
The Londoner called City Hall for reassurances regarding the impact on our favourite jazz spot. A spokesman defended the Mayor. 'Sadiq Khan has been lobbying the Government for more generous transitional arrangements that will phase in the impact of this increase in London more slowly - but despite limited concessions made by the Chancellor in the Autumn statement, many businesses will see huge increases within the next few weeks'.
Time to face the music".
I haven't personally attended at Ronnie's since 1967, the club not being for the kinds of music I would go for for many years, although upstairs puts on a late-nite slot featuring young and upcoming acts for the night owls, of which I am not one. That said, the place does have legendary status worldwide in the music, and if true, the above news bodes ill for other non-subsidised places in and around the square few miles concentrating on non-commercialised musics of various sorts, and I'm thinking of the Vortex and Cafe Oto as among the few.Comment
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Pete Hurt Jaz Orchestra - Cafe Posk, Chiswick, Fri 7 April
Rather late in reporting on this, since I didn't want to waste what from previous experience suggests might have been the best of the summer weather for 2017.
Anyway, I turned up at the recommended hour, as always without prior booking, to find the place almost fully packed. The venue is downstairs at the unpretentiously well-appointed Polish Centre, three minutes' walk from Ravenscourt Park station on the District Line or a fifteen minute stroll from Hammersmith to the east. As is almost always the case at such suburban jazz locales aproximately two-thirds of the audience was of my own generation or older, but unlike most people are always friendly, and the atmosphere familial in the best sense, er, relatively speaking. The number of times I've visited there is few but on most occasions the two rows of tables in front of the stage, which is large enough to take a sizeable big band with ease, have been occupied, with the larger seating area rising up to the rear, with the bar on the left, pretty much empty. This time even the two carpetted sets of six or so steps had people sitting on them, without, it should be said, blocking anyone's way.
This was one of the monthly Way Out West gigs organised by the semi-informal Richmond/Twickenham district-based collective of musicians that includes the likes of Tim Whitehead, Tony Woods, the singer Nette Robinson, the veteran drummer Tony Kinsey, and Mr. Hurt himself, who used to operate from a Richmond pub before moving to the Bull's Head before falling out with the latter's management, so that, sadly, they now seem limited to this monthly show. Even so, it was pleasing to see a full house for someone who, for all his originality as both saxophonist and composer, is a somewhat shy personality, not given to self-publicity.
Ian Thumwood has previously hailed the new Pete Hurt Jazz Orchestra CD 'A New Start" a crowning success in terms of contemporary British big band jazz, and from this performance, still not yet having listened to the CD, I would unhesitatingly concur. Pete's music, with its emphasis on memorably melodic extended head arrangements, richly scored in manner derived from but by no means merely imitative of early Gil Evans, has moved on from the subtle distillation of late-1960s/early-1970s homegrown pop displayed in the 1984 Spotlite release Lost for Words to a generalised post-Kenny Wheeler idiom that provides challenging vehicles for improvisation across a range of moods and tempos from melancholic to exuberant. The band had most of the personnel present on "A New Start", with Tori Freestone taking a couple of characteristically cliché-free tenor solos that had the audience held in spellbound attention, sometime eccentricist Martin Hathaway really giving it all his worth on soprano (one thinks of him as an altoist), likewise Tony Woods, sitting in for Josephone Davies one assumes, Mick Foster taking a gutteral late solo on baritone on Blues in the Dark, Henry Lowther offering Milesian trumpet on a My Funny Valentine in a quirky Hurt arrangement, Kate Williams supplying dependable support, particularly noticeable in the looser passages, and cogent solos on piano, albeit set rather too high in the overall balance mix, sound checkers please note! Jon Scott provided the momentum, rhythmic flexibility, and behind soloists the responsive alacrity for which he is becoming renowned on several London scenes. Some of the younger members of the orchestra seemed to find difficulty with Pete's harmonic idiosyncracies: they were idiosyncratic back in the 1980s, but should they be today when modulatory post-echoes of Bartok or Prokofiev are ubiquitously to be discovered in how the up-and-comers, with (as Ian frequently points out) their emphasis on arrangement subtleties, think about harmony? That said, it was arguably John Parricelli and bassist Andy Cleyndert (sitting in for Mick Hutton) who were the stars of the evening, though Hurt, having preannounced his role as prescribed to waving his arms about, delivered a couple of his characteristic mid-60s Wayne Shorterish liquid dot-dash tenor solos. Guitarist Parricelli, who so often disappoints, is to my mind as good as anyone when inspired to be, and such he was on this occasion, drawing some of the loudest applause from an encouraging audience.
Like others who come to mind - Stan Sulzmann being one - Pete Hurt is undeservingly one of this country's great under-recogniseds. One of the best big band gigs I've attended in a long while.Comment
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S.A
Thanks for your lengthy review.
The "New Start" album is probably the best British jazz album of the 2000's. It is amazing that someone of the ability of Pete Hurt has only two albums to his name and last year's offering is probably the longest I can recall having to wait for a follow up - it must have been about 32 years!
