Tone Poems

Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra

(Jazz Academy Records JAZA 19)

Michael Garrick MBE, one of a handful of jazz musicians to be distinguished with such an honour, has never been one to rest on his laurels. Tone Poems (JAZA 19), his latest big band offering, is a good case in point. Garrick uses his magnificent orchestral brush-strokes to add fresh colour and emotional depth to ten titles drawn from his great repertoire of original compositions. 

The joyful effervescence of ?Midsummer Departures’, vocal by Nette Robinson, contrasts brilliantly with Garrick at his reflective best in ?Songs of the Ainur’ and ?Jeduthun’, while Mick Foster’s tenor draws every ounce of heart-wrenching beauty from ?Rustat’s Gravesong’ aided by Alan Jackson’s drums and the dirge-like beat of Matthias Garrick’s tympani. 

Elsewhere, Gabriel Garrick’s playing on trumpet and flugel-horn perfectly captures the fragile beauty of ?October Woman’ and the inexorable passage of doomed love in   ?Black Marigolds’. ?Shambolism’ (Garrick’s take on the Millennium Dome debacle of 2000) is exactly that, an excursion into near-free form; Martin Gladdish, Nick Mills and Steve Fishwisk add to the hokum before being brought to order by Martin Shaw.

?Limbo Child’, featuring Sam Walker on tenor and a solo outing for Alan Jackson, also serves as a tribute to Garrick’s long-term collaborator, the poet John Smith, who died last year, and whose ?Colours for Jan Le Witt’ inspired the composition. ?Bladon’ resonates with the force of Churchill’s personality which left such an impression on Garrick as he grew up in wartime Britain, while ?Floating on Summer’, with the saxes of Matt Wates and Dave Shulman, conjures an image of the childhood days that we like to believe were filled with endless sunshine.

Underpinned by the rich tones of Matt Ridley’s bass and with timely ?other worldly’ interpolations from Dominic Ashworth’s guitar, “Tone Poems” is an excellent album and thoroughly recommended.

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