Christelis / Stylianides / Crowley / Glaser, The Green Note, Camden Town, London, 15/11/2024 (Part of EFG London Jazz Festival).

Harry Christelis – guitar, electronics, Christos Stylianides – trumpet, electronics, George Crowley – tenor sax, clarinet, electronics, Will Glaser – drums, percussion

2024 represented my first visit to the EFG London Jazz Festival for five years following a long, Covid generated hiatus. It was great to be back, checking out new music and new venues, as well as returning to favourite jazz haunts like the Green Note, a venue that I first visited in 2012. My thanks to proprietors Immy and Risa for allowing me to cover this performance at their splendidly intimate award winning venue.

Heeding the advice on the Green Note website my wife and I arrived early and found ourselves at the front of the queue. We were rewarded with seats at the front table, giving an uninterrupted view of the stage. We were also able to avail ourselves of a selection of delicacies from the Green Note’s vegetarian snack menu, which were delicious, the hummus was to die for.

Suitably replenished we were able to enjoy two immersive, unbroken fifty minute sets from this new quartet nominally led by guitarist, composer and improviser Harry Christelis.

Christelis has previously featured on the Jazzmann web pages as the leader of Moostak Trio, a group that also features bassist Andrea Di Biase and drummer Dave Storey. The trio’s eponymous debut album from 2020 is reviewed elsewhere on this site, as is a livestream performance documented at the Green Note that formed part of the all online 2020 EFG London Jazz Festival.

In 2023 Christelis released the impressive “Nurture The Child / Challenge The Adult”, issued under his own name and featuring an expanded line up featuring Di Biase, Storey and trumpeter Christos Stylianides. This line up represents Christelis’ regular quartet but he is also involved with numerous other projects, including a duo with fellow guitarist Pedro Velsaco, with whom he released the album “Scribbling” (2022), which is also reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Christelis also heads Clonmell Jazz Social, an organisation that co-ordinates jazz events and runs its own record label. CJS curated the majority of the jazz programme at the Green Note during the 2024 EFG LJF.

Having enjoyed both the recordings and the 2020 livestream performance I was delighted to get the opportunity of seeing Christelis perform live for the first time in conjunction with three other CJS regulars. Apparently Christelis, Crowley and Glaser had already performed gigs as a trio but for this special Festival show had decided to add Stylianides to the group. It had initially been intended that Stylianides would play a solo trumpet and electronics set followed by a longer performance by the Christelis / Crowley / Glaser trio, but in the end it was decided that it would be best to ‘just go for it’ as a quartet.

The tiny Green Note stage was crowded with musical instruments and associated electronic hardware with all four group members remaining seated during the performance, the better to manipulate the extensive electronic gadgetry at their disposal.

Each set was structured around three Christelis compositions, these forming, in the guitarist’s own words, a “road map”  for the quartet’s expansive and extensive collective improvisations. Indeed the music largely felt as if it were being completely improvised. Despite the presence of sheet music on the stage one very much got the sense that this was a free jazz, electro-improvising performance. I spoke to Christelis at half time, which is when he explained the nature of the performance to me and in the second set it was interesting to note when the musicians were actually reading – it wasn’t that frequent, but there were clearly linking passages that had been pre-composed.

Set one was based around the compositions “Blues For The Birds”, “Wood Dalling”, named for a village in Norfolk, and “Calling It”.

The music began with Crowley and Stylianides generating doomy, ambient electronic soundscapes, these accompanied by Glaser’s mallet rumbles and cymbal shimmers. Gradually a rhythmic pattern began to emerge from the drums, this forming a platform for Stylianides’ plangent trumpet melodies and subsequent soloing. Having focussed entirely on electronics during the opening stages Crowley made a comparatively late entry on tenor, but his subsequent soloing made a considerable impact as the music began to take on more of a song like, avant rock quality with Christelis adding crystalline shards of guitar melody.

An all electronics episode that saw Christelis making effective use of his floor mounted ‘Pedaltrain’ FX unit seemed to mark the segue into the next section, with trumpet and tenor subsequently combining to chime above the electronic backdrop. Having largely played with mallets until this point Glaser now picked up his sticks for the first time, signalling a change to a music that was more aggressive and garrulous, with Stylianides and Crowley entering into a series of hard edged trumpet and tenor sax exchanges.

