Soultime!, Progress Theatre, Reading, Friday 13 December 2024

Steve Fishwick  - trumpet & flugelhorn, Leon Greening -  piano, Matyas Hofecker  - bass, Matt Home -  drums.

Way back in the 1980s, Al Haig, a pioneer of modern jazz who played piano with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz amongst many greats of the music, made a telling remark on a visit to London which still rings true today. ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why we never hear British guys in New York. There’s so much talent here – and no one knows your names.’

He could have been talking about pianist Leon Greening, whose remarkable home-grown talents deserve the recognition of a world stage. The emotional depth of his playing and nail-biting flights of invention are simply astonishing. He grabs the listeners’ attention at his first touch of the keyboard and never lets it go.

How apt that Greening’s latest project, Soultime!, a joint venture with the perfect foil of Steve Fishwick’s pure toned trumpet and flugelhorn and a powerhouse rhythm section of Matyas Hofecker and Matt Home, should pay tribute to Bobby Timmons, whose influence helped to shape his earliest efforts at the keyboard.

Greening recalls that at the age of about ten, his father, himself an accomplished jazz musician, set him to learn Timmons’ iconic composition ‘Moanin’’ as a test piece. Eager to impress, young Leon rose to the challenge and passed with flying colours. From that moment on he delved through his father’s extensive record collection to discover more treasures from the Timmons’ canon and to embrace the full range of his work; as a pianist and side-man with the likes of Cannonball Adderley and Art Blakey, as a leader of his own trio with Ron Carter on bass and Al ‘Tootie’ Heath on drums and as a composer and arranger.

Timmons, he realised, occupied a unique place in jazz in the late 1950s, infusing his blues/gospel-soaked background with the hard bop of the day to help create something new in the form of ‘soul jazz’. It made the music more accessible to a wider audience without compromising its integrity. A rangy figure, he could use his exceptionally long fingers to great effect at the keyboard. Tragically, Timmons fell prey to the scourge of drug/alcohol abuse that devastated so many musicians of his generation and died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of thirty-eight in 1974.

The palpable spirit of Bobby Timmons set the evening alight with the declamatory ‘This Here’, a hit for Bobby on an album under his own name in 1960 and also for Cannonball Adderley with his classic album ‘In San Francisco’.

If ‘This Here’ was exactly the sort of number one would expect from an exponent of ‘soul’, Timmons’ intriguing arrangement of ‘Autumn Leaves’ added a further dimension to the meaning of the word. This was deeply soulful; an elegy to loss, expressed with heart wrenching beauty by the members of Soultime!

Steve Fishwick switched to the mellow tones of his flugelhorn to ride over a colourful melee of sounds and rhythms conjured by his colleagues on ‘Booker’s Bossa’, a composition by bassist Walter Booker taken from Timmon’s 1967 big band outing ‘Got To Get It’.

Like the legendary Erroll Garner, Leon Greening has the gift of leading the audience (and maybe also his fellow musicians?) through a tantalising labyrinth of side routes and blind alleys before he reveals the full splendour of the melody he wants to play. Some tunes lend themselves perfectly to this guessing game, Victor Herbert’s ‘(I Don’t Stand) a Ghost of a Chance With You’ is one such, which Bobby Timmons recorded on his ‘Easy Does It’ album. Well done to the lady who identified it correctly when Leon invited suggestions from the audience. Nor should we forget a beautiful bass solo from Matyas Hofecker. As a footnote to this song and further evidence of jazz musicians’ aptitude for deconstructing and the rebuilding both word and musical patterns, the late Eddie Thompson, a noted British pianist used to announce it as ‘I Won’t Chance a Stand with a Ghost Like You’.

Another Timmons’ classic ‘So Tired’ was anything but; a brilliant, supercharged tour de force exposition of keyboard artistry from Leon Greening, with everyone ‘manning the pumps’ in support.

With barely a pause for breath the quartet launched into ‘Joy Ride’, a helter-skelter of a number with thrilling exchanges between the respective musicians topped by an outing for Matt Home on the drums, all of which took us to a well-earned interval.

‘Dat Dere’, which first made its appearance as the opening track on Cannonball Adderley’s ‘Them Dirty Blues’ album, set the tone for the second set with an irresistible stamp of authority. It’s earthy power just sweeps you along. Amongst its many delights were Hofecker’s extended bass solo and the precision of Matt Home’s drumming.

Does anyone remember ‘Too Many Girls’, I wonder, a Broadway musical from 1938 with songs by Rodgers and Hart? The show died, but thankfully at least one of its songs, ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was’ survived and has stood the test of time with numerous recordings by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra amongst many other great artists. Steve Fishwick’s trumpet expressed the elegance of the melody against a blues-tinged background featuring the dazzling piano of Leon