Photograph of Daniel Herskedal sourced from the EFG London Jazz Festival website http://www.efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk

EFG London Jazz Festival, first Saturday, 14/11/2015.

My first full day at the 2015 EFG London Jazz Festival. As ever acknowledgements first, beginning with my hosts Paul and Richard who once again agreed to accommodate my wife and I for the entire festival, incredibly my sixth LJF. Thanks also to Sally Reeves of Serious for dealing with my ticket requests with her customary courtesy and efficiency.

DANS LES ARBRES, THE FORGE, CAMDEN TOWN

On then to the music and this early afternoon performance at The Forge by the international improvising group Dans Les Arbres. The quartet consists of three Norwegian musicians, pianist Christian Wallumrod, guitarist Ivor Grydeland and percussionist Ingar Zach, plus the French clarinettist Xavier Charles.

The group was first constituted in 2004 and has recorded two albums for ECM (“Dans Les Arbres”, 2006 and “Canopee”, 2012), both of which managed to slip under my radar both as a fan and also in my capacity as a reviewer. Instead I tend to associate these musicians (particularly Grydeland) with recordings made on the enterprising Norwegian label Hubro and it was this connection that attracted me to this particular gig.

The music of Dans Les Arbres is entirely improvised and although the music on their two albums consists of relatively short pieces (some of these perhaps edited fragments from a larger whole) their performance at the Forge comprised of a single full length Necks style improvisation lasting a around fifty minutes or so.

Dans Les Arbres approach to improvisation is quiet, unhurried and contemplative, similar in spirit to that of ECM label mates Food or perhaps the British improvising quartet Fourth Page. It’s certainly a long may removed from the sonic bluster of the Peter Brotzmann / Mats Gustafsson school of improv.

The single piece evolved gradually and organically through a series of small gestures. Wallumrod played acoustic piano throughout but frequently deployed prepared piano techniques to broaden his sound. Grydeland played much of the set with his electric guitar on his knee, lap steel style, and made use of a variety of extended techniques including use of a bow and the placement of found objects, notably a shoe brush, on the strings. He sometimes adds banjo and sruti box to his arsenal but both of these were notable by their absence today. Zach played an enormous bass drum with remarkable sensitivity, often using soft headed mallets, and also deployed a number of small percussive devices alongside a variety of cymbals, sometimes utilising bowing techniques on the latter. But for me it was Charles who was the most distinctive instrumentalist in the group as he conjured a remarkable variety of sounds from his clarinet ranging from almost subliminal breathy whisperings to an angry buzzing and incorporating a range of slap tonguing and overblowing techniques.

Although the music was largely ruminative it possessed a quiet intensity of its own that was strangely compelling. There were moments of genuine beauty but the performance was far from bloodless with Zach occasionally detonating a series of unsettling drum explosions and deploying chains on the skin of his bass drum. Charles, too, injected elements of dissonance into the collective discourse.

Sadly the gig was rather poorly attended, particularly in view of the impressive reputations of the musicians involved but the small audience of improv diehards gave the group a a genuinely warm reception for their efforts, calling them back for an encore after they had left the stage. Sadly this was not to be with Grydeland informing us that the group had to pack up immediately in order to fly to Switzerland to give another performance, presumably that same evening. This was a little disappointing as it is not uncommon for improvising groups such as Dans Les Arbres to play one lengthy improvisation plus a shorter one, often around fifteen minutes or so, as an encore. I’m sure I wasn’t the only concert goer who felt a little short changed and I couldn’t help feeling, given the group’s other commitments, that the performance should have been scheduled a little earlier, say at 1.30 rather than 2.00 pm.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the music of Dans Les Arbres and hope to check out the music on their two ECM albums at some point in the future.

JAZZ LINE UP, CLORE BALLROOM,SOUTHBANK CENTRE.

A particularly foul cold and wet day in London may have deterred potential listeners from visiting The Forge. However the weather didn’t seem to affect the audience at the Southbank Centre where a huge crowd were gathered in the Clore Ballroom to witness a series of performers taking part in the recording of BBC Radio 3’s “Jazz Line Up” programme. Of course admission was free, proof yet again that the British public are more than happy to listen to jazz as long as they don’t have to pay for it!

During the course of the afternoon presenters Claire Martin and Julian Joseph introduced a number of acts including a duo set by trumpeter Laura Jurd and pianist Elliott Galvin plus a surprise appearance by Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bartsch and his new Mobile Acoustic Trio. I missed both of these and was particularly disappointed not to catch a glimpse of Bartsch who was due to play a concert (this time complete with a string section) at Kings Place later in the evening.

