Mike Hall with the Alex Steele Trio, Corn Exchange Jazz Club, Corn Exchange, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, 20/03.2025.

Mike Hall – tenor sax, Alex Steele – keyboard, Mike Green – double bass, Mike Cypher – drums

A welcome return to the Corn Exchange for me following a recent spate of ‘fixture clashes’ with events in the Music Spoken Here series at the Marr’s Bar in Worcester. Tonight’s date fitted in neatly, sandwiched between the MSH events on 13th and 27th March.

For tonight’s event promoter Dave Logan, co-ordinator of the jazz programme at the Corn Exchange had invited along his old friend, tenor saxophonist Mike Hall, down from Manchester to play with the Cheltenham based trio led by pianist Alex Steele.

Hall is a respected jazz educator and taught for twenty five years at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) where he was also the director of the RNCM Big Band. Between 1999 and 2019 the RNCMBB performed with an impressive list of illustrious guest jazz instrumentalists and vocalists. Although no longer working for the RNCM in a full time capacity Hall is still associated with the College and also conducts his own workshops and simmer schools.

As a player he is involved with a number of different projects including the leadership of his own ‘Legends of the Tenor Saxophone’ quartet, a duo with guitarist Andy Hulme, and a variety of different ensembles including the Boplicity Octet (5 horns plus rhythm section), The Messengers (a quintet featuring trumpeter Steve Waterman), the twelve piece ensemble The Felonious Monks and the septet Crystal, the last named group an outlet for Hall’s original compositions.  He also leads Quadratus, an ensemble that features his regular jazz quartet augmented by a string quartet.

He has also worked with the Apollo Saxophone Quartet, the Michael Garrick Big Band, Andy Scott’s Sax Assault, Pete Long’s Echoes of Ellington, the SuperBigTrampBand and with the Royal London Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their collaboration with the late, great Wayne Shorter.

Others he has worked with include fellow saxophonists John Dankworth and Tony Coe, vocalists Cleo Laine and Sue Kibbey, bassist Ben Crosland and pianist Julian Joseph. As a sideman he remains a very active presence on the jazz scene in the North of England and his current date sheet includes shows with a variety of different leaders scheduled for the coming months.

See http://www.mikehall.co.uk for further information.

Although I wasn’t previously familiar with Hall’s playing I was fully acquainted with that of his colleagues for the evening. Pianist Alex Steele, bassist Mike Green and drummer Mike Cypher are all regular presences on the Jazzmann web pages thanks to their work with a variety of different ensembles. All three play together in the bands of saxophonist, vocalist and songwriter Kim Cypher, wife of drummer Mike Cypher, who was present in the audience this evening.

Steele has also been featured leading his own quartet as part of the Fringe programme at the 2010 jazz festival and also on recordings by guitarist Lee Jones and saxophonist Dominic Franks’ Strayhorn Quartet.

Mike Green has featured as a member of ensembles led by guitarists Remi Harris and B.D. Lenz,, pianist / vocalist Wendy Kirkland, saxophonist John Hallam and trumpeter Ray Butcher (the band Butcher’s Brew).

Hall had briefly worked with Green about a decade ago but tonight’s event was the first time that he had met Steele and Cypher. Nevertheless this one off quartet established a rapport very quickly, united by the shared musical language of jazz and helped by the fact that the Cheltenham trio work regularly together as unit.

Although Hall is a composer the programme was largely standards based, but with plenty of pleasing surprises thrown in. The tune selections were all Hall’s but he and Steele shared the announcing duties, emphasising the collaborative nature of tonight’s alliance.

Things kicked off with “Pennies from Heaven”, with Hall stating the theme and taking the first solo. Playing entirely without amplification or bug mics his tone was fluent and powerful, a classic tenor sax sound. Steele followed at the keyboard, a Yamaha CP4 on an acoustic piano setting, that for the purpose of this review I’ll refer to as a ‘piano’. Having seen them all play before I was aware of the trio’s capabilities and individually and collectively they didn’t disappoint, with this opening number also featuring a double bass solo from Green and a series of exchanges between Hall, Steele and drummer Cypher.

Hall is based in Sale, Greater Manchester, his place of residence suitably fertile ground for jokes about his next selection, the Cole Porter song “Love for Sale”. A Latin-esque arrangement followed a similar format to the opener with a theme statement and opening solo from Hall followed by features for Steele and Green. However the conclusion was different, shading off into a more freely structured diminuendo.