However the ambient roots of the music were not forgotten, with Christelis frequently deploying his guitar and electronics as a kind of sound-scaping tool, often sounding a little reminiscent of Bill Frisell in the process. He was also to feature as a ‘soloist’ as he gradually ramped up the volume, encouraged by Glaser’s explosive drumming, before concluding this particular section with a spacey Pink Floyd style outro that also featured a gentle sax melody and the sound of brushed drums.

The next passage saw Crowley and Stylianides deploying extended tenor and trumpet techniques above a backdrop of broken brushed drum beats and glitchy, whistling electronica. At this juncture Crowley switched to clarinet to deliver an incisive electronically enhanced solo that was emphatically NOT Acker Bilk.

This was followed by a solo guitar episode that variously evoked both Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, the latter playing the Festival the same night just down the road at the Barbican. Stylianides then took over on trumpet, manipulating the sound of his playing electronically as Crowley reverted to tenor and the music gradually worked its way to some kind of resolution.

Skilfully walking the bridge between composition and improvisation this had been an absorbing and sometimes challenging set that had embraced a variety of musical styles, and of which the use of electronics had played a major part. It was accorded an excellent reception from a knowledgable and appreciative Green Note audience.

The second set was to offer more of the same and was centred around the Christelis compositions “Jon’s Moon”, “A Quiet Christmas Night In Overbury” (named after a warehouse community within which Christelis had once lived) and the more bluntly titled “How Old Are You?”

An almost subliminal opening featuring guitar and electronics was subsequently augmented by Glaser’s bass drum pulse and the sounds of mallets on skins and cymbals. The group continued to make highly creative use of electronic effects as sax and trumpet melodies began to emerge, with Glaser also making highly musical use out of a variety of cymbals, both large and small.

Stylianides’ playing gradually became more incisive, with the trumpeter again deploying electronics to manipulate his sound. The leader’s guitar then came to the fore, appearing to represent a link to the next section as Glaser made effective use of a range of small percussive objects, including tambourine and bells.

The drummer eventually sat out for a more ambient passage featuring the electronically enhanced sounds of tenor, trumpet and guitar prior to a transition into a written passage featuring unison sax and trumpet melodies above ambient guitar washes. Subsequent sax and trumpet solos saw Glaser returning to the fold at the kit as the music began to gather a powerful momentum, culminating in a squalling free jazz style peak.

The ‘calm after the storm’ was represented by another ambient trio passage, jointly led by Stylianides’ trumpet and Crowley’s electronics with Glaser again sitting out. I was reminded of Bill Bruford being accorded a composer credit for the track “Trio” on the King Crimson album “Starless and Bible Black”. Although Bruford doesn’t actually play on this spontaneously realised group composition he receives a share of the royalties and a credit on the album sleeve for “admirable restraint”.

It was a long time until Glaser returned as the other three members continued their musical conversation, the drummer sitting back with a beatific smile on his face as he immersed himself in the beautiful ambient textures being created by his colleagues.

Crowley’s eventual return to tenor sax saw Glaser picking up his brushes once more as this second set began to steer itself towards a resolution via a written passage featuring unison horn melodies and the luminous chime of Christelis’ guitar.

Again this adventurous and immersive music was well received by a highly appreciative audience. Although challenging at times this had been an enjoyable set of collective music making based around a flexible compositional framework and with plenty of room allowed for improvisation and spontaneous creativity.

Although nominally led by Christelis this was very much a collective performance with no one member overly dominating, although Crowley, via a combination of reeds and electronics, probably played more than anyone else. The leader seemed content to concentrate on colour, texture and ambience and there were few obvious ‘guitar solos’, the horns tending to dominate on those occasions when a single instrument was featured in the foreground.

My thanks to all four group members for speaking with me during the interval and after the show. Crowley has featured on the Jazzmann web pages many times, both as the leader of his own groups and as one of the most versatile and in demand musicians on the London jazz scene. I’m familiar with Glaser via his excellent “Climbing In Circles” album series and his work with trumpeter / sound artist Alex Bonney. Stylianides’ playing I knew less well, only having seen him in the bands of others, usually large ensembles, so it was good to hear his playing in a very contemporary small group setting.

A good way to start EFG LJF 2024 and it is to be hoped that this line up proves to be more than just a Festival ‘one off’.

 

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