One vocal artist pondering this is the Swiss Andreas Schaerer, whose voice is of course a remarkable instrument, and who habitually sings in several languages, or none. On this latest release from his quartet with drummer Lucas Niggli, guitarist Kalle Kalima and accordionist Luciano Biondini, six years after their debut A Novel of Anomaly (link to review below), he takes this a step further. There are wordless vocals here, but also tracks where Schaerer sings in an improvised language. This is made up of non-words that nonetheless use phonemes that suggest the listener is hearing one or more European languages.

That is quite effective in some ways, lending the sometimes quite complex written lines an improvised quality, and allowing Schaerer to extemporise freely in the same vein using a teasing repertoire of sounds that is a vocabulary only in the musical sense yet comes across like he might be using actual words.

It also aligns conceptually with the sentiment that informs the quartet’s musical project here, a wish to move beyond borders, transcend territories, and emphasise cultural expression that conveys our common humanity – hence Anthem for No Man’s Land.

Some might feel music does that anyway, just as group improvisation always benefits from open-hearted communication between the players. And in truth the new album does not sound radically different from the quartet’s first offering. That’s a good thing, as this is a tremendous group. Niggli and Kallima have a long sympathy with Schaerer’s dizzying variety of vocal styles, and Biondini’s exuberant accordion flights are an inspiring match for the singer. As before, there are diverse folk strains, jazz rhythms, and touches of prog rock – with Schaerer’s bass synth added to soaring electric guitar, cuts like the title track here or the rocker Bad Eye would not disappoint fans of Yes, especially if they were looking for more interesting vocals than that group supplied.

But they operate in several other modes, often subtly reflective and with just two or three of the players interacting with some delicacy. It’s a beguiling mix, sometimes tending to the slightly melancholic but always engaging. The tailpiece Sogna Belimo, is a simple wordless song that is both those things. Wordless? Well, it features Schaerer’s language-that-is-no-language and on this one it does become a little distracting. On reflection, that affects a few other tracks too. Ironically, unlike the first album, where your monoglot reviewer was content to ignore the words of songs in other languages and just hearken to the voice, the slow vocal here sounds as if it is wrapped round words you ought to able to discern, but cannot. The effect, for me, is not so much universal communication as a moment of post-Babel bewilderment, in which all languages have become incomprehensible. Which is to say that Schaerer’s linguistic experiment here is certainly interesting, but not perhaps entirely successful. Musically, though, it detracts only a little from another splendid album from a unique quartet.

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Yet in spite of the Canadian trumpeter’s introversion, he forged a towering reputation, and a far-reaching influence. His individual sound achieved the often sought but rarely realised state of being instantly recognisable. Family, friends and some other important musicians insisted his prowess on the horn and his composing compared with the greatest jazz artists.

One of those was Nick Smart, head of jazz at the Royal Academy of Music, who immediately after Wheeler’s death suggested on behalf of the Academy that he had been “a genius walking amongst us”. Now Smart, along with transatlantic collaborator Brian Shaw, has produced a formidably well-researched account of Wheeler’s life and times that goes some way to justifying such a large claim.

It has taken a decade, and is clearly a labour of love. The result is not revelatory, but if the story fleshed out here is largely familiar to jazz listeners who remember that gorgeous sound, it is certainly told in as much detail – 500 pages and over 2000 endnotes – as anyone could wish. Moreover, it goes beyond the limitations of individual musician biographies to enlarge on important parts of UK jazz history.

Wheeler came to this country in 1952 when he was just 22, a big leap for a shy kid from a troubled home in Canada. Before long he had his first gig, in the Gerard Street basement that would one day host the first incarnation of Ronnie Scott’s club, and met his wife to be, Doreen, who underpinned his career by taking care of all possible domestic business for the rest of his life.

The career progressed from dance bands to jazz bands to tours, and by the end of the 1950s to the leading band of the day, led by John Dankworth. Then came the reliably brilliant work with Wheeler’s own groups, often with the same core set of close collaborators, and increasing opportunities to compose for larger ensembles.

The authors’ account sheds interesting light on the musical life of the 1950s and 1960s. Making a living for London-based players was often a matter of studio sessions in the daytime, and jazz – if you were lucky – in the evenings. Both kinds of work gave rise to tight-knit groups of colleagues, and the book emphasises how this fed into writing, which Wheeler not only composed (in classic jazz fashion) for the qualities of specific players, but also to express “the way he feels about the people he is with”. Sessions for BBC radio were the best opportunity to try out much new writing, though the copying and rehearsing for those was done for love, not money.