I really wish that this band would record more frequently. The bizarre thing about British Jazz is that, for so many years, the big bands that the country produced always seemed to considered unfavourably with their American counterparts. I think that the criticism was deserved up until the arrival of bandleaders like Mike Westbrook and Mike Gibbs as well as the contributions of Kenny Wheeler and, to a lesser degree, Chris McGregor. At some point around the 1960's everything seemed to click and whereas positive comparisons had previously been with along the lines of Ted Heath being contrasted (not unfavourably) with other American bands of the 1950s of a similar ilk such as the Elgart brothers, Les Brown and Ray Anthony, the changes in the music around the late 60's / early 70's seemed reveal an increasing awareness of self-identity in British big band writing. By the time the 1980s had arrived, the likes of Loose Tubes and , to a lesser degree, the Jazz Warriors, British big bands just seemed to be for more credible.
I would tend to agree that the influence of Gil Evans was paramount to these changes yet I think we have now gone well beyond this point. Evans' last significant work was probably "Priestess" which was recorded around 1977 and his arrangements became less and less apart of his music in the 1980's. What I love about Pete Hurt's music is that he is probably more Classically informed that Gil Evans and quite capable of taking influences from the likes of Messaien - something that was never the case with Evans and maybe first manifested itself in the writing of Mike Gibbs. I think Gil Evans was unique and produced some of the greatest writing for jazz orchestras ever. However, I am of the opinion that Peter Hurt is not really that far behind him and , in the context of the passing years, more sophisticated. The timbre of his orchestration does have a richness that belies Kenny Wheeler's writing although I think that Hurt is far more capable with the employment of the deeper sounding brass instruments. I would also opine that Hurt's music lacks the melancholy nature of Wheeler's compositions and there is a gulf between the kind of melodies that each compose.
I love big band jazz and can appreciate anything from the likes of Fletcher Henderson onwards. The oeuvre is dominated by the twin pillars of Basie and Ellington, the latter style having a massive bearing on contemporary arrangers / writers like Jason Roebke. When Gil Evans ripped up the rule book the possibilities started to appear to be endless. It is also fair to say that big bands have almost become " de rigueur" for so many musicians these days and the whole "business man's bounce" stereotype has been kicked into the long grass. For my money, Peter Hurt is tackling the tradition in an immediately distinctive fashion and whilst the British jazz scene has been inundated with big bands since the 80's from Colin Towns through to "Bits and pieces", I think none are of the same calibre as Peter Hurt. I would suggest that he is easily the most distinctive writer for big bands that we have had in the UK since Mike Gibbs.Comment
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Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostAbove title is the heading to the Guy Pewsey-edited Politics, party and pillow talk, in yesterday's Evening Standard, Page 16, which I do my best to reproduce in all its accuracy for all of those whose envy of not being part of where today's life is really happening knows no bounds:
"IS LONDON'S most famous jazz club in danger? As controversy rages over the Government's revaluation of business rates, which has seen the bills for many small businesses soar, fears have been raised for the future of Ronnie Scott's.
Nestled in the heart of Soho on Frith Street, the club has hosted, among many others, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone since it opened in 1959. It counts Kate Moss, Adele and Cara Delevigne among its regular punters. But with the increased business rates set to take effect in April, could it be the next Soho landmark to close?
Simon Cooke, managing director of Ronnie Scott's says, 'It's just another way of chasing people out of bricks and mortar and putting businesses online. Soho has lost a lot of its smaller record stores and cafés; the bigger groups are coming in and the independent operators are struggling to make it all work. This is just another wallop'.
Cooke voiced scepticism about Mayor Sadiq Khan's business stragety. 'He makes a lot of noise about protecting the night-time economy and appointed a "night czar". They are running a Night Tube, they are building Crossrail and bringing in 10 million people, so you have to make sure the businesses are there on the other side'.
The Londoner called City Hall for reassurances regarding the impact on our favourite jazz spot. A spokesman defended the Mayor. 'Sadiq Khan has been lobbying the Government for more generous transitional arrangements that will phase in the impact of this increase in London more slowly - but despite limited concessions made by the Chancellor in the Autumn statement, many businesses will see huge increases within the next few weeks'.
Time to face the music".
I haven't personally attended at Ronnie's since 1967, the club not being for the kinds of music I would go for for many years, although upstairs puts on a late-nite slot featuring young and upcoming acts for the night owls, of which I am not one. That said, the place does have legendary status worldwide in the music, and if true, the above news bodes ill for other non-subsidised places in and around the square few miles concentrating on non-commercialised musics of various sorts, and I'm thinking of the Vortex and Cafe Oto as among the few.