However I did manage to catch the last knockings of a set by the excellent British pianist (and occasional vocalist) Gareth Williams who was leading his “European Trio” featuring the Swedish musicians Martin Sjostedt (bass) and Daniel Frederiksson (drums). The tune I heard was the last of the set, a Wayne Shorter composition called ( I think) “Black Mamba”. I’ve always enjoyed Williams playing and covered his performance at Swansea Jazz Festival earlier in the year. This brief glimpse of his European Trio suggested that this a collaboration with considerable potential.

Next to take to the stage was the guitarist (and again sometime vocalist) Lionel Loueke who was to perform a short solo set. Born in Benin Loueke studied in Ivory Coast before moving to the USA where he was worked with such jazz greats as pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Unfortunately most of his set was drowned out here by the hubbub of the Southbank crowd. Having arrived late I was standing at the back of the Clore Ballroom and couldn’t hear much of what Loueke was playing.
His set featured both his guitar playing and his singing, including examples of vocal percussion, and he also made use of a variety of electronic effects including live looping. Stylistically he covered aspects of jazz, blues and West African music but it was difficult to form a precise opinion of the music due to the extraneous noise all around me. Fans who had arrived earlier and got good seats probably enjoyed it a lot more than I was able to, although I suspect that the subsequent radio broadcast, scheduled for 5.00 pm on Saturday November 28 will probably sound wonderful.

ALICE ZAWADZKI and PERCY PURSGLOVE - WAY IN TO THE WAY OUT, LEVEL 5 FUNCTION ROOM, SOUTHBANK CENTRE

I had intended to watch the set by the Italian pianist Giovanni Gaudi and his trio but feared having to endure the same frustrations that I experienced during the Lionel Loueke set. Instead I headed upstairs to the relative tranquillity of the Level Five Function Room where violinist/vocalist Alice Zawadzki and trumpeter/bassist Percy Pursglove were due to appear as part of the Festival’s acclaimed talk series “Way In To The Way Out”. Previous events in this series have featured Andy Champion/Chris Sharkey and Zoe Rahman/Arun Ghosh.

The series allows its two participants to talk about the influences that brought them to jazz, illustrating their points with recorded examples along the way. Following the Rahman/Ghosh collaboration in 2014 which include a good deal of actual playing an element of live performance is now encouraged and today’s event concluded with a performance of Zawadzki’s festival commission.

Both Zawadzki and Pursglove have appeared regularly on the Jazzmann web pages in a variety of different contexts and it was interesting to see the two musicians talk about their music and their influences.

Birmingham based Pursglove came directly jazz through the medium of youth big bands. He was also exposed to the British tradition of singing in choirs and both of these strands were brought together in his nine part suite “Far Reaching Dreams Of Mortal Souls” commissioned by the Birmingham based Jazzlines organisation and the Jerwood Foundation and premièred at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham in October 2014 by an ensemble consisting of nine instrumentalists and an eight piece choir, a performance reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Zawadzki’s route proved to be more circuitous and included formal training in classical music and composition. The folk music of her Polish antecedents was also a significant influence and she only came to jazz during her mid teens. She described herself as being part of the Spotify generation with all kinds of music now being freely available and up for grabs, hence the stylistic variety on her acclaimed début album “China Lane”.

As a vocalist Zawadzki was profoundly influenced by her mentor the New Orleans born singer Lillian Boutte who first introduced the young Alice to jazz and subsequently took the teenage Zawadzki on the road as a backing vocalist. For Zawadzki Boutte’s informal approach to teaching represented a welcome and refreshing change to the discipline and rigour of the classical world although she acknowledged that both methods had provided her with long term benefits.

Zawadzki studied classical music in Manchester but at the same time was performing with function bands and immersing herself in the city’s jazz and improv scene while also listening to and learning from vocalists as diverse as Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Lauren Hill. She eventually moved to London to complete her MA and has thereafter divided her time between the London and Manchester music scenes with musicians from both cities appearing on “China Lane”. 

Musical illustrations from Pursglove’s suite and Zawadzki’s album (the song “You As A Man”) illustrated the points the musicians had made and the cross genre nature of both projects spawned a lively debate about the categorisation of music with audience participation very much encouraged.

