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

EFG London Jazz Festival 2015, Tuesday, 17/11/2015.

BEN COX BAND, PIZZA EXPRESS JAZZ CLUB

Ben Cox is a young jazz vocalist and songwriter and this free lunchtime event at Pizza Express found him singing a selection of jazz standards, imaginatively chosen rock and pop and rock covers and a clutch of original tunes, many of them sourced from his début album “This Waiting Game”, credited to the Ben Cox Band.

Endorsed by vocal talents such as Ian Shaw, Lianne Carroll and Barb Jungr Cox occupies a position that embraces aspects of jazz, pop, rock and soul. Many of the original songs in his band’s repertoire are written in conjunction with the group’s pianist and keyboard player Jamie Safiruddin, a talented songwriter and arranger who is in great demand on both the jazz and pop scenes. Safiruddin currently has a high profile “money gig” playing keyboards in Will Young’s touring band and this lunchtime event found him moonlighting from Young’s current tour.

Cox studied at the Guildhall School of Music and his band includes another former Guildhall student in the shape of Flo Moore who today contributed acoustic and electric bass plus backing vocals. Her partner in the rhythm section was drummer James Pritchard, who was depping for the the band’s regular incumbent Will Glaser. We were also due to hear trumpeter Adam Chatterton but in his absence the group performed as a quartet, opening with the standard “When In Rome”.

The first original song was “This Waiting Game”, the album title track written by Cox and arranged by Safiruddin. The album had been launched at the Pizza Express earlier in the year and today’s performance represented a welcome return by the Ben Cox Band. The highly talented Safiruddin doubled on piano and synthesiser and delivered the first of several excellent solos on the acoustic instrument.

Written by Safiruddin the album track “When Ends Appear” explored the interface between jazz, pop and soul with the composer augmenting Cox’s breezy vocal with a fine solo on electric piano. Safiruddin is a significant talent, it wouldn’t be inappropriate for the band to be billed as a co-led project. 

The Safiruddin original “Slumber” was performed as a voice/acoustic piano duet by Cox and the composer. Moore and Pritchard returned for “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square” which featured an exquisite acoustic piano solo from arranger Safiruddin. The album version includes a warm guest vocal performance from Claire Martin, yet another of Cox’s high profile admirers.

The new Safiruddin song “If Only” flirted with pop power balladry before the first set closed with a high energy funk/soul workout with Safiruddin doubling brilliantly on piano and synth.

The second set included a greater number of cover versions beginning with a segue of the standard “In The Wee Small Hours”, a tune indelibly associated with Frank Sinatra, and Joni Mitchell’s beautiful song “River”. 

Equally beautiful was “George”, a song sourced from the album co-written by Safiruddin and Ian Shaw.

Cox summoned guest vocalist Emma Smith to the stage to duet on a good natured, if slightly, ragged, version of the standard “My Foolish Heart”. One got the impression that this was entirely unscripted and that Cox had just spotted Smith in the audience and invited her up to sing.

Two more original songs followed “Kathleen”, and the charming “Round and Round”, the latter effectively a children’s song written by Cox for his young niece.

Next up were a couple of highly effective pop covers, from the 1980s came Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” and from a decade earlier Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”. Anybody who includes Donald Fagen and Walter Becker among their favourite songwriters is alright with me.

The afternoon concluded with the gospel tinged strains of “Time Slips Away”, a highly appropriate choice.

Regular readers of The Jazzmann will know that I generally prefer instrumental jazz to the vocal variety but after a few initial misapprehensions I found myself rather enjoying this. Ex NYJO vocalist Cox is an engaging singer and performer and in Safiruddin he has a supremely talented ally. The standards and covers were well chosen and the original songs of both Cox and Safiruddin were skilfully written and arranged and featured perceptive and intelligent lyrics. Moore and Pritchard offered low key but effective support with Moore’s vocal harmonies helping to add depth to the arrangements. I was a little disappointed not to hear Chatterton’s trumpet but the cameo appearance by Smith, another highly promising young vocal talent, was a considerable bonus.

The album, which also features a guest vocal performance by Emily Dankworth and which is produced by Ian Shaw also stands up well in the home listening environment and includes several original songs that were not featured today. With Safiruddin increasingly busy with other projects it remains to be seen if the Ben Cox Band in its present incarnation can stay together, let’s hope so.