As Wheeler was consolidating his personal style in the ‘60s, he got to know the work of Booker Little. The American’s way of straining at the confines of bebop encouraged Wheeler not to play like Little, but to believe that he must cultivate his own style. He still found this frustrating as often as fulfilling, and in pursuit of new possibilities Wheeler the dedicated composer also took up with the pioneers of free improvisation in London, in outfits like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The book emphasises the development of this particular jazz career – like most, perhaps – as an endeavour of sustaining a network of collaborators. The trumpeter’s network made him an important bridging point between free-playing and more conventionally-minded scenes, in the UK and, later, internationally.

The international work took a spectacular turn with membership of Anthony Braxton’s group, then with close friend and fellow Braxton alumnus Dave Holland in the bass player’s first great quintet. By now Wheeler, like Holland, was recording for ECM, and the book offers plenty of vignettes of what it was like to work with Manfred Eicher. Prize among them is the occasion when the trumpeter actually once lost his temper and put the phone down on Eicher, apparently leading the usually immovable producer to agree to record a big-band of Wheeler’s own choosing in London. That green-lit the sessions that produced Music for Large and Small Ensembles, often cited as perhaps Wheeler’s finest work.

There was work for other labels, and with other bands, most often – as with many UK players of the time – in Europe. Multiple collaborations with Holland, John Taylor, Norma Winstone, Evan Parker, Chris Laurence and more are chronicled exhaustively here, and there are details of a startling number of large-scale compositions for big ensembles, many of them destined for just one or at most a handful of outings. We learn about all the recordings and not just all the gigs, but sometimes every tune on a gig.

The book probably gets as near the heart of the music as writing can. There is some interesting professional evaluation of Wheeler’s trumpet sound: very strong, centred, and able to find the target area “where the tone takes on the fullest resonance possible for the least amount of work”. That gave him conspicuous stamina, unwaveringly exact pitch and unusually good projection. This does account for part of the experience of hearing him play. The timbre is always burnished, but not over-bright, incisive but never harsh. It’s a voice that commands the ear without apparent effort.

As Shaw and Smart put it, “Kenny never ‘blasted’ to the point where his tone became forced or unattractive. It was just that the core of the sound was so resonant and full of overtones that it seemed loud in a way that could fill a room.”

In this fashion, the book does all that a biography can do. If it aspires, perhaps, to do more, that leads to questions that may not be answerable through reading or writing. Why did someone compose and play the way they did? You might want to find out more about the player to understand the music better. But it is probably more in keeping with their art to turn that round: listen to more of the music, more closely, to better understand the player.

For Wheeler’s technical mastery was allied to other qualities that are harder to describe. The melodies in the compositions and the improvised lines typically had that emotional flavour most readily summed up as bittersweet. His writing and playing returned to this zone again and again. As he said, “beautiful sad melodies make me very happy”. His alternative formulation was also apt, describing his sweet spot as a blend of melancholy and chaos. The title of poet Peter Gizzi’s collection that won the T.S. Eliot prize last month also comes to mind: Fierce Elegies seems to fit quite a few Wheeler compositions. One might go further. At its most affecting, it is some of the best work ever in that area where music makes an existential statement: human life is essentially tragic, but we can choose to create and appreciate beauty. 

Wheeler’s final recording for ECM, Songs for Quintet, laid down with care when his health was in terminal decline and his playing often faltering, is a striking evocation of that spirit, but it is as strongly present in much of the work that went before. That, for me, is why Wheeler’s music is so appealing, and why it is worth reading this book, which will almost certainly allow you to track down a good deal more of it than you know.

The post ‘Song for Someone – The Musical Life of Kenny Wheeler’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

And laying down at least a few Monk tunes has become something of a rite of passage for jazz newcomers. Indeed, saxophonist Xhosa Cole included one on his splendid debut album, Know Them Know Us in 2022, where he paid tribute other great predecessors from Woody Shaw to Ornette Coleman and Lee Morgan.

Now, for his third release, he offers an (almost) all Monk set, recorded live last year, mid-tour, on his home turf in Birmingham. It’s a satisfying set, brimful of the shared delight in improvisation that Monk seems to trigger so reliably in suitably talented interpreters. In a constantly crowded field, it’s as good an example as I can think of how these old tunes hold such a strong fascination for modern players and listeners.

Old they really are. Cole’s choices are mainly from the most-played Monk titles, save for the notoriously difficult Brilliant Corners. The compositions here were first recorded in the 1940s or 1950s, with a single title from 1961. Yet, while vast acreages of riffy tunes from the era now sound pretty stale, Monk’s wry, even sardonic, lines, and slyly insistent rhythms, still come up fresh, each one a little concentrated nugget of musical intelligence it is up to the player to unpack.

