The event opens on 24 August at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice, where auditions will be held for three consecutive days. The jury consists of Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, a member (with Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul) of Weather Report; ECM artist Mark Feldman, and Polish violinist Michał Urbaniak, best known for his collaboration with US jazz legend Miles Davis.

The following violinists have qualified for the semi-finals:

• Amalia Obrębowska (Poland) a participant of the 2018 Seifert Competition and winner of the audience award
• Lucy Southern (USA),
• Serge Hirsch (France),
• Benjamin Sutin (USA),
• Wojciech Barteczek (Poland),
• Kacper Malisz (Poland),
• Guilherme Pimenta (Brazil),
• Eduardo Bortolotti (Mexico and living in Poland),
• Gabriel Vieira (Brazil) a participant in 2020 and winner of the audience award,
• João Silva (Portugal) also a participant in the 2020 competition.

GALA CONCERT FOR STANKO 80th

Following the competition, a gala will be held on 29 August at ICE Kraków which will be dedicated to the memory of Tomasz Stańko. It will be held on the 80^th anniversary of Stańko’s birthday in Kraków, where he received his music education and set up his first bands, including the Tomasz Stańko Quintet with Zbigniew Seifert, Bronisław Suchanek, Janusz Muniak and Janusz Stefański.

Stańko’s compositions will be recalled and reinterpreted by those who accompanied him on his musical journey for nearly three decades by pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Sławomir Kurkiewicz, and drummer Michał Miśkiewicz, together forming the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, with a guest appearance by Nils Petter Molvær.

This concert is part of the international celebrations of Stanko 80, which also include a concert at the EFG London Jazz Festival.

The post Semi-finalists of the Seifert Competition announced first appeared on UK Jazz News.

UKJazz News: How did the Brackenbury/Bianco duo come together?

Faith Brackenbury: I met Tony, who’s from the Bronx, NY, two years ago this August. His life had somewhat miraculously (for me) landed him 15 miles from me in rural Shropshire – it’s a beautiful place, but not exactly a jazz hub – via Berlin and London, where he played and recorded with Alex von Schlippenbach, Aki Takase, Elton Dean, Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall, Dave Liebman on the jazz and free scene. We released ‘Rising Up’, on Discus, in 2021. Our new double album is very different, and although it has three of our long free improvisations on it, it also has five tracks based on the sacred music of St.Hildegard von Bingen.

UKJN: How did you get into St.Hildegard von Bingen’s music?

FB: I came across it when I was playing with Martin Speake’s Mafarowi band with Rob Luft and Will Glaser in 2015/16, and researched her. I was inspired by everything about her work, her life (1098-1179) and her music.

Tony Bianco: So, one day Faith came over with a Hildegard record…I had nothing to do that afternoon, and just drummed to the whole hour of it…and it was great…and Faith liked it…and I liked it also. I love the melodies and the rhythms, so that’s how it started, with us.

FB: Tony’s rolling drums underneath the Hildegard sounded so earthy and grounded, in response to the ethereal quality of the monophonic vocals. Then I thought that maybe I could even sing some of these beautiful liturgical songs, and loop background drones and riffs on my violin and viola, as backing, and then improvise over that. The Latin, containing all those vowels, is so natural to sing. And the intervals, and freeness she wrote with, as well as it being modal, meant a crossover of classical, spiritual, jazz, folk; fantastic for improvising on.

UKJN: What is it about Hildegard’s music that will resonate with the audience?

TB: I’ve always listened a lot to Ravi Shankar and Indian music. I also practised yoga… I got into that world listening to the Beatles ‘Within You Without you’. I loved the way the tabla played in an improvisational way with the sitar, and I thought, maybe we can kind of do this with Hildegard – and it worked out like we were making the Hildegard into some kind of Christian meditation music, that’s similar, to me, to aspects of how Indians regard their music, in terms of the spirituality.

FB: And each track we do is over 10 minutes, which is (apparently) the point at which the human mind starts to go into a trance, listening to music.

UKJN: Most of your gigs are in churches, and local to you, is there a reason for that?

FB: After the last two years of social isolation, restrictions and loneliness, we decided to try to encourage the communities around us to re-engage with live music, just going out and being together socially again, which is vital to the overall health of all humans – and we are so privileged to be able to play in these most beautiful buildings, that have such a sense of peace, belonging, and are so ancient.