So far, so predictable, but next Hall surprised us with a delightful and totally unexpected rendition of Kenny Garrett’s “Song for Abdullah”. This required the trio members to demonstrate their sight reading skills on a composition that I suspect was probably unfamiliar to them. This was a beautiful tune that emphasised the song like quality of Garrett’s writing. Again Hall stated the main melodic theme and took the first solo, his playing exhibiting a wistful, yearning quality. He was followed by Steele at the piano before returning for a second wave of sax meditations.

Another of Hall’s saxophone heroes was homaged with a version of “Midnight Voyage”, a tune indelibly associated with the late, great Michael Brecker but actually written by Brecker’s pianist, Joey Calderazzo. The piece, which has become something of a modern day standard, appeared on Brecker’s classic 1996 album “Tales from the Hudson”, an album that featured an all star line up including guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Tonight’s version more than did the tune justice with Green taking the first solo, followed by Hall and Steele.

The ballad “My One and Only Love” marked a return to more familiar standards territory and was a beautiful performance that demonstrated Hall’s skills as a ballad player. Also worthy of note were Steele’s lyrical piano solo, Green’s melodic double bass statement and Cypher’s exquisite brush work. The performance was bookended by unaccompanied tenor sax cadenzas from the leader.

The first set concluded with a radically re-harmonised version of the jazz standard “Have You Met Miss Jones?” in an arrangement by the Boston, MA based saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi. A perfect vehicle for Hall the performance also included a piano solo from Steele plus a series of exchanges between Hall, Steele and Cypher as they ‘traded fours’.

Set two took things up a further notch and began in rousing fashion with an arrangement of “Groove Merchant”, a tune written by the American saxophonist Jerome Richardson. Something of a soul jazz classic this featured the raunchier sound of Hall’s r’n’b style tenor and also featured a piano solo from Steele.

The quartet dipped into the repertoire of the Count Basie Orchestra for a small group arrangement of “Shiny Stockings” which incorporated solos from Hall, Steele and Green.

Hall told us the tale behind the title of the Horace Silver composition “The Jody Grind”. Apparently the disreputable character Joe the Grind was a legendary figure of blues mythology who used to sleep with the wives of prisoners and military personnel absent on active service. It’s a tune that is popular and familiar among jazz fans, particularly those of the hard bop genre, but I wonder if many modern day listeners are familiar of the story behind it. Again Hall’s tenor sax was at its earthiest while Steele switched to a funky electric piano sound before reverting to an acoustic piano setting during the course of an expansive keyboard solo. Green was also featured on double bass on a hard grooving and highly accessible tune that was very well received by an appreciative Ross audience.

The quartet quietened things down with this set’s ballad offering, an arrangement of “Darn That Dream”, a song from the failed Broadway musical “Swingin’ the Dream”,  itself a jazz variation  on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that starred Louis Armstrong as Bottom and also featured vocalist Maxine Sullivan. The only thing of note to survive from the musical it’s a piece that’s been recorded many times by a wide variety of jazz artists, among them saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Introduced here by just sax and piano, subsequently joined by double bass and brushed drums, this was a beautiful performance that featured melodic and lyrical solos from Hall, Steele and Green.

The quartet’s last scheduled number was the unfortunately titled “Mil Dew”, a composition by US saxophonist Johnny Griffin. This was a fast moving piece delivered very much in Griffin’s frantic ‘tear it up’ style with a tricky bebop style head the foundation for a buccaneering tenor solo by Hall, matched by Steele on piano and Cypher at the drums, the latter involved in a dynamic series of exchanges with sax and piano.

The audience loved this and the quartet remained on stage to perform a deserved encore of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”. This was presented in an unusual
Latin-esque arrangement incorporating solos from Hall and Steele and a neatly constructed drum feature from Cypher that saw him wielding an effective combination of one stick and one brush. Again this was a performance that earned an excellent reception from the audience.

Overall this was a performance that had delivered more than I expected. Knowing that this was likely to be a one off quartet I had expected a standards based programme and the first couple of numbers were perhaps a little too safe and predictable. But the first set really began to take off as the band tried something a little more adventurous with the Garrett and Brecker associated numbers and from then on they never looked back in a well chosen selection of material that combined tender ballads with r’n’b style raunch and blistering hard bop. The event was a triumph both for the quartet and for David Logan, whose role in putting the event together was warmly acknowledged from the stage, with Hall also paying tribute to his musical colleagues, telling the audience “You’re lucky to have a trio of this quality in your vicinity”. Amen to that, and Hall will also be a name to look out for should he decide to venture south again.

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