Cole goes at the unpacking with an abandon worthy of one of his other great inspirations, Sonny Rollins, aided by equally spirited contributions from Steve Saunders on guitar, Josh Vadiveloo on bass and Nathan England Jones on drums. Monk’s tunes can sometimes be heard as near-abstractions from his own musical milieu , and the performances on this night in Birmingham benefit from Cole’s fluency in keeping faith with a composition – when they have such strong character neglecting to do that is perilous indeed – while reserving the right to drop into abstractions of his own every now and then.

The secret sauce for this Monk tribute, though, is Liberty Styles’ brilliant tap dancing. This draws attention to the rhythmic subtleties of the music, emphasising Monk’s deep understanding of that percussive tradition – and calling to mind pianist Jason Moran’s own Monk project and his inspired use of field recordings of the composer dancing on the floorboards of a rehearsal loft.

That’s not to imply Styles is as endearingly clumpy-footed as the great man. The American is as fleet of foot as thought and her four tracks here are truly lifted by her presence. They include the closing Come Sunday, programmed in deference to Monk’s deep debt to Ellington and featuring a stately vocal from Heidel Vogel.

Not that the other three cuts, which squeeze in treatments of another six Monk compositions, suffer by comparison. The quartet are four players working together with delight to demonstrate yet again that the practice of jazz is perhaps the best way to allow great music to generate more great music – provided that, as here, you begin with the right materials.

If you are fortunate enough to be hearing Monk music for the first time, this is a fine way to begin. If – more likely – you know these pieces already, I think these versions stand with any others I’ve heard, including the ones left us by the composer. Since Monk fully deserves the modern genius tag, that’s quite an achievement.

‘On a Modern Genius, Vol 1’ is released today, 10 January 2025.

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In this case, it’s not one they were likely to forget. The singer we now know as Julie Tippetts enjoyed fleeting stardom as Julie Driscoll when she sang with keyboard artist Brian Auger in the 1960s. Their group, at home on Top of the Pops as well as jazz stages, was featured at the Montreux Jazz Festival, in only its second year and already looking for bands with a broader appeal than the jazz tag might imply.

So the Trinity joined Bill Evans and Nina Simone on the three day programme, and now we can hear a cleaned-up mono version of their Friday night show in the Montreux Casino.

And an excellent night it was. It’s a show of two halves. Driscoll takes the lead for half a dozen songs, including her take on Donovan’s Season of the Witch as well as titles associated with Richie Havens, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone (yes, they met her: no, she wasn’t chatty). Her strong soul-soaked vocals don’t have quite the impact they must have made in 1968 but still dig into the essence of the songs.

The second half focusses on Auger, his hammond organ rich and fluently idiomatic. It’s customary to dust off the word “psychedelic” when recalling this band, but there’s nothing especially psychedelic going on here. Instead we have an excellent trio – Auger supported ably by David Ambrose on bass and Clive Thacker at the drums – mixing up R&B and jazz numbers with jazz treatments of A Day in the Life and a couple of Auger originals.

All are groovily listenable, vindicating Auger’s conviction – rarer then than now – that boundaries were there to be ignored. That extends to the pleasant surprise of the leader’s own vocal channeling the composer surprisingly effectively on Mose Allison’s If You Live.

Two years after this show Auger was back at Montreux with the long-lived Oblivion Express, while Driscoll had moved on to sing with Keith Tippett’s epoch-making Centipede. That marked a move into freely improvised music that took her out of the pop arena. She could still produce world-class soul singing, as a brilliant one-off studio reunion with Auger on 1978’s Encore attested, but by and large she had other artistic priorities.

So it’s good to have another little time capsule from their first round of collaboration. At this distance it’s perhaps not earth shattering musically, but captures a moment beautifully.

1. Soft And Furry
2. Inside Of Him
3. Season Of The Witch
4. Take Me To The Water
5. I’m Going Back Home
6. Save Me
7. Red Beans And Rice
8. A Day In The Life
9. If You Live
10. Along Came Zizi
11. Bumpin’ On Sunset
12. Goodbye Jungle Telegraph

Brian Auger, organ; David Ambrose, bass; Clive Thacker, drums; Julie Driscoll, vocals.
14 June 1968, Casino Kursaal, Montreux Jazz Festival.