Last time I went to Ronnie Scott's I got seated behind one of those pillars and didn't see a thing. What a waste of money that was. Haven't been back since.Comment
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Last night I attended Paul Dunmall's new band with pianist Liam Noble, plus Paul's frequent partners of late, bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders, at The Vortex. In two totally improvised high-energy sets, in many respects the performance brought back happy memories of the band disbanded with the death of the great drummer Tony Levin, Mujician. Here, if anything, Paul took to more exploratory pathways, little referencing the early influence Coltrane had on him that has been well absorbed into a singleminded vision of his own, or zoning into the overt stylistic sidelines beloved of Keith Tippett. The latter's influence is occasionally detectable in the playing of Liam Noble, but altogether not the heart-on-sleeve romanticist that may be implied, however, Noble being the kind of player of versatility who meets whatever the job demands; and in the case of Paul Dunmall this can seem a tall order. The music meets the demands evoked by the times, and although, as Paul said afterwards, the ingredients have always been there as an undercurrant, never in most people's memories have they been so scarily present in the constant news bombardment each day assailing our awarenesses. The breaking to positive ends from constraints incites the best of what these four musicians have to offer - the all-rounder Edwards, who can switch from conventional "walking" at any pace to vocalised utterance on a coin's turn, is as much every discerning visitor's choice as Sanders, the responsive fireball who first emerged as a competent straight-ahead jazz drummer in the late 1980s before the limitations imposed by structural boundaries propelled him into musical outer space, as was also happening at the time with Mr Edwards and had happened a few years before in the case of Mr Dunmall. All four have that capacity to come up with new ideas capable of taking the music forward in unsignposted directions. The audience symbiotically partakes in this - as an experience therapeutic, as a paradoxical inner-strengthening balm that leaves a longer lasting buzz than any other music around at the moment that I know of, while complementing the convivial vibe that produces the finished, unfinished article.
Ah yes, I'd forgotten those pillars - it's been so long...Originally posted by CGR View PostComment
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I got back earlier from seeing Adrian Reid's trio at The Clocktower, Croydon. One of the Jazz Warrior's original pianists, if not the original one, Reid has quirky, genuinely improvisatory style, in the sense that he seldom resorts to clichés or shows off for showing off's sake, but always invokes the least likely next phrase or harmonic twist/twixt. He composes numbers in a style more reminiscent of Herbie Nichols's compositions than anybody else I can think of, and in style plays perhaps closest to Wynton. When this was pointed out to me by my friendly table-sharer, I asked if the observer meant the Greek Wynton or the Irish one - to which he dryly replied, the latter. On upright bass was the tall, strikingly Masai-like Larry Bartley - seen alongside Adrian Reid in Reid's quartet with altoist and sopranoist Tony Kofi a fortnight ago at The Oval, whom some may have seen with Tim Richards's Great Spirit a decade and a half ago. That one had the American Rod youngs on drums, one of the most musical and least showy drummers on the London scene, and he is on the Adrian Reid Quartet CD (Nyanza St label)
These two-hour long freebies, every Thursday lunchtime, are attended by a packed, fearsomely attentive audience of mainly octogenarians culled from various stopping points along the Overground, anywhere mainly between Islington and Croydon by way of Whitechapel and New Cross; and so, surprised and delighted one was to find this sea of white barnets treated to the tenor saxophone and flute of Michael "Bammie" Rose, a legend in the reggae world, who among many others has been associated with Aswad, as well as having played in Dudu Pukwana's Jabula (pronounced JabOOla): it well made up for the two sets consisting of well-worn standards lovingly played, and being the youngest member of the audience.Comment
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Octogenerians with white barnets...
must have been mostly women in the audience, which would be unusual up here.
OGComment
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Being elderly jazzers would make these Friern Barnets!Originally posted by Old Grumpy View PostOctogenerians with white barnets...
must have been mostly women in the audience, which would be unusual up here.
OGComment
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That is interesting.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostI got back earlier from seeing Adrian Reid's trio at The Clocktower, Croydon. One of the Jazz Warrior's original pianists, if not the original one, Reid has quirky, genuinely improvisatory style, in the sense that he seldom resorts to clichés or shows off for showing off's sake, but always invokes the least likely next phrase or harmonic twist/twixt. He composes numbers in a style more reminiscent of Herbie Nichols's compositions than anybody else I can think of, and in style plays perhaps closest to Wynton. When this was pointed out to me by my friendly table-sharer, I asked if the observer meant the Greek Wynton or the Irish one - to which he dryly replied, the latter. On upright bass was the tall, strikingly Masai-like Larry Bartley - seen alongside Adrian Reid in Reid's quartet with altoist and sopranoist Tony Kofi a fortnight ago at The Oval, whom some may have seen with Tim Richards's Great Spirit a decade and a half ago. That one had the American Rod youngs on drums, one of the most musical and least showy drummers on the London scene, and he is on the Adrian Reid Quartet CD (Nyanza St label)
These two-hour long freebies, every Thursday lunchtime, are attended by a packed, fearsomely attentive audience of mainly octogenarians culled from various stopping points along the Overground, anywhere mainly between Islington and Croydon by way of Whitechapel and New Cross; and so, surprised and delighted one was to find this sea of white barnets treated to the tenor saxophone and flute of Michael "Bammie" Rose, a legend in the reggae world, who among many others has been associated with Aswad, as well as having played in Dudu Pukwana's Jabula (pronounced JabOOla): it well made up for the two sets consisting of well-worn standards lovingly played, and being the youngest member of the audience.
It sounds like a good line up.
I thought The Clocktower jazz had stopped but then it has been so long since I went into Croydon I am told I wouldn't recognise it.Comment
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