Django Bates

“Tenacity”

(Lost Marble Records LM009)

Beloved;

Django Bates – piano, vocals, Petter Eldh – double bass, vocals, Peter Bruun – drums, vocals

Norbotten Big Band;

Bo Strandberg, Magnus Ekholm, Dan Johansson, Jacek Onuszkiewich – trumpets

Peter Dahlgren, Ashley Slater – trombones

Bjorn Hangsel – bass trombone

Hakan Brostom – soprano sax

Jan Thelin – clarinets

Mats Garberg – flutes

Karl-Martin Almqvist – tenor sax, clarinet

Per Morberg – baritone sax

Daniel Herskedal – tuba

Markus Pesonen – electric guitar

For this acclaimed release on his own Lost Marble record label pianist and composer Django Bates teams his regular ‘Beloved’ trio with the Swedish ensemble the Norbotten Big Band. This collaboration came about as the result of a commission from the New Directions Festival, held in the town of Lulea in Northern Sweden.

The trio and big band subsequently went into the studio to record the music and the finished album was released in October 2020, a date chosen by Bates to coincide with his 60th birthday.

The album appeared in time to make the “Best of 2020” playlists with the release attracting considerable critical acclaim.

“Tenacity” finds Bates still exploring the music of the late, great saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker, an unlikely childhood hero for the teenage Bates. The release of the album also marks the centenary of Parker’s birth.

Parker was a musical innovator and one of the founding fathers of the bebop movement that revolutionised jazz in the 1940s. Even today his ideas continue to influence jazz musicians and his musical legacy remains truly monumental. His tragically early death in 1955, following a life of drug fuelled excess, has only added to his legend.

Borrowing the band name from a Parker tune Bates formed the Beloved trio in 2008 in the company of two Scandinavian musicians, Petter Eldh on double bass and Peter Bruun at the drums. Both were former students of Bates and had been taught by the Englishman when he held an appointment as a professor at the Rhythmic Music Conservatoire in Copenhagen.

The trio’s first release “Beloved Bird” (2010) focussed on interpretations of Parker compositions, with Bates concentrating exclusively on acoustic piano. His earlier musical projects, including the collaborative large ensemble Loose Tubes plus his own bands Delightful Precipice and Human Chain had also featured his intelligent and inspired use of synthesisers and electric keyboards, not to mention the occasional thrilling foray on e flat peck-horn.

The Beloved project served as a welcome reminder of Bates’ talents as an acoustic pianist and the new trio was warmly received by critics and audiences alike.

The second Beloved album, “Confirmation” (2012) placed a greater emphasis on original material, albeit played in a broadly ‘Parker-esque’ style. Some of these pieces later emerged on “The Study Of Touch”, Beloved’s 2018 album for the prestigious ECM record label. Here Bates and the trio adopted a more considered approach, making greater use of space and nuance, with producer and ECM founder Manfred Eicher exerting a subtle influence on the music. It was a release that helped to bring the trio’s talents to an even broader international audience. My review of this excellent recording, which also includes a substantial overview of Bates’ musical career to that date, can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/the-study-of-touch

The development of the Beloved trio can be charted over the course of these three recordings, with Eldh and Bruun becoming increasingly influential as they have matured as musicians. Beloved has become an increasingly democratic and interactive group over the years, even as Eldh and Bruun have become involved with other projects. The bassist is a particularly active presence on the European and international jazz scene, featuring in the Enemy trio with pianist Kit Downes and drummer James Maddren, playing in a variety of groups led by Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset and leading his own international quartet Amok Amor, featuring German drummer Christian Lillinger, Polish saxophonist Wanja Slavin and the extraordinary American trumpeter Peter Evans.
Meanwhile Bruun has played in a trio led by Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser and featuring French born guitarist Marc Ducret.

The material on “Tenacity” features a mix of Parker related pieces and Bates originals. There are four arrangements of Parker tunes, plus a further two jazz standards associated with him, in addition to four compositions from Bates, these including the title track.

