Elijah Jeffery Quartet, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 25/08/2024

Elijah Jeffery – vocals, Eddie Gripper - piano, Nick Kacal – double bass, Patrick Barrett-Donlon- drums

Black Mountain Jazz continues to go from strength to strength. The organisers were delighted to welcome a sell out crowd on a Bank Holiday Sunday for the visit of this Cardiff based quartet led by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Elijah Jeffery.

Originally from Hampshire Jeffery is a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) in Cardiff. He has elected to remain in the Welsh capital and is pursuing a career as a professional musician, performing regularly on the live music circuit in South Wales and the West Country of England.

My first sighting of him was as part of an online performance by the Cardiff based big band Siglo Section that formed part of the 2020 ‘Virtual’ Brecon Jazz Festival. Jeffery was featured as a guest vocalist and acquitted himself well as he sang a Nelson Riddle arrangement of the Cole Porter song “Night and Day”. My account of the performance can be found as part of my Festival coverage here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/friday-at-virtual-brecon-jazz-festival-07-08-2020

In 2023 he played Brecon Jazz Festival for real, appearing as part of the Cardiff jazz, funk and soul ensemble Funkyard, a band taking the mighty Tower Of Power as their primary source of inspiration. In addition to being one of three featured vocalists, alongside Sylvie Noble and Amy Marsden, Jeffery also played guitar with this group. My account of this performance, which formed part of BJF’s Family Jazz & Dance Day can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/brecon-jazz-festival-jazz-at-the-marquee-family-jazz-dance-day-brecon-county-showground-brecon-06-08-2023

As a jazz vocalist Jeffery cites Mel Torme. Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Kurt Elling as primary sources of inspiration. He is happy to sing songs from the ‘Great American Songbook’ but during the lockdown period he began to write his own songs and has recently released his debut solo recording “One of Her Clowns”, an EP featuring five original songs. Jeffery sings and also plays guitar and electric bass. The personnel also includes Eddie Gripper on keyboards, Huw Llewellyn on trumpet and George Povey at the drums.

Jeffery and Gripper have subsequently formed a song writing partnership and some of the fruits of their labours were to be heard this evening. It is intended that the pair will record a full length duo album featuring their songs, which, on the evidence of tonight’s performance, is something to be very much looked forward to.

Another project with which Jeffery is involved is A Wheel Inside A Wheel, a jazz flavoured folk / Americana collaboration featuring fellow vocalist Sylvie Noble. Jeffery both sings and plays guitar with this quartet, which also features bassist Ursula Harrison and saxophonist Coren Sithers.

Jeffery has also worked with the Irish pianist Nils Kavanagh, a former Young Irish Jazz Musician of the Year award winner.

Jeffery’s visit to Abergavenny came about after BMJ’s Debs Hancock, herself a highly accomplished jazz vocalist, witnessed Jeffery performing at the Flute and Tankard in Cardiff and decided that she just had to book him to play at the Melville Centre.
Fronting a quartet featuring some real BMJ favourites Jeffery was greeted by a rousing reception from the capacity crowd. He promised us a “musical journey through the decades”, which would concentrate on ‘Great American Songbook’ material in the first half, but with a greater focus on his original songwriting in the second.

With this in mind the performance commenced with a Sinatra inspired version of “Witchcraft”, which revealed Jeffery to be a smooth, assured, expressive and technically accomplished vocalist. His singing was augmented by instrumental solos from Gripper at the Melville’s upright acoustic piano and Kacal on double bass.

Unaccompanied bass introduced the versatile jazz standard “Comes Love”, which included a short scat vocal episode alongside a more expansive piano solo from the excellent Gripper. The flexibility of Gripper’s voice was then emphasised during a passage that featured his singing with bass and drum accompaniment only.

Jeffery explained that as a vocalist he is particularly keen to perform songs possessed of strong lyrical imagery, citing as an example the rarely heard jazz ballad “Deep in a Dream”, a song variously recorded by Artie Shaw and Chet Baker. Introduced by a passage of unaccompanied piano, with Gripper later joined by Jeffery in a piano and voice duet, the song’s lyrics were just as evocative as Jeffery had promised. However the regular references to cigarette smoking may have caused it to have fallen from favour in recent times. Double bass and brushed drums were subsequently added as Gripper embarked on a lyrical piano solo. Jeffery’s singing was both expressive and evocative on this most definitive of ‘torch songs’.