TB: We hope people may feel a sense of universal consciousness, a connection to spirit and each other, again. I’m glad that our tour is in churches, to bring that even more to our understanding, and to the people, because I think churches are the perfect place to hear that music. And also there are elements of jazz that are spiritual; we’re jazz musicians, and it’s emphasising that. Plus it’s fortunate it is local, because of fuel prices!

UKJN: Would you like to take the music further afield?

FB: Absolutely, other regional UK tours or gigs would be great. I’d like to go to Germany with it too, where Hildegard was from, and elsewhere of course.

UKJN: How important is it that you are receiving Arts Council England funding?

TB: It’s great – we do eat! And it means we’ll be able to put fuel in the car to get to the gigs with less worry. It’s not easy packing up your drums and going to these gigs and such, without any kind of financial security, especially in these times. So thank you, Arts Council England.

UKJN: The new double album, ‘Wayward Mystic’, is being released on Discus on 2 September…

TB: Yes – Faith liked that title. It’s a jazz musician’s version of things. Hildegard was a mystic, poet, dramatist, physician as well as a composer. She was quite a rebel. And maybe at this point in the world, try to believe in a higher power – the power of man seems to have failed totally! We’ve moved away from taking a higher power seriously, so maybe a contemplative, spiritual, prayerful thing, if it comes into our life in a way that’s meaningful and sacred and peaceful, without any judgement, might bring us hope, that’s real and not from politicians.

FB: She had visions from an early age, hence our project name of ‘Visio Improvisus’, which has since given some critics an excuse to ridicule her – but she was very respected in her time, advising and giving her opinion to royalty and the Pope. She was ahead of her times, a political moralist.

TB: But then, she was kept hidden from the world for centuries, as Truth and profound things are…

FB: Yes, but she was canonised 10 years ago in 2012, and also made a Doctor of the Church. The tour actually finishes on 17 September, which is St. Hildegard’s Feast Day, so that’s very satisfying.

The post Faith Brackenbury and Tony Bianco – Visio Improvisus tour first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford-on-Avon kicks off its 2022 spring/summer season with Empirical on Saturday 29 January 2022.

The Centre is a community hub, hosting events as diverse as baby sensory activities, specialist music classes for toddlers and all genres of music. The journey there is always worth it: the sound and lighting is perfect, the auditorium size just right for jazz, and the very reasonably priced bar is manned by charming volunteers.

Empirical will be preview a collection of new pieces from a new album set for release in March 2022. Written by each individual band member in isolation during lockdowns throughout the pandemic, the music reflects the desire and joy to perform and improvise together as a collective.

Other events coming up include the Wiltshire Youth Jazz Orchestra on 6 March, a concert and livestream by Maya Youssef, virtuoso of the 78 stringed qanun, performing her latest album Coming Home on 26 March, and two good friends and top-flight musicians, pianist Gwilym Simcock and violinist Thomas Gould on 10 June, premiering a new work by Simcock.

The post Empirical at Wiltshire Music Centre first appeared on UK Jazz News.

UKJazz News: After the first Big Band Christmas concert in 2016 (picture above) Sebastian Scotney wrote: “Whisper it quietly, but this could just possibly be the start of a new tradition”. How does that make you feel now that you’re into your sixth Big Band Christmas show at the Royal Albert Hall?

Guy Barker: I feel incredibly happy that this is happening. When I was first asked to do it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do a Christmas concert. It’s the Albert Hall, it holds 5,000 people. I wasn’t sure I could draw a crowd that big and then somebody said to me: “You don’t have to worry Guy, you’ve got two enormous stars on the bill already – the Albert Hall and Christmas – they’ll sell your tickets!” We are already talking about next year, so it seems to have become a regular Christmas concert.

UKJN: It’s the 150^th anniversary of the Royal Albert Hall this year. Have you been given a specific brief?

GB: They invited me to look in their archive – they have kept all the programmes going back years, in pristine condition. I saw that Benny Goodman did a gig in 1971 and I remember my Dad taking me to that concert, it was my first trip to the Albert Hall. For this year’s concert to celebrate the 150^th, I’ve taken moments that celebrate jazz and Big Band concerts that have taken place over all these years, as well as all the Christmas music.

UKJN: It sounds like you have great affection for the Hall.