The album packaging includes an ‘interview’ with Bates, conducted by a character simply named Leon. I suspect that this is essentially our hero interviewing himself, his jazz loving parents having given him the forenames Leon Django, after Messrs.  (Bix) Beiderbecke and Reinhardt respectively.

During the course of the ‘interview’ Bates discusses the word ‘tenacity’ and muses on the nature of his music. It includes the following observations;

“I don’t feel attracted to writing music which only aims to soothe. I want listeners to experience a gamut of emotions, from sadness to outright laughter. I want them to be involved with me in the thought processes and to get enjoyment from the compositional side of the music too. The word ‘Tenacity’ is also meant as a suggestion for my audience - ‘please hang in there, the reward is not a spoonful of honey, but it should be profound and lasting’.

Speaking as a long term Bates listener this seems to me to sum up his always interesting, but occasionally frustrating, career to date to a ‘T’.

Of his treatment of the Parker material he states;
“I have put a lot of detail into my arrangements of Parker because that felt like the best way to honour his music and thank him for his lasting influence on me. His playing still makes me smile, and it can also be plaintive and heart-rending”.

And so to the album itself, which commences with “Cordial”, a forty two second Bates original. Even this manages to cram a wealth of information into its short span, opening with the sounds of tumbling piano, clattering drums and fiercely plucked bass before handing over to the elongated horn lines of the Big Band, these representing something of an ‘overture’ to the Parker piece that follows.

“A Leu Cha”, which featured on the core trio’s “Beloved Bird” album, here incorporates a typically busy big band arrangement from Bates. Eldh and Bruun drive the song with powerful, but idiosyncratic rhythms but it’s the deployment of the various horns at his disposal that is perhaps the most distinctive element of Bates’ arrangement. He makes efficient use of tonal contrasts, from effervescent flutes to grainy bass clarinets and the low end sonorities of the trombones. There’s a lot going on here, this is music that is simultaneously highly exciting and mind bogglingly complex, a combination guaranteed to stimulate, or maybe even provoke, the listener. Once the Big Band have blown themselves out the piece concludes with a more impressionistic and lyrical passage from the core trio, one that also includes the gently wistful sounds of their simple wordless vocals.

Then we’re back on the fairground ride again with Parker’s “Donna Lee”, with Bates alternately stretching and compressing Parker’s melody lines to fit the rhythms laid down by the core trio. At times it sounds like Parker as played by Loose Tubes, but there’s also an extended trio passage featuring Bates’ increasingly idiosyncratic piano soloing. This sees him straying into the avant garde realm of Cecil Taylor, Keith Tippet etc. Eldh is subsequently featured on the bass as the time signatures become increasingly complex, with brass and reed stabs weaving their way in and out of the music as the piece eventually wends its way to a totally bonkers climax. It’s the sound of Parker in Bates’ image. This is no tired re-tread or museum piece, but is instead loud, brash, daring, complex, exciting – and very much of the now.

“Laura”, written by David Raksin, is one of the standards associated with Parker. The core trio introduce this in thoughtful lyrical, jazz ballad fashion, subsequently joined by lush big band textures, but with Bates’ impish sense of musical mischief still bubbling just below the surface. This finally erupts in the second half of the performance as the sumptuous horns eventually fade away, replaced by Bates piano solo, periodically interrupted by bizarre electronic interjections.

On Parker’s “Confirmation” Bates’ combines his own brilliant pianism with a quirky big band arrangement as the music passes through a series of hairpin twists and turns, incorporating a variety of dynamic and stylistic variations. Perhaps the most impressive element here is the fierce interaction of the core trio, with Bates’ virtuosity complemented by Eldh’s physical approach to the bass and Bruun’s restlessly inventive drumming.

