The place for jazz videos

[Ian Thumwood]

The jazz scene in Spain never seems to get much coverage although there have been musicians as diverse as Denis Gonsalves and Guillermo Klein who have been based there at one time or other. I would normally have been in Vienne this week and I cannot recall hearing any jazz musicians from Spain even though the Scene de Cybele figures talent from some really unlikely European countries. Someone requested a Spanish equivalent of NYJO on JRR a few week back and I had no idea that this band existed. I was playing a CD in my car this week by a quartet who came from Slovenia whose music sounded like a Slavic version of Terje Rypdal which is really decent. I am not surprised that there are is a decent younger generation of players in Spain because the European scene is far richer than most people in the UK appreciate. A lot of these bands end up touring between the summer jazz festivals and the quality is often exceptionally high. I would suggest that a lot of the stuff lauded by SA from the scene in London is replicated throughout London. I have seen some fantastic bands from Lyon which has a very strong jazz department in the conservatoire and would suggest that this city is something of a hot bed for all styles of jazz. The bands coming out of Lyon are pretty incredible.

The band that has really impressed me is Shems Bendali's quintet. The trumpeter's debut album was getting a lot of attention in the French media last year. I think this is something that Bruce and Bluesnik will love.

[Serial_Apologist]

The jazz scene in Spain never seems to get much coverage although there have been musicians as diverse as Denis Gonsalves and Guillermo Klein who have been based there at one time or other. I would normally have been in Vienne this week and I cannot recall hearing any jazz musicians from Spain even though the Scene de Cybele figures talent from some really unlikely European countries. Someone requested a Spanish equivalent of NYJO on JRR a few week back and I had no idea that this band existed. I was playing a CD in my car this week by a quartet who came from Slovenia whose music sounded like a Slavic version of Terje Rypdal which is really decent. I am not surprised that there are is a decent younger generation of players in Spain because the European scene is far richer than most people in the UK appreciate. A lot of these bands end up touring between the summer jazz festivals and the quality is often exceptionally high. I would suggest that a lot of the stuff lauded by SA from the scene in London is replicated throughout London. I have seen some fantastic bands from Lyon which has a very strong jazz department in the conservatoire and would suggest that this city is something of a hot bed for all styles of jazz. The bands coming out of Lyon are pretty incredible.

The band that has really impressed me is Shems Bendali's quintet. The trumpeter's debut album was getting a lot of attention in the French media last year. I think this is something that Bruce and Bluesnik will love.

I agree - one of the first noticeable things about collectives operating here in this country since the turn of the Millennium, particularly in London and starting with the F-Ire Collective and Loop Collectives has been the massive levels of co-operation across European borders in particular, to the point where, in some ways sadly, in others positively, it becomes nearly impossible to define "the home scene" in terms of its Englishness or Britishness. Sadly, because for all the ethnic/cultural multiplicity of home-grown jazz, what was once possible to discern, an "Englishess" with subliminal roots in what Elizabeth Lutyens disparagingly called "the cowpat school" of early 20th century composers, especially Vaughan Williams and John Ireland in the case of jazz (easily detectable when you listened to Robert Wyatt, John Surman, Azimuth, Stan Sulzmann, Danny Thompson's Whatever), has now largely gone or, in the case of Tim Garland or Gwilym Simcock, been absorbed into a kind of post-Corea mainstream of gifted soundalikes, although you can hear vestiges of it in Kit Downes - and this, tied up with folk rock and poetry in the 1960s, adapted from the Beat scene across the Pond, as was well illustrated in yesterday's documentary on the Beatles; positively because musical cosmopolitanism as found in the pre-existing scene posits a strong musical aesthetic base from which to propagate the sorts of jazz we are now hearing on J to Z, in particular. And it's not only the yojunger generation who are profiting in the only good sense from this co-operation across borders - it has been going on for a good couple of decades, possibly three, for people like Django Bates and Iain Ballamy in their associations with Scandinavian musicians and institutions - partly out of necessity, given the more enlightened attitudes by those countries towards maintaining non-commercial arts.

Instancing Scotland, interestingly, I think this transnational consciousness is less apparent the further north, and possibly west you go. What was "Scottish" in British jazz in the 1950s and 60s tended to get reflected in the contributions of Scottish musicians who moved south, people such as Bobby Wellins, and a consciously Scottish expression of national consciousness or a sub-culture first came about with rugged determination with Ken Hyder's Talisker, despite which what one thinks of as Scottish jazz then fell into the hands of Tommy Smith. It may well be that amid the near-ubiquitous cross-hybridization of jazz with other genres characterising the London scene, "provincialists" such as the Welsh pianist and folk singer accompanist Huw Warren, Scots saxophonist John Bancroft, along with his brother Tom, drummer John Rae and pianist Brian Kellock have moulded another kind of hybrid between traditional Scottish music and hard bop. I am talking new trends in the music rather than the older pub-meetings mainstream for another jar of Straight No Chaser please! I would be happy to be challenged in this, my impression of where jazz is and has been going. I rather suspect that inter-generic cross-fertilisation will increasingly fuel the scene in the Metropolis, whether or not one identifies such musics as jazz, with the celebratory spirit of populist bands such as Shabaka Hutchings' Sons of Kemet drawing sections of following towards the freer more experimental areas he and his associates are involved in. This did not happen in the early 1980s when erstswhile free players jumped on board Acid Jazz, because <<jazz>> was about to be co-opted as a yuppie style accessory. Today's world offers the young no such ideological palliatives. Jazz in the provinces will more reflect the beleaguered state post-Thatcher/Blair, of Britain, socially distanced beyond the EU, let alone the M25.

[Serial_Apologist]

This is from one of the weekly gigs at the Amersham in New Cross, from 9 years ago: Trish Clowes performing one of the numbers from her debut CD, then just about released, and clearly getting off on the funky rhythmic interplay between Calum's bass and James's drums. I prefer this version, nevertheless Trish was lucky to get the services of a small orchestra for that recording date.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfs77puWN6E

Glad it's still available. Happy memories - Trish was part of the SE Collective, who organised those gigs, and she was often playing in other's line-ups, or on the door. We used to wonder how they could read their music! That far back - seems only yesterday!

[CGR]

[Jazzrook]

Peter King playing 'Lush Life' at the Pizza Express in 2002:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=gLtCggfJgF0

JR

[CGR]

Smalls livestream - Mike Moreno Quartet

Music starts about 17 minutes in.

[Joseph K]

Listening now.

edit: I am enjoying this Mike Moreno set. As for the man himself, I've seen an interview where he came across a bit grouchy...

[Joseph K]

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Interview with Tony Williams just up on YouTube, guessing from the 80s, maybe later? I hadn't seen this before...

http://youtu.be/ORA5GmWl7j8

[Joseph K]

Keith Jarrett, Solar - https://youtu.be/NnprjaR6wFc

[Ian Thumwood]

Looks like he needs a Gok Wan fashion fix!

[CGR]

[Serial_Apologist]

Looks like he needs a Gok Wan fashion fix!

Enough kurt comments, please!

[CGR]

Smalls livestream - Miki Yamanaka Quartet with Mark Turner. Again the music kicks off about 15 minutes in.

I saw Miki Yamanaka at Smalls last time I was in NY. She always seems to get great people in her band.

[CGR]

Another Smalls livestream - Great line-up: Dezron Douglas, Cyrus Chestnut, Victor Lewis trio