The gregarious Zawadzki had done most of the talking so far but Pursglove now took the opportunity of expressing his admiration for the composer and arranger Vince Mendoza who he felt had done much to create a credible and convincing jazz/classical hybrid and whose bands had featured acclaimed jazz musicians such as former Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine and those two sadly late jazz luminaries John Taylor (piano) and Michael Brecker (tenor sax).

In recent years Pursglove has also become increasingly involved in the world of free improvisation and spoke glowingly of the influence upon him of the great free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker.

Simultaneously he is completing a PHD in composition and the outside track that he chose to share with us was “Partita For Eight Voices” by the contemporary classical composer Caroline Shaw, a highly rhythmic and accessible piece featuring interlocking human vocal lines and presumably influenced in its turn by the music of Steve Reich.

Meanwhile Zawadzki felt that she couldn’t let us go without sharing something by Lillian Boutte with us, the track selected being “Am I Blue”. Boutte, a one time favourite at Brecon Jazz Festival was described by Zawadzki as a force of nature.

To conclude a stimulating and thought provoking event Zawadzki assembled a group of musicians to perform her Festival Commission, a setting of the WB Yeats poem “Within You There Is A World Of Spring”. Pursglove played bass with Zawadzki on violin and vocals and the group was completed by pianist Phil Peskett, cellist Lucy Railton and Lewis Wright, best known as a vibraphonist, at a scaled down drum kit. The performance was beautiful and offered further evidence that Yeats is very much the ‘go to’ poet for contemporary jazz musicians with vocalist Christine Tobin and the band Blue-Eyed Hawk among those who have recently drawn inspiration from his works.

ALAN BENZIE TRIO / DANIEL HERSKEDAL ENSEMBLE, HALL TWO, KINGS PLACE

This sold event represented the eagerly awaited UK première of music from the acclaimed album “Slow Eastbound Train” by the Norwegian tuba player and composer Daniel Herskedal.

Herskedal first came to the attention of UK jazz audiences with the 2012 release on Edition Records “Neck of the Woods”, a duo album recorded with saxophonist Marius Neset. That album is reviewed elsewhere on this site and shortly after its release I saw the pair give a spellbinding, quietly brilliant duo performance of the music from the album at Dempsey’s in Cardiff.

In 2014 Herskedal returned with “Slow Eastbound Train”, an album of luminous beauty with a strong cinematic quality performed by an ensemble featuring Herskedal on tuba and the less familiar bass trumpet plus a core personnel of pianist Eyolf Dale and percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken. The album also featured members of the Trondheim String Ensemble, Norway’s leading chamber orchestra, and one of their number was present tonight in the shape of cellist Kaja Fjellberg Pettersen who was joined by three talented young students from London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire to form a string quartet (Christin Chian – viola, Olivia Holland and Justin Gasselling – violins).

However before we got to Herskedal’s music we were to enjoy an excellent support set from the young Scottish pianist and composer Alan Benzie and his trio. The Berklee trained Benzie is an emerging talent and I very much enjoyed his début album “Traveller’s Tales” which was released earlier in 2015 and received a four star recommendation from this site. Thus I was very much looking forward to seeing him too.

“Traveller’s Tales” features a trio including bassist and composer Andrew Robb and the Hungarian born drummer Marton Juhasz. Unfortunately Juhasz, now based in Paris, was unable to travel due to the terrorist atrocities that had taken place in the French capital the night before. Juhasz was unharmed but the travel restrictions meant that he had to be replaced by Jon Scott, a supremely versatile musician and in many respects the absolute dream dep. Scott, the only musician to be reading music, had been drafted in at short notice and had not even been able to rehearse with his new colleagues, nevertheless he acquitted himself superbly.

Much of the material was sourced from “Traveller’s Tales” beginning with “Glass”, a highly melodic piece with a pronounced narrative quality. Benzie’s solo piano intro and subsequent development of the melody led naturally to a melodic and highly dexterous solo from Robb at the bass. Benzie’s own solo began prettily before probing more deeply behind the melody and he was also involved in an absorbing dialogue with Scott’s drums and cymbals.

Robb is also a composer and his new composition “Beslan” featured typically mellifluous solos from himself and Benzie plus some exquisitely detailed brush work from Scott.

The playful “Frog Town On The Hill” was introduced by the patter of Scott’s hand drums and featured some delightfully impish exchanges between Benzie and Robb, very much in the mischievous spirit of the tune title. Scott switched to sticks as the piece gained momentum with solos coming from Robb at the bass followed by Benzie in particularly expansive and dazzling form at the piano.