LIAM NOBLE / MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA, CADOGAN HALL.

It was back to the splendid architecture and acoustics of Cadogan Hall for an evening of music making headlined by the Maria Schneider Orchestra. Schneider is currently regarded as the finest writer for large ensembles in the jazz firmament, the natural heir to the great Gil Evans. It’s a talent that the Minnesota native has been honing for over twenty years since moving to New York and forming the first incarnation of her Orchestra in 1992. The current line up includes some of the most in demand musicians in the US, a veritable who’s who of contemporary American Jazz.

LIAM NOBLE

However the first part of the evening belonged to the revered British pianist and composer Liam Noble who gave a solo performance of pieces from his latest album “A Room Somewhere”, a recording reviewed and recommended elsewhere on this site.

Noble’s album takes its title from a line in the show tune “Wouldn’t It Be Lovely?”, the first of three lengthy extemporizations played by Noble this evening. Noble’s variations featured him toying with meters and styles, sometimes alluding to ragtime, at other moments recalling Thelonious Monk, a key influence. As a musician Noble is distinguished by both his wit and intelligence and elements of a mischievously wilful dissonance were part of his performance here.

The pianist clearly relished the technical challenges presented by Joe Zawinul’s composition “Directions”, the rhythmic complexities of the piece calling for some demanding work with the left hand. Noble also stood up to play under the lid before eventually seguing into the show tune “The Way We Were”. 

The white shirted Noble thanked “whoever it was who had the idea to put me in this massive place” as he gestured to the sold out, nine hundred strong audience in the magnificent surroundings of Cadogan Hall. His final tune was the much loved standard “Body and Soul” which he played with great tenderness and relatively little embellishment. An knowledgeable audience, one that clearly appreciated that Liam Noble has gradually become something of a national treasure, awarded him with a great reception. It may only have been a brief set but it was eminently enjoyable. Short, but sweet indeed. 

MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA

I was lucky enough to visit New York City in December 1996 and it has always been a regret that I didn’t take the opportunity of seeing the Maria Schneider Orchestra while I was there. The band was then playing a regular club residency but has since risen to be one of the major concert hall attractions on the international jazz circuit.

Tonight’s performance was part of a European tour that had already seen the Orchestra playing two weeks of live dates in mainland Europe before heading to the UK for shows in London and Birmingham.

In 2007 I reviewed and recommended the Schneider Orchestra’s then current album “Sky Blue” describing Schneider as a “painter in sound” and enthusing about “ the power and beauty of her evocative writing and the rich, lustrous textures of her arrangements”.

These qualities were apparent throughout tonight’s performance which was largely sourced from Schneider’s latest album “The Thompson Fields”, named for a location in her native Minnesota. The music on the album is inspired by Schneider’s childhood memories and the landscape of the American Mid West. Also a respected ornithologist (much of “Sky Blue” had an ornithological theme) Schneider’s writing is greatly influenced by nature and landscape and that inspiration can clearly be heard in the music which is lush, spacious, occasionally grandiose, but always full of warmth and humanity. The sophistication of the arrangements is offset by the freedom that Schneider allows for her team of star soloists to express themselves. It’s an almost perfect blend that has won her countless plaudits with many people considering the Maria Schneider Orchestra to be the finest jazz large ensemble on the planet.

Deploying the classic big band line up of five reeds, four trumpets/flugels and four trombones plus piano, guitar, double bass and drums the Schneider Orchestra also included a magical additional ingredient in the form of Gary Versace’s accordion which helped to create that Mid Western sense of big skied openness often heard in Pat Metheny’s music when he chooses to celebrate his birthplace (in his case a little further south in the state of Missouri).
Versace was prominent on the opening piece “A Potter’s Song” which also featured Schneider’s distinctive arranging processes, the mix of trumpets and flugelhorns being particularly effective as she conjured rich, colourful, evocative and distinctive textures from her Orchestra.

“Nimbus” featured the first solo from Schneider’s stellar reed section with Steve Wilson playing powerfully and expansively on his feature and also adding a hint of wilful dissonance to the rich Schneider sound.
   
