As in the past, several of the freebie jazz performances being presented at this year's London Jazz Festival measure up will against the pricey items prominenced at South Bank. Today's gig, an hour's worth of the much-lauded Gwilym Simcock was no exception. One or two tracks from his latest release have figured on various radio programmes of late, and what was on offer consisted mostly, I guess , of these materials.
Arriving as I did two minutes late - for which I and others were directed up to the gallery, and made to wait until the end of the first number - some allowance had to be made for echoey acoustics giving the impression, erroneous or not was hard to tell, of excessive use of the sustain pedal. The technique is less accentuated than the way jazz customarily expresses its soul through the concert techniques it finds useful to itself. That said, there is no doubting Mr Simcock's virtuosity - a fluency immediately comparable in my mind to the great, late Gordon Beck, who seems now to represent Gwilym's nearest predecessor in bringing additional panache to a stylistic tradition represented by such well known figures as Chick Corea (who is said to greatly admire him) and Keith Jarrett, and the particularly "English" slant long incorporated within the vernacular by our own John Taylor. The excitement Gwilym generates comes off best on fast, Fusion-type materials in which one is commanded to peer over the parapet to witness that two hands are genuinely capable of distinguishing improvised lines amid a forest of two-handed multiple-tempoed riffs. How much of what he says is actually "new" takes second consideration to the fact that he does this kind of stuff as well as, if not better than, anybody else one can think of. It is all very serious, very "literal", and very smoothly executed. There is a sense that he is comfortable within his range; and that range being one which surreptitiously slips in a polymodal chord combination or two from, for example, Messiaen's "Vingt Regards", as well as many more which John Taylor has already unselfconsciously adapted from English "pastoral" composers such as John Ireland and Jack Moeran, one is (unfairly?) left with an impression that the range in its self-sufficiency is all we need to look for, and never beyond. Bereft thus far of any detectable change of direction, one searches fruitlessly for clues of new possibilities.
This concert wass one of three which are being presented at St James's during the LJF. The first, on Monday, which I unfortunately missed, was The Golden Age of Steam - a grouping from the fertile Loop Collective containing another, arguably more imaginatively adventurous pianist, Kit Downes, who is also a gifted exponent of keyboard electronics. At the venue on Friday coming the group is the impressive Liam Noble/Julian Siegel Quartet some may have heard on Sunday's JLU.
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Arriving as I did two minutes late - for which I and others were directed up to the gallery, and made to wait until the end of the first number - some allowance had to be made for echoey acoustics giving the impression, erroneous or not was hard to tell, of excessive use of the sustain pedal. The technique is less accentuated than the way jazz customarily expresses its soul through the concert techniques it finds useful to itself. That said, there is no doubting Mr Simcock's virtuosity - a fluency immediately comparable in my mind to the great, late Gordon Beck, who seems now to represent Gwilym's nearest predecessor in bringing additional panache to a stylistic tradition represented by such well known figures as Chick Corea (who is said to greatly admire him) and Keith Jarrett, and the particularly "English" slant long incorporated within the vernacular by our own John Taylor. The excitement Gwilym generates comes off best on fast, Fusion-type materials in which one is commanded to peer over the parapet to witness that two hands are genuinely capable of distinguishing improvised lines amid a forest of two-handed multiple-tempoed riffs. How much of what he says is actually "new" takes second consideration to the fact that he does this kind of stuff as well as, if not better than, anybody else one can think of. It is all very serious, very "literal", and very smoothly executed. There is a sense that he is comfortable within his range; and that range being one which surreptitiously slips in a polymodal chord combination or two from, for example, Messiaen's "Vingt Regards", as well as many more which John Taylor has already unselfconsciously adapted from English "pastoral" composers such as John Ireland and Jack Moeran, one is (unfairly?) left with an impression that the range in its self-sufficiency is all we need to look for, and never beyond. Bereft thus far of any detectable change of direction, one searches fruitlessly for clues of new possibilities.
This concert wass one of three which are being presented at St James's during the LJF. The first, on Monday, which I unfortunately missed, was The Golden Age of Steam - a grouping from the fertile Loop Collective containing another, arguably more imaginatively adventurous pianist, Kit Downes, who is also a gifted exponent of keyboard electronics. At the venue on Friday coming the group is the impressive Liam Noble/Julian Siegel Quartet some may have heard on Sunday's JLU.
S-A
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