Many of the compositions on “Traveller’s Tales” are inspired by actual incidents or locations - although there is also the elements of the ‘traveller’ in Benzie’s head). “Midnight Café” seemed to draw inspiration from a real life experience with its gauzy, noirish after hours feel and lyrical melodic statements from piano and bass accompanied by softly brushed drums.

An all too short set concluded in more robust fashion with a second composition from Robb, a new piece titled “Dream Snatcher”. Benzie took the first solo and subsequently entered into a lively dialogue with Scott, sparks were already beginning to fly between the inventive young pianist and his temporary drummer. The composer also soloed on bass before a closing feature from the impressive Scott.

The Benzie trio had triumphed in the face of adversity and during the interval album sales were correspondingly healthy with Benzie signing CDS and chatting to fans. It had been an excellent start on what was to develop into a marvellous evening of music and a real festival highlight.

On now to the Herskedal ensemble whose music embodied many of the same qualities as Benzie’s, at least in terms of melodic content and narrative arc. Herskedal’s music is also highly descriptive and capable of generating a real sense of place and possesses a genuinely cinematic quality. The seven piece ensemble was complemented by the presence of August Wanngren at the mixing desk, the Danish engineer responsible for the excellent sound quality to be heard on so many Edition Records releases.

The “Slow Eastbound Train” album possesses an almost suite like quality and during this performance several pieces were segued together such as the opening combination of “Slow Eastbound Boat” and “Rainfall”. In the intimate atmosphere of the smaller of Kings Place’s two performance spaces (Nik Bartsch was playing in the other) with a sold out crowd and with Wanngren at the desk the sound was immaculate from the start with Herskedal beginning on bass trumpet and making use of live looping techniques to sculpt and layer his sound.
Pizzicato strings ushered in the “Rainfall” section of the segue with Herskedal moving to tuba and linking up with Norbakken to provide the vamp that backed the first of several excellent piano solos from the impressive Dale.

The three Trinity students impressed throughout as they combined well with Pettersen and offered great support to the virtuosic Herskedal. The Norwegian is unique with regard to the warmth and emotional depth that he can summon from what some still regard as a comedy instrument. The evocative “Monsoon Coming” featured Herskedal on both tuba and bass trumpet, soloing on each during the course of the piece as Dale directed the strings. The pianist, a perfect foil to the leader throughout, also shone with a memorable solo of his own. 

In the light of recent events it seems almost impossible to credit that Herskedal went travelling in Syria as recently as 2008 where he learned the tune “Bayot” from an oud player who is now a political refugee living in Denmark. The tune doesn’t appear on the album but wouldn’t sound out of place there. It began with Herskedal solo on bass trumpet with Wanngren manipulating the sound with dashes of echo as Norbakken commenced a slow building percussive rumble, subsequently linking up with Dale on piano as the strings sat out. In the trio format both Herskedal and Dale enjoyed expansive solos prior to an exuberant dialogue between Dale and Norbakken that clearly delighted the crowd.

Herskedal moved back to tuba for the tight, riffy “Crosswind Landing” with Pettersen’s cello leading the rapidly bowed strings that formed the intensely rhythmic counterpoint to Herskedal’s solo .

By way of contrast “Slow Eastbound Train” itself initially evoked quiet, wide open spaces with its solo piano introduction before eventually taking on a greater intensity thanks to the dense, interlocking patterns forged by a combination of strings, piano and percussion. Sonorous cello then combined with Herskedal’s bass trumpet as Norbakken’s shakers rattled in the background.

“Mistral Noir”, the album opener, was performed as a solo piece by Herskedal who developed three distinct melodic lines on the tuba and looped them to provide the backdrop for his subsequent bass trumpet solo. The net result was stunningly beautiful.

A second non album track, “Smoking Shisha in Ramala” was another piece inspired by Herskedal’s travels, this time to Palestine. The tune was a showcase for percussionist Norbakken who deployed his full range of frame drums,  cymbals, shakers and what looked like car wheels in addition to a smattering of vocal percussion. His complex rhythms were complemented by a distinctive Middle Eastern drone generated by the string section. Eventually Herskedal joined the proceedings with a solo on bass trumpet before Dale rounded things off with a playfully exuberant piano solo.