The title of “The Monarch And The Milkweed”, named for the Monarch Butterfly and the plant on which it feeds epitomised Schneider’s love of nature and the inspiration she draws from it. The flugelhorn of Greg Gisbert and the trombone of Marshall Gilkes embodied the two protagonists of the title, both soloing delightfully but combining even more beautifully in an arrangement that also made imaginative use of flutes, accordion and bass clarinet.

“Dance You Monster To My Soft Song” was inspired by a Paul Klee painting and was sourced from “Evansescence”, Schneider’s début album and a homage to Gil Evans, released in 1994. Trombonist Ryan Keberle and trumpeter Michael Rodriguez were the featured soloists here on a piece that sounded as fresh as it did when it was first recorded over twenty years ago.

The “Thompson Fields” album appears on the Artist Share label and in introducing the title track Schneider took the opportunity to thank two particularly generous sponsors of the project. The song itself was a particularly evocative depiction of Schneider’s childhood home in the Mid West with solos from the excellent Frank Kimbrough on piano and the always tasteful Lage Lund on guitar, again provoking those Metheny comparisons. Schneider felt that it was particularly appropriate that the Norwegian born, Brooklyn based Lund should feature on this track in view of the large numbers of Scandinavian settlers who made Minnesota their home.

From the same album the composition “Home” was commissioned by one Paul James of Birmingham who was present in the audience to hear the warm toned tenor saxophone of featured soloist Rich Perry, one of the most popular and long serving musicians in the Orchestra.

The closing “Birds Of Paradise” was another piece inspired by Schneider’s love of nature and ornithology. Describing herself as a ‘twitcher’ she explained something of the courtship rituals of the birds in the title and the vivid colouring and extrovert ‘dancing’ of the males. Star soloists Donny McCaslin (tenor sax) and Scott Robinson (baritone) represented the displaying males in a face off that saw McCaslin soloing in declamatory, typically marathon manner on tenor before Robinson answered him on baritone, sometimes stretching right up to the top of the instrument’s range and also entering into an absorbing dialogue with pianist Kimbrough. Finally the pair locked horns to the sound of a roaring big band accompaniment. The audience loved it and awarded the Orchestra a thoroughly deserved standing ovation. 

Following the aural fireworks of “Birds In Paradise” Schneider chose to encore with two pieces from the album “Winter Morning Walks”, her award winning cross genre collaboration with the classical soprano Dawn Upchurch plus two separate chamber orchestras. Both pieces were instrumental settings of poems by the American poet Ted Kooser.

The first of these featured Robinson soling effectively on flugelhorn, something that appeared to be unscripted “he’s never done this before!” exclaimed Schneider. However I have an old album by Robinson, “Magic Eye”, a 1993 collaboration with the Czech pianist Emil Viklicky (also performing at the Festival incidentally) which shows Robinson to be an accomplished brass player despite the fact that he’s predominately associated with reed instruments.

The second piece featured a delightful solo by alto saxophonist Dave Pietro over a backdrop of dampened piano strings and the delicate sonorities of muted trombones. Both of these pieces were effectively delightful tone poems, the perfect wind down after the earlier pyrotechnics.

It was a privilege to finally see the Maria Schneider Orchestra perform live, an opinion that seemed to be shared by many other people with several fans and commentators citing this as their “gig of the year”. Schneider not only conducted the orchestra but also handled the announcements, her presenting style a charming mix of elegance and eloquence. It all made a pleasant contrast to the now well documented histrionics of Cassandra Wilson.

I was tempted to purchase a copy of “The Thompson Fields” after the show but felt that the asking price of twenty quid was a bit steep, although I will concede that it must cost a lot of money to keep an Orchestra of this quality on the road. If you’re reading this let me know what you think. 

For the record the Maria Schneider Orchestra lined up as follows; 

Maria Schneider composer/conductor
Steve Wilson reeds
Dave Pietro reeds
Rich Perry reeds
Donny McCaslin reeds
Scott Robinson reeds
Greg Gisbert trumpet
August Haas trumpet
Garrett Schmidt trumpet
Mike Rodriguez trumpet
Keith O’Quinn trombone
Ryan Keberle trombone
Marshall Gilkes trombone
George Flynn bass trombone
Gary Versace accordion
Lage Lund guitar
Frank Kimbrough piano
Jay Anderson bass
Johnathan Blake drums

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