GB: When you walk into that amazing space it feels really special. You don’t just do a concert there, it becomes a special occasion. The view from the stage is spectacular. It’s so enormous, it looks like it could swallow you up but in a very welcoming way! And as you walk through the “Bull run” to the stage, it opens up, and every time it looks like it’s welcoming you.

UKJN: So who’s going to be playing this year?

GB: As always, the 38-piece band, plus guests. Clare Teal will be there. Liv Warfield from Chicago, she’s a spectacular performer. And Joe Stilgoe, Tony Momrelle and Giacomo Smith, all of whom are stars in their own right.

UKJN: You’ve got Jazz Voice coming up on 12 November. How do you keep on top of all this work?

GB: You just have to do it and keep on top of it. I get up, practise the trumpet for two hours every day, then I write. It’s a necessity.

UKJN: So what else have you been working on?

GB: I’d always wanted to write a concerto for Giacomo Smith because he’s one of the most inspiring musicians I’ve ever met. He’s done three of the Christmas shows. And as I started to write the concerto, I got an email saying that John Cumming had died and I was desperately upset by that. We were really good friends. I even found a programme from a gig he booked me for, in the Hammersmith Town Hall when I was 20 or 21 so I’ve known him since then. So I knew I had another reason to do this concerto. I’ll dedicate it to John. We were going to perform it in 2020 but couldn’t, but I’ve got a chance to rehearse it soon with the Southbank Sinfonia and it will be premiered next year.

UKJN: I last saw you live in 2019 at Cheltenham Music Festival in the Town Hall with Brass for Africa.

GB: That was fun! There was a youth band and Brass for Africa and they were all set up in brass band formation. I’ve got a picture, of the back row of third cornets and it’s me, Alison Balsom and Wynton Marsalis!

UKJN: And it was such a joyful concert. What is going to bring us joy at your Christmas concert?

GB: The audience will probably feel it coming from the stage. The musicians have started to work again but we’ve not been in the Albert Hall with that kind of audience for two years so there’s going to be a buzz. And with the material we’ve chosen, there’s nothing to depress you. It will be fun, there will be a few surprises and I hope everybody will have a good time.

Guy Barker’s Big Band Christmas is at the Royal Albert Hall, 7.30pm on Friday 10 December 2021

The post Guy Barker (Big Band Christmas, Royal Albert Hall, 10 December) first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The film features twenty bass players and people associated with the instrument talking about their lives, influences and techniques (list below). They all talk straight to camera. There is no narrator guiding us through the film either on or off screen, unless you count John Goldsby who appears throughout the film, subtly shifting focus from one idea to the next, from one legend to another. In the first few minutes of the film we are walked through the past 100 years of double bass in jazz and it’s immediately apparent how much today’s bass players owe to a few seminal figures such as Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Ray Brown, how hits such as Bob Haggart’s 1938 “Big Noise from Winnetka” blazed a trail for bass players to move out from a supportive role to enabling the bass to be at the forefront of a band, making sophisticated ideas work on a bass.

There are many beautiful anecdotes which encapsulate a lifetime’s work on the bass. Ron Carter saying “Every night is a chance to play beautiful music. Don’t fool around.” Christian McBride at the age of 16 trying and failing to sound and look like Ron Carter and then seeing Ray Brown up close at the Blue Note, feeling the same kind of propulsion that he felt when he heard funk, and thinking “Oh, that’s how it’s supposed to be done”.

It’s not all talk, there are 4 short, absorbing, solo performances (from Larry Grenadier, Phil Palombi, Jasper Høiby and John Patitucci ), each one beautifully lit. The sight of Palombi playing Gloria’s Step in the Village Vanguard, on Scott LaFaro’s 1825 Abraham Prescott double bass, the very same bass he used in Sunday at the Village Vanguard, is captivating and moving, as is the story of how that bass came to be acquired by LaFaro, to become his perfect instrument and was restored after the fatal accident.

The venues where people play or talk are places that immediately make you feel nostalgic for live music – the Village Vanguard, Pizza Express Soho, Wigmore Hall. There are breezy snippets of archival film, shots of wet pavements, the New York City subway, Ronnie’s signage at night, closeups of hands. But perhaps what will most strike the viewer is how extraordinarily humble each of these great artists is. Dave Holland recounts how much space he was given by Miles Davis to dialogue with soloists, moving beyond a supportive role to commenting on the music. But then one night Miles said to him “Dave, you know you are a bass player”. And in that moment, in those few words Holland saw a lifetime’s work to balance the role of support with one of feeding the music. As Katie Thiroux reflects “Playing four notes in a measure simply and beautifully is challenging”. This film will help us appreciate that.