The first original of he evening was “Shifting Seasons”, a song co-written by Jeffery and Gripper that is scheduled to be released on the forthcoming duo album. With Kacal and Barrett-Donlon vacating the stage the song was performed in the duo format, the exposed setting revealing Jeffery to be a poetic and intelligent lyricist who has learnt well from the ‘Songbook’ tradition. Gripper provided sensitive piano accompaniment, bookending the piece with short unaccompanied passages and also taking a brief solo mid-tune.

There was a return to the standards repertoire with a playful quartet arrangement of “Tea For Two” that included an audacious unaccompanied vocal passage, a Gripper piano solo and a quirky, but highly musical, drum feature from Barrett-Donlon, the regular drummer with Gripper’s own instrumental trio.

The first set concluded with a medley inspired by two of Jeffery’s most significant vocal influences, Nat King Cole and Kurt Elling. The first half of the segue featured a Cole inspired version of “Mona Lisa”, one of Nat’s biggest hits.
The second half featured one of Elling’s vocalese lyrics, the words based upon “Winter Stars” a poem by the American writer Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) that was first published in 1920. Elling’s melody is based on “Lawns”, a composition by Carla Bley (1936-2023) and these twin sources combine to create the song “Endless Lawns”, introduced here by a voice and piano duet, with double bass and brushed drums subsequently added. Jeffery delivered the song with great gravitas, his eloquent vocalising complemented by the floating lyricism of Gripper’s piano solo. A haunting and evocative way to conclude an excellent first half.

The beginning of the second set lightened the mood again with a playful arrangement of another Nat King Cole hit, “Walking My Baby Back Home”, with Kacal and Gripper the featured instrumental soloists.

Next up was the title track from the “One of Her Clowns” EP, a tale of modern love, with a lyrical reference to text messaging,  but still with a foot in the ‘Songbook’ tradition. Paced by Barrett-Donlon’s brushed drums the performance also included a piano solo from Gripper.

A second duo performance saw Jeffery and Gripper performing “True Love Never Dies”, another song due to appear on the forthcoming duo recording. More obviously in the folk tradition this was an attempt to write a contemporary murder ballad, with Jeffery’s singing augmented by some dramatic pianistics from Gripper.

Kacal and Barrett-Donlon returned as the quartet delivered an exquisite performance of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”. Introduced by a passage of solo piano, with double bass and brushed drums subsequently added, the piece featured an evocative vocal from Jeffery and melodic instrumental solos from Gripper on piano and Kacal on double bass. This was an item that was particularly warmly received by the Abergavenny audience.

A particularly surprising inclusion was an arrangement of “Thoughts of a Dying Atheist”, a song by the rock band Muse, of which Jeffery is a huge fan. Introduced by Barrett-Donlon at the drums this jazz style arrangement was surprisingly effective with Jeffery singing wordlessly as well as delivering the stark lyric “It scares the hell out of me, when the end is all I can see”. An expansive Gripper solo introduced a Latin tinge to the proceedings and the performance concluded with a remarkable feature from Barrett-Donlon that saw him sketching melodies on the toms.

The performance ended in energetic fashion with what Jeffery described as a “rompy, stompy” arrangement of the Gregory Porter song “Don’t Lose Your Steam”. Combining gospel harmonies and martial rhythms this made for a rousing finish, with Gripper the featured instrumental soloist.

A delighted audience shouted for more, but in a final twist Jeffery elected to perform this solo, seating himself at the piano to sing his original song “You Call Home”, the beautiful final track on the “One of Her Clowns” recording.

Although he has been resident in South Wales for five years this was the first time that Jeffery had performed in Abergavenny. One suspects that it will not be his last, for this gig was a triumph, both for Jeffery and his quartet and for Black Mountain Jazz.

I will admit that I’m not always particularly keen on male jazz vocalists but Jeffery quickly won me over with the quality of his singing and his warm and erudite presentation. I was also hugely impressed by the standard of the original songwriting and the forthcoming Jeffery / Gripper duo album will be eagerly awaited.

It also helped that Jeffery had an absolutely terrific band with him. Gripper, Kacal and Barrett-Donlon provided empathic support but also sparkled during their individual features, all hallmarks of particularly well balanced quartet.

My thanks to Elijah and Eddie for speaking with me after the show.

Elijah Jeffery made a lot of new friends tonight. A return to Abergavenny and Black Mountain Jazz is almost certain to happen at some point in the future.

The “One of Her Clowns” EP is available here;
https://elijahjeffery.bandcamp.com/album/one-of-her-clowns

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