The post Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity – ‘Live at Montreux 1968’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The programme for the first weekend of 2025 looks like the best yet. It draws mainly on UK musicians, often those based in the South West, along with a few Europeans who might not otherwise be seen on these shores. This year that brings us Laura Jurd’s new quartet, topping the bill on Friday night, one new trio venture from Saxophonist Ian Ballamy, Molecatcher (don’t ask) with Rob Luft on guitar and Conor Chaplin on bass, and another featuring committed improvisers Larry Stabbins, sax and Mark Sanders on drums with the remarkable French-resident bassist Paul Rogers, who will get to work on Sunday afternoon.

More familiar UK line-ups also appearing include two sextets on Saturday afternoon, when Kevin Figes’ excellent tribute to Keith Tippett’s compositions and arrangements, We Are Here, follows on from altoist Dee Byrne’s Outlines.

From farther afield, the are also sets from Fraser Fifield’s Secret Path Trio, down from Scotland, and the intriguing Netherlands-based singer and pianist Nani Vazana, who is weaving new songs from her roots in Morocco using the Ladino language. The whole thing is topped and tailed by pianist Ky Osborne’s quartet who begin the live music on Friday evening, and Huw Warren’s beautiful duo collaboration with singer and violinist Angharad Jenkins, with their unique set of old Welsh carols that mark the turn of the year.

That will be a neat festive closer for a January gig, and an apt way to kick off a new year’s listening to quality live music. The whole thing happens in the comfortable confines of Bath’s Widcombe Social Club, a handy five-minute walk from Bath Spa Station for out of town visitors, and is highly recommended.

The post Bath Jazz Weekend first appeared on UK Jazz News.

There is still plenty of stirring music to celebrate, and the programme looked forward rather than back to the South African jazz of an earlier era, with Ntuli and her co-curator for the evening Siyabonga Mthembu bringing together a fascinating array of players from the current SA scene, and a few UK guests.

She was joined in duo by Thandiswa Mazwai, who has a voice to make the hair stand on end. Their mini-set of three impassioned songs was brief but intensely satisfying, especially when the two sang together, a vocal blend that surely deserves further exploration.

Then a rapid changeover to bring on another contemporary piano star, Bokani Dyer, who opened with his African Piano Suite, energised by the remarkable drumming of Tumi Mogorosi. He was joined by another fine pianist, less well known in the UK, Keenan Meyer, whose style has a similarly fruitful relationship to Abdullah Ibrahim, and then Soweto Kinch, whose saxophone interjections were sometimes lost in the mix. If there was a slightly tentative air about this assembly’s offering, it was dispelled with their final flourish, a rousing treatment of Kinch’s swinger Revival Time from his 2018 Black Peril recording.

Getting acquainted with three superb pianists who all demand further attention would have been an evening well-spent, but there was almost a full concert’s worth of music to come. The post interval set brought the magnificent voice of Mthembu leading The Brother Moves On. Their music is simpler, though not unsubtle, and more dance oriented. There were still prayerful moments, but the band were mainly in a high energy zone. And there was energy to spare, Mogorisi’s return meaning they enjoyed the power of two drummers and Chelsea Carmichael augmenting the saxophones. Communal singing swiftly ensued, followed by energetic dancing in the auditorium, bringing this long festival finale to a rousing conclusion.

The post A Celebration of South African Jazz first appeared on UK Jazz News.

After an agreeable but not especially striking half hour from Mongolian vocalist Enji, the trio settled in for a 100-minute set, spare on the announcements but astoundingly generous with the playing.

Exchanging Hussein’s tablas for a regular drum set meant little scope for melodic contributions from the drum stool, and the early focus was more on Holland and Potter. Harland underscored the marvellous match of time feel between bassist and saxophonist, as well as their quickfire responses when playing together (they really should make a duo album one day).

Potter was magisterial throughout, delivering torrential tenor flights and serpentine soprano sax. His slightly dry, supple sound (with a hint of reverb on this gig) was distinctive, but the influences of former masters surface every now and again. A few Ornette Coleman-isms crept into his soprano work, and a tenor ballad had a discernible touch of John Coltrane. Crosscurrents’ favourite ‘Good Hope’, meanwhile, became Potter’s ‘Don’t Stop the Carnival’, and began with a saxophone cadenza that would have pleased Sonny Rollins.

Holland was a perfect foil, occupying the sweet spot between support and provocation at every turn, and enjoying more solo space than he might at a regular Crosscurrents gig. That was more than welcome: at 78, he has never sounded better and the Barbican set-up offered a bass sound to revel in. Harland was brilliantly collaborative throughout, and conjured up miracles on a new piece from Potter, ‘Rampart Street Assembly’, with a drum intro offering more variations on a shuffle beat than one thought were possible.