The credits roll as Patitucci and Grenadier improvise a short, ethereal piece both using bows, after which they smile, laugh and hug each other. This is a warm, affectionate film beautifully paced and edited, which will prompt you to dust off albums you haven’t listened to for a long time and you’ll listen with revived enthusiasm and awe for all that has gone into that performance. This labour of love has paid off.

‘Walking the Changes: Legends of Double Bass in Jazz’ was released in February 2021 and is available to watch on Vimeo.

INTERVIEWEES:
Nick Blacka
Ron Carter
Avishai Cohen
Lars Danielsson
Chris Minh Doky
Liran Donin
David Gage
John Goldsby
Eddie Gomez
Larry Grenadier
Dave Holland
Jasper Hoiby
Barrie Kolstein
Boris Koslov
Christian McBride
Edgar Meyer
John Patitucci
Phil Palombi
Katie Thiroux
Jon Thorne

The post ‘Walking the Changes – Legends of Double Bass in Jazz’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Originally composed as a solo work for Russian American pianist Kirill Gerstein, this orchestral version was commissioned and performed with the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra – a democratic conductor-less ensemble of 38 musicians who rotate leadership and governance and whose complete recordings are about to be released on Deutsche Grammophon. Mehldau and the Orchestra toured the US, Europe and Russia with the piece, and this recording was a live performance in October 2013 at Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts, a venue known for its elegance and perfect acoustics.

Mehldau explains the technical structure of the work in the liner notes, a series of paired variations book-ended with Theme and Postlude. He draws attention to the narrative challenge of how to tell a story that starts with a conclusion. Perhaps the answer to this conundrum is to use each variation to explore the multitude of emotions that trigger melancholy, to dissect and probe the emotion in order to understand it, or at least accept it. And that’s what happens in the Theme, 11 Variations, Cadenza and Postlude. They tumble into each other, scarcely a breath between them, creating a unified work which dazzles, each piece gently merging into the next with forward references.

Theme is a memorable waltz, gently paced and not deeply melancholic, although woodwind intimates that emotion. The first two variations continue the skittery waltz, a sense of remembered sunlit happiness which you know must end. The pace picks up and the mood darkens, a tumult of piano notes, dissonance and angles. Variation 7 is for orchestra only, twelve-tone, it is sombre with shades of Prokofiev and achingly beautiful strings. Variations 9 and 10 are lighter in feel after the dense and dark Variation 8, like dawn after a long night, and a sense of acceptance and resignation.

There is an American landscape spaciousness about the sound whilst at the same time a complexity of detail delicately and serenely portrayed by a masterly chamber orchestra. At no time does the piano dominate and Mehldau modestly allows himself only one Variation for solo piano, a Cadenza and an encore. The Cadenza is of limpid beauty like bird song and the pure blues encore Variations X and Y sparkles with staccato notes. The beauty of working with a conductor-less orchestra is that the musicians are free to grasp the moment to explore what they hear, without a single coherent viewpoint imposed from a conductor. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra do this with great sensitivity, no more so than in the longest piece, the symphonic climactic Postlude, a beautiful conversation between pianist and orchestra.

The recording may date from 2013 but now is a good time for this release, a follow up to Mehldau’s solo album Suite: April 2020 which explored his personal experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this orchestral work he explores a universal, valuable and intangible emotion with great insight into the human predicament. The album cover is also a thing of beauty – a montage of steam trains and steamboats, autumn foliage, a skyscraper at dusk and a sepia photo of unnamed women. These things hint at nostalgia and complement a very fine work.

The post Brad Mehldau and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra – ‘Variations on a Melancholy Theme’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The prestigious Jazz Juniors Competition held annually in Kraków returns as a live event for its 45th edition after a domestic-only version last year owing to global travel restrictions. It is organised by Fundacja Muzyki Filmowej i Jazzowej.