The closing piece, “Snowfall”, began with a spectacular solo tuba feature from Herskedal that saw him producing an astonishing array of sounds that included vocalised overblowing that was sometimes reminiscent of throat singing. It certainly wasn’t the first time that Herskedal had seemed to sing through his horn. If the UK’s Oren Marshall is the Jimi Hendrix of the tuba then Herskedal is the Arve Henriksen. Eventually some almost impossibly low end sounds erupted into a propulsive tuba vamp that together with Norbakken’s percussion fuelled a final solo from the excellent Dale.

The audience reaction to all this was ecstatic and the ensemble returned to play an encore of the evocative “Sea Breeze Front”, the final track on the album. The strings created a diaphanous backdrop as Herskedal again demonstrated that the once humble tuba can indeed be an instrument of genuine beauty.

It’s easy to admire Herskedal’s playing on record, particularly on the beautiful “Slow Eastbound Train” which also reveals him to be a composer of genuine stature. But it’s something else to see him perform live, the guy genuinely is a phenomenon and it’s only by seeing him in the flesh that you can grasp the true enormity of his talent.

That said the whole ensemble, including the Trinity students plus Wanngren was quite magnificent. I’d love to hear both Dale and Norbakken again in other contexts, both were highly impressive. But tonight was Herskedal’s night, a genuine triumph and a definite festival highlight.

TERRELL STAFFORD / BRUCE BARTH QUARTET

Following the conclusion of the Benzie / Herskedal concert at 10.00 pm I made my way down to Soho and the Pizza Express Jazz Club for the late night set by a quartet co-led by the American musicians Terrell Stafford (trumpet) and Bruce Barth (piano). This was the last show in a two night residency at the club which saw the two Americans accompanied by the exemplary British/Irish rhythm section of bassist Mark Hodgson and drummer Stephen Keogh.

I arrived at the end of what I judged to be the opening number, Barth’s “Almost Blues” (see what he just did there).

This was a far more mainstream set than we had seen at Kings Place but it was still eminently enjoyable with a number of high quality Barth originals punctuated by the occasional standard. Barth’s “Brasilia” included features for Stafford on trumpet plus the house rhythm section of Hodgson and Keogh.

Stafford’s name was the one highlighted for this gig and it seemed a little strange to find Barth doing all of the talking, on the other hand most of the tunes were his, so why not? An exception was Stafford’s arrangement of the traditional spiritual “If I Perish” which featured his best playing of the night with a bravura trumpet solo that hit some dazzling high register peaks. Barth’s own solo brought a distinctive Latin tinge to the proceedings and Keogh excelled with a series of fiery drum fills.

Stafford then showed his gentler side on an arrangement of the classic ballad “Body And Soul” which began with an elegant solo piano introduction from Barth and included a lyrical solo from Hodgson at the bass subtly supported by Keogh’s deft brush work.

Clifford Brown was a significant influence on Stafford and Barth’s contrafact of Brown’s enduring composition “Joy Spring”, here titled “Joy Fall” paid homage with only its second public airing. Solos here came from Stafford, who captured something of the “joy” in the title with his trumpeting, followed by Barth and Hodgson and finally by Keogh with a particularly well constructed drum feature.

A segue of “Mama Who’s Been Here?” and Barth’s “Wise Charlie’s Blues” completed the set, the first segment an absorbing passage of solo piano from Barth before the piece mutated into a slow blues with Stafford’s barnstorming solo building from bluesy beginnings to embrace dramatic vocalisations - the audience loved it. The vocal quality of Stafford’s playing was reflected in the growl of Hodgson’s bass during his solo before Barth things rounded things off with a piano solo that got right to the heart of the blues.

During the course of the evening Barth had informed us that Stafford was originally from Miami, Florida but was now resident in Philadelphia where he had a teaching post at Temple University. Among Stafford’s main influences was the Philadelphia born trumpeter Lee Morgan so it was particularly appropriate that the encore was to be a version of the classic Morgan composition “Speedball”, a piece that appears on Stafford’s most recent album, a Morgan tribute entitled “Brotherlee Love” (Morgan was fond of similar puns himself). Inevitably the stand-out solo on the encore came from Stafford himself on trumpet. Again the audience absolutely loved it, bringing a successful residency (the early evening show had sold out) to a triumphant close.

For me it had been a varied day of music embracing several different styles of jazz and beyond, with Daniel Herskedal’s performance the undoubted highlight.     

 

 
 

 

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