The Bates original “We Are Not Lost, We Are Simply Finding Our Way” was originally a commission for BBC Radio 3 and the 2011 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, where it was performed by an octet dubbed the TDE’s (in honour of the Festival’s Artistic Director Tony Dudley-Evans). The piece subsequently found it way onto the trio recordings “Confirmation” and “The Study Of Touch”. Now scaled up once more the trio plus big band arrangement affords a greater opportunity for the members of the Norbotten Big Band to express themselves, but unfortunately the album packaging doesn’t cite individual soloists. Bates’ fidgety theme includes a feature for one of the trombonists, alongside some rousing ensemble playing. The piece also includes a virtuoso performance from drummer Bruun as he and Bates bounce ideas off each other.

The title of “The Study Of Touch” has assumed an unforeseen significance during the pandemic. One of Bates’ most straightforwardly beautiful compositions it commences with the core trio in melodic and lyrical mode, with Bruun now deploying brushes. Flutes and other reeds and brass are then added and the music steadily gathers momentum, with Brostom soloing incisively on soprano sax. Subsequently the music ebbs and flows, with the tranquillity of a reed choir later superseded by the more muscular sounds of Almqvist’s robust but fluent tenor sax soloing. Eventually the trio, with a little guitar embellishment, courtesy of Pesonen, close the piece as quietly as it began.

“My Little Suede Shoes” returns us to the Parker repertoire with a joyous Latin inflected arrangement. Initially this features the core trio with Bates as the featured soloist, but with discrete electronic and big band orchestration subsequently added. The trio also deploy wordless vocals as the piece weaves its merry way.

“Star Eyes”, written by Don Raye and Gene Paul is another standard that was associated with Parker and its memorable theme eventually emerges, somewhat woozily,  after a period of intense trio interaction. Again that Bates-ian sense of mischief is there, even when the introduction of the big band adds a veneer of lushness and conventionality to the proceedings. Guitarist Pesonen joins the trio in a section where the twinkling and sparkling of guitar and piano are contrasted with the pugnaciousness of Eldh’s double bass solo.

Finally we hear “Tenacity” itself, its pedal bass motif a musical embodiment of the word as the big band swarms above, creating ominous orchestral textures, interspersed by passages featuring scurrying avant garde piano and the clatter of drums. Finally the trio drop out to leave the long lined sonorities of the Norbotten Big Band.

Released in a landmark year for both its creator (Bates) and for its inspiration (Parker) “Tenacity” sounds like a landmark album. That 2020 became a landmark year for the whole of the world’s population represents the most unfortunate of coincidences.

As the sixty year old Bates takes stock of his career this is an album that brings several of the multifarious strands of his music making together – his love of Charlie Parker and his music, his own inspired and idiosyncratic writing for large ensembles, his talents as a virtuoso acoustic pianist and even his judicious use of the human voice.

For long term Bates listeners it’s almost the complete package and it comes as no surprise to learn that the album has been so rapturously received. As a work for large ensemble it’s right up there with the best of his work with Loose Tubes and his own Delightful Precipice.

When Bates first assembled the Beloved Trio his stated aim was to “take Charlie Parker tunes and do crazy things to them” but also to  “play his music with respect, contemporary sensibility and joy”.  

That approach reaches its zenith here with Bates putting his own stamp on Parker’s music more emphatically than ever before. He has been working intermittently with the Norbotten Big Band (which currently includes his old Loose Tubes buddy Ashley Slater) since 2013 and the rapport that he has established with them clearly shines through. The NBB tackle the complexities of Bates’ arrangements with skill and aplomb, while instilling them with an essential joyousness. It’s no mean musical feat.

Equally impressive is the core trio, which will hopefully be able to continue in these difficult times, whether still exploring Parker tunes or performing Bates originals. Look out for Eldh’s and Bruun’s individual projects too.

Django Bates’ music isn’t for everybody but his many fans will absolutely relish this challenging, but frequently dazzling and hugely exhilarating album; a suitable reward for the tenacity of performers and audiences alike.

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