The competition started in 1976 and previous winners and award holders include Leszek Możdżer and Pawel Kaczmarczyk. The competition is open to jazz musicians of 35 years and under, and the prize is an album recording released on a record label chosen by the organisers plus additional prizes such as festival gigs, and the Janusz Muniak Award for an outstanding musician.

The closing date for online entries is 31 August and a decision on the successful entrants (who will be selected via an anonymised process) will be made on 7 September with the final audition on Wednesday 6 October, held live in Kraków. The competition is the opening event of the four day Jazz Juniors Festival.

Those interested may like to know that if invited to audition, there is a requirement to be in Kraków for the entirety of 6 October only, so enabling musicians to undertake work at home close to the audition date. Travel costs are not covered by the organisers but accommodation and full backline will be provided.

The jury members are US guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly (who recorded with Miles Davis on Amandla and is known for his cross genre collaborations), gnawa music master Majid Bekkas from Morocco, and Chair of the Jury and Artistic Director of the Jazz Juniors Festival, saxophonist Adam Pierończyk.

The post Jazz Juniors Competition (Kraków) 2021 Open for Entries first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Take Frank Parr – a man who ate only fried food and eschewed social niceties. “Even in flannels, walking on to the field, he still managed to look anything but a cricketer,” wrote England fast bowler Brian Statham of Parr, whose promising wicket-keeping career ended abruptly in 1956, who went on to join Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia Jazz Band (of which George Melly was a member), became Acker Bilk’s manager and a film extra, dying in 2012. And Patrick ‘Spike’ Hughes (drawn to cricket after Cambridge and who once dismissed Maurice Tate’s XI for 17, taking 6 wickets) whose musical adventures peaked whilst in New York with a 1933 Decca recording of Spike Hughes and his All-American Orchestra featuring Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins, an event of such magnitude for him that everything else afterwards was an anticlimax and he stopped playing. And more recently bassist Orlando Le Fleming who showed genuine promise as a medium-fast bowler for Devon CC and Somerset Second XI, but then moved to New York where he has made his mark in jazz as both sideman and band leader.

So what is it about jazz and cricket that enables men to move between these two different ways of life? (And, incidentally, it is in essence only men – no female cricketers are mentioned, and woman musicians such as Bessie Smith and Ella Fitzgerald appear tangentially in anecdotes.)

One answer to that question comes from Jim Godbolt, writer and founding editor of house magazine Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s. He wrote: “Both cricket and jazz, irrespective of style, require a sense of rhythm, timing, concentration, improvisation, solo and team work.” It’s as much an attitude of mind as anything else. As Le Fleming says on his website, [my] “facility as an improviser and capacity as a team player were first honed not on the bandstand, nor in the practice room, but on the cricket pitch”.

Wright draws on an article by Mike Marqusee entitled Why Cricket? in which he observes that an extra-terrestrial observing a cricket match, knowing nothing of the rules but able to work them out by observation, might wonder why humans spend so many hours in such a seemingly pointless activity. But we go to a cricket match to watch the unfolding of something unpredictable, dependent on the internal life of the players as much as their skills with bat or ball. Those watching are not just consumers of cricket, they are engaging imagination, interpretation and memory. And so it is with jazz. We never know how it is going to turn out. We love to watch contrasting skills – the elegance and grace of David Gower and the belligerence of Ian Botham, hear the lyricism of Miles Davis alongside John Coltrane’s urgent harder tone.

The book is beautifully illustrated with team photos, album covers and membership cards to long lost London clubs. There are thoughtful and insightful chapters on the development of cricket in the West Indies, South Africa and the USA, and the rich contribution to British life of migrants such as Tunji Sowande who became the first Black judge in the UK, played with Ronnie Scott as well as being a keen cricketer and member of the MCC. There is much of interest in this book, even if you have never cared for cricket, the insights that Wright offers will prompt further reflection on what we enjoy in jazz.

Central to the book is a chapter on the Ravers CC, the jazz cricket team of the 100 Club (then called the Lyttleton Club) comprising personalities in jazz, of whom Frank Parr was the most eminent cricketer. Ray Smith (of Collet’s Record Shop) was a spin bowler of great skill, taking 5 for 9 runs on one occasion. They all took their cricket very seriously. It wouldn’t be a book about cricket that didn’t include some numbers and the book ends with Frank Parr’s First-class career statistics.

The post Matthew Wright – ‘Jazz and Cricket’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.