It was a standout moment in a set that seemed to consist entirely of highlights, from opener to encore. There is a vast amount of great jazz in the world now, but chances to hear an improvising trio of unquenchably creative equals operating at this level are still relatively rare. A very special night.

The post Crosscurrents Trio first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Politeness meant I did not demur, but I should have. Appreciating music, except for a few infant savants, is learned, and learning more can surely deepen that appreciation. As with any other art, denying that cuts you off from pleasure you might enjoy.

Pianist and academic Bob Gluck wants to helps us learn more about Pat Metheny’s work and methods. When Gluck began playing many of the celebrated guitarist and bandleader’s compositions, he was drawn into investigating how they worked, and then analysed the writing and playing on a large sample of his recordings, as well as scores provided by the man himself. Along with a biographical sketch and some new interview reflections from Metheny and key bandmates, this makes short book a solid addition to the already extensive literature on an artist hugely popular in the jazz world and far beyond.

Gluck lays out a range of aspects of the music, in chapters distinguished by extremely detailed discussion of items from the vast Metheny oeuvre. His key idea, as the subtitle indicates, is music as a kind of story-telling. It’s a familiar notion, and one his subject has frequently alluded to. That can happen in a single solo, or an entire album-length composition, and there are examples of both. Metheny, as Gluck notes, uses story as “a metaphor for the dynamic unfolding of a musical work rather than a plotline”. The author, though, mainly has a different sense in mind, where the music conjures an actual story in the mind of an individual listener, perhaps prompted by some association of the title or other words that accompany a composition.

That approach is elaborated in the last chapter on “listening interpretively”, where he relates what comes to mind while attending to two long pieces, America Undefined and Is This America? (Katrina 2005).

Before then come chapters looking at motivic improvisation, on the sounds Metheny has conjured from his guitar and its various electronically enhanced derivatives, on the internal workings of the long-lived Pat Metheny Group, and on Metheny’s use of wordless vocals. The exposition here often gets pretty technical, and although Gluck begins with the hope the book can be a “listeners’ guide”, the musical analysis is often at a level more helpful for the professional reader. There are many points of interest for the lay listener, but it isn’t always clear how these investigations relate to the overall project of the book. Rather, Gluck seems to try a range of different approaches to getting under the surface of the music, to see what appears, then move on. All are illuminating in their way, though, even if they don’t necessarily fit together. There are plenty of interesting comments from Metheny himself, and colleagues such as Steve Rodby and Antonio Sánchez. And Gluck makes good use of older interviews. He includes this well-known remark from Pat on melody, which I’ve always thought especially revealing: “For me sound and the expression of sound is always about melody. To me melody appears in many different ways. Every conversation, every experience of walking down the street, every experience of hearing an aeroplane take off, trash cans falling down a flight of stairs, I perceive all of it as melody. This has become more and more acute as time has gone by. You can find melody any place that you look for it.”

Gluck quite rightly emphasises Metheny’s strength as a melodist, although the author doesn’t really pick up on this more expansive notion of melody. Rather, he is interested in the additional elements that enhance it. That’s a focus that results in occasional remarks of the sort that almost anyone who tries to write about music can be reduced to such as: “Melody alone, however, cannot sustain an extended work like ‘Imaginary Day’. A blend of rich and varied instrumental colors and attentive management of changing overall densities and dynamic levels are among the musical elements that add nuance to melody, harmony and rhythm, thus holding the interest of listeners across a lengthy work”. Pause on that, and find it fails to add to one’s understanding in two ways. It’s a statement of the obvious. And it applies to every worthwhile composer and arranger you can think of.

When he returns to musical unfolding as a key to narrative in his final chapter, Gluck takes the two pieces under discussion to be representations, in some imaginatively conceived sense, of aspects of American history. That didn’t work particularly for me. Nor, he concedes is there any special reason to think it should. He simply wants to demonstrate, I think, that the music has the capacity to prompt a narrative response if you let it, rather than suggest any such response is the “right” one.

All of which leaves an impression that Gluck has circled round the great problem of musical communication – why do we respond as we do to these abstract, non-representational sounds? – without solving it. That would be too much to expect, of course: it remains the mystery at the heart of music-making.

More personally, the book didn’t quite succeed in its other ambition. Gluck certainly induced me to listen to a slew of recordings I hadn’t attended to properly before. Alas, even with his generous commentaries, the main effect was to reinforce my existing bias. I love Pat the melodist, and Pat the improviser, especially when he is working with his peers in jazz – Gary Burton; Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses; Roy Haynes and Dave Holland; Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart; Ornette Coleman or Charlie Haden. But the sound world of the Pat Metheny Group, with its portentious orchestral synth backdrops and wordless vocals, is not somewhere I care to dwell. My personal reaction is stuck where it sat in the 1980s: the more of his preferred orchestral effects Metheny tries to achieve, the less appealing the music becomes. I’m glad to have been prompted to reconsider this by Gluck’s thoughtful exposition of how this side of his work is achieved. But it turns out I may be closer to agreeing with my visitor than I first thought.

The post ‘Pat Metheny – Stories beyond Words’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

What’s a conference for? Discussion, certainly. Decisions? Not essential. After the Jazz Promotion Network’s two-day bash in Bristol another feature, more nebulous but still positive, comes to mind. Now the meeting is established as a regular thing – it was stop-start with the pandemic but this was the third annual conference in a row – it’s a kind of existence proof.

It’s a reminder that there is, for want of a better word, a jazz industry. The scale is small, and it involves mainly tiny, artisanal outfits that are just getting by, but it covers the four nations of the UK. It isn’t in possession of any unified vision – the diversity of jazz and “jazz adjacent” music, as we now say, not to mention the character of people who make it as artisanal producers, means that ain’t going to happen. But there is a sense of community, even common purpose, which an annual gathering of 170 people or so reinforces.

The commonality, perhaps, is trying to ensure making art and making a living can sometimes go together. That goes for musicians, of course, as well as venues, producers, agents, publicists, and record labels. Making a living may just mean breaking even in a volunteer-run venue, but money always comes into it: which is why calling this an industry isn’t too much of a stretch. As Loz Collier from Cardiff stressed, “you’ve got to treat it like a business, even if it is a side hustle”.

All this means similar questions come up at each conference, often tied to issues common to all the arts, and the answers – whether optimistic or pessimistic – depend who you talk to. So what was special this, time, and seemed specific to jazz?

The most optimistic picture probably emerged from a keynote interview with Fred Bolza, a former VP for strategy at Sony Music who now presides over “artist services company”, New Soil. Running an artist management effort which now extends to a record label, he has a nice line in converting big company experience into small company precepts. “Find the music people want to soundtrack their lives to” sounded like Sony-style wisdom, but isn’t a bad credo for a company dedicated to choosing only music the people working on it really love. Succeed in that, even in a world in digital turmoil, and “the money will flow eventually”, Bolza declares.

How? Well, big companies can be dumb – they certainly do plenty of dumb things. But one thing the majors can offer at least some people is time to think, even if they don’t use it well. Running an independent outfit is frantic but taking a breath really helps: “Any time, however small, that can be spent reflecting on the actual person and their music pays massive dividends”.

New Soil have examples – Theon Cross, Corto Alto – that show how this works, and plenty more advice about how to navigate the labyrinth of modern distribution. Bolza underlined that streaming is both essential, and a bugbear. “Think of Spotify as a google for songs, not an artist development programme.” Streaming data is a blessing and a curse. Best not to ignore it, which would be like driving a car without a dashboard. But remember always that the platform’s business model drives the algorithm, which is built to deter clicking away. And developing appreciation of this music takes time – “our job is to create the things people want to listen to in 20 years time” – which the digital world does not like at all.

Points well taken, although other more diffuse comments, like the suggestion that jazz always needs a a connection to the past but at the same time the optimists among us are “people inventing the future they want to be living in” might be harder to turn into concrete action. And, let’s be realistic, the number of people who can sign with an organisation providing the quality of support for developing sustainable careers that New Soil, which is backed by the Marathon Music Group, offers its artists is going to be a tiny percentage of aspiring jazz practitioners.

For the rest, Bolza’s optimistic contribution was perhaps to adjust the dominant metaphor of the meeting. If you were thinking maybe it’s not really an industry, the other main idea on offer seemed to be the jazz ecosystem. That often crops up in arts talk nowadays, though is rarely, if ever expanded to check any of the features of real ecosystems. It generally seems to mean something locally based, and fuzzily interactive, in a good way (though this author, who, one panellist mentioned in passing, has some more developed ideas).

Bolza offered another, simpler, locality: a village, as in “it takes a village”. That seemed to resonate with quite a few people. It might mean a lot of people working collaboratively (instead of competing or sitting inside a clique) on artist development. It might just mean a city, or part of a city with a working jazz scene, or scenes. That gets complex very quickly. Tony Benjamin, who offers a monthly preview of all jazz things in Bristol, a medium-sized city, tells me he now queries 30 or more venues every time.

A scene can extend beyond a city, perhaps helped by co-ordination of touring in a region, but how to develop one? The conference covered the range of opinion from exhortations to nurture your scene to Bolza’s oblique dismissal of the word: “scene is a word that gets used by people who are already in it, or journalists who don’t know what the fuck it is”.

The truth is probably that you know one when you’ve got one, but the origins of every scene will be different. That means the kind of free-wheeling interaction and cross-fertilization the word implies is hard to contrive but will sometimes emerge unbidden. There’s no real recipe for ensuring that happens locally nor, perhaps, nationally. But the JPN is a determined move in the right direction, and the meeting offered plenty of other information about things that can underpin a healthy network of jazz venues, from advice about DIY touring, through social media strategies, to which funding schemes to target (hint: Arts Council England’s Grassroots Music Fund has not had nearly enough jazz applications, according to Council’s own executives).

And, while scenes don’t grow to order, having everyone in the same room is a start. Pretty well everyone I spoke to valued the meeting at the elementary level of meeting all the other people involved in the effort to turn surviving in jazz promotion into thriving. Perhaps Ian Storror, who had put together an exhibition at the Bristol Beacon marking a startling 40 years as an independent jazz promoter in the city, put it best. The JPN meeting, he reckoned, was a bit like a COVID vaccine booster. Every year, when resistance to the pressures of mounting regular gigs might be wearing a bit thin, spending a couple of days picking the brains of others in the same game provides a necessary lift. Anyone who needs that can head to Cardiff for another dose in 2025.

And the showcase…

After listening in to the jazz promoters’ gathering for two days, I should mention the music the delegates also enjoyed, from all four parts of the UK. So, let’s see if I’ve got the hang of this: how hard can it be? I’ll assume the budget is there, and I have power over programming. Who of the players we heard would I book. And for what kind of audience?

2. SHOWCASES

First up were the Secret Path Trio down from Scotland, playing in the freezing wastes of the Beacon’s foyer (still suffering from a design fail on the street doors). Fraser Fifield led on the very distinctive low whistle (and one tune on the pipes), with master drummer Tom Bancroft and Paul Harrison on keys. Hard not to sense a folkish, pastoral tinge in the pieces Fifield writes for the trio, but there’s plenty of rhythmic energy too. A lovely set with an unusual sonic flavour. Would be great in a medium-sized club, somewhere you can get close up to appreciate the detail, perhaps even a folk club with an adventurous audience.

Keynote interviewee Yazz Ahmed’s set wasn’t strictly showcase, but kicked off the Monday evening sequence in the 300-seat Lantern Hall. That proved too small for the volume her set-up delivered, particularly the skull-resonating synth bass lines she has developed to accompany a set of her pleasing trumpet compositions. I’d only sign up for more of this in a stadium, or some other venue where you can get a long way away.

Pleasant relief came in the form of Bristol-residents Sara Colman and Rebecca Nash with their Ribbons project, with Henrik Jensen on bass and, for the first time, Jonathan Silk on drums. I happened to hear the trio, sans Silk, at a different venue the week before, when the overall (unamplified) sound was better, but the drums did wonders in knitting together their performance of Colman’s reflective songs. Jensen’s bass sound was spoilt by the Lantern rig but he still played beautifully, and Nash’s piano is a fine complement to Colman’s vocal. They definitely deserve another lunchtime concert in the world-beating acoustic of St George’s Bristol, this time with their very fine drummer.

Then something completely different in the form of Vipertime, a two-drumset, sax and electric bass quartet from Leeds. Described in the programme as “aggro-jazz”, they were again hard on the ears volume-wise, and the declamatory horn playing would probably get people moving at house parties, which are a thing in Leeds. If you believe two drumsets are never not a good idea, and I do, then the basic sound has promise, but the sax lines get repetitive pretty quickly and I think I’d show my face at the party but then slip out the back for a quiet drink after a couple of numbers.

Vocal-led Azamiah, from Glasgow rounded off the evening with an altogether dreamier set, India Blue’s voice benefits from some processing, and settings that feature further electronics from the keys. A lightly grooving affair that would suit an open-air festival, perhaps first thing or late at night.

Tuesday’s showcase started Welsh where Monday had been Scottish, with harp virtuoso Amanda Whiting’s quartet gracing the foyer stage straight after lunch. The harp and sax combination of the front line proved an excellent postprandial mix and the quartet trade in a pleasing combination of original tunes and straight ahead jazz, with the harp’s lilt distinctive enough to keep the attention. A band who deserve a medium-sized concert hall with (yes, they were amplified) skilled ears at the sound desk.

The same space came alive at conference end on Tuesday evening with a crackling half hour from tap dancer Petra Haller and John Pope’s upright bass. Haller is compelling, and you feel she might put her tap square down on any street corner and draw a crowd. She and Pope only met the previous day but their constantly invntive joint improvisation could have been the work of old partners – conveying that delightful sense of shared creative discovery you can get on a jazz stage at its best. They should be openers for any other quality jazz act, but only ones confident they could match the impact of this engaging duo.

After dinner proceedings in the Lantern began with Tullis Rennie’s Safe Operating Space, in which the leader’s electronics seed elaborations that are picked up by two saxophones (Dee Byrne and Cath Roberts) and drums. It’s a sometimes austere but heartfelt set of improvisations that would hold the attention of a club crowd in an open-minded venue where people might be used to something more raucous but are prepared to give anything a try. We have such venues, yes?

The showcase proper finished with two rather different bands from across the Irish Sea. The Córas Trio have a nice line in deconstructing Irish traditional tunes, the melodies sometimes stated clearly, sometimes merely hinted at by Kevin McCullagh’s fiddle, the rhythms also broken up and a dose of electronics taking the sound further away from what you might hear from the corner table in a pub. A persuasive attempt to link jazz practice with local musical strains that would travel well, and could catch urban ears or blow away some cobwebs nicely in a village hall.

Then the Adjunct Ensemble, in a quintet edition, gave a full-throated long sample of their freewheeling, incantatory stew of producer Jamie Thompson’s prepared and found sounds, sax, drums, bass and vocal declamation of texts from Felispeaks. Their work explores aspects of the old avant garde, with musical gestures one might have heard in the 1960s, but there are twenty-first century twists and a freshly minted urgency. It called to mind at moments both Escalator Over the Hill-era Carla Bley and Matana Roberts’ sound collages, and would be a good fit for an arts centre that has cultivated an audience for complex music that is emotionally and aurally quite demanding, if such places still flourish.

Well, here begins and ends my imaginary career as a jazz promoter, I’m glad to say, after this extended lesson about the astonishing range of varieties of jazz that now exist. I would, though really love to be able to book the closing trio, Andy Sheppard’s Pushy Doctors, somewhere because this once regular Bristol trio are so unfailingly entertaining. A treat for everyone who was still around (an impressively high proportion of attendees, but then listening to this stuff is their job). Alas, although the trio were long an adornment to pubs and small clubs in Bristol and round about, it was Sheppard’s first show with organist Dan Moore and old comrade Tony Orrell on drums for six years, and Andy’s move to Portugal means we may have to wait a similar stretch to hear them again. Never mind. Bands come and go but the scene, we hope, goes on.

The post Jazz Promotion Network 2024 conference and showcase. first appeared on UK Jazz News.

So there’s a definite sense of anticipation on learning he has found a new singer worthy of his company. I caught a low key set from Warren and Irish singer Sue Rynhart one Pizza Express lunchtime at the London Jazz festival in 2019, and it did not disappoint. Neither, after the usual pandemic hiatus, does this first fully realised recording.

The two resolved to work together after meeting at the Galway Jazz Festival. Rynhart has voice of unusual purity, and has worked in early music, classical and folk as well as improvisation. In the lead up to this session the pair worked up material that locates it mainly in the folkish territory where songs concern love and death, but more often the latter – death witnessed, already done with, or perhaps just dreamt of, as in the duo opener Lowlands.

Elm, a meditation on a tree and a river, is a new Rynhart song, the addition of Dan Bodwell’s bass bringing a flavour of the great Pentangle to the intro. Other new songs draw on literary sources including Dickens, Sheridan le Fanu, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edgar Allen Poe, and Rynhart crafts elegant lyrics. Educate’s words are recited against solo guitar their first time round and survive that treatment, a feat few contemporary songwriters could bring off.

The remaining songs are of similar quality, from Catacombs’ rumination on time and loss to the enigmatic assertions of River – which prompt a fine solo from Warren – the disconcertingly minatory Cat and the spooky tale of The Signalman.

The closer, Long Years Ago seals the elegiac mood with another folk ballad of drowning and lost love. Yes, it’s a resolutely downbeat offering, but for all that a most uplifting one, the vocal consistently clear and compelling, the accompaniment a perfect complement to each song. This is a brilliant collaboration whose slightly delayed fruition is a real pleasure to hear.

The post Sue Rynhart, Huw Warren, Dan Bodwell – ‘Say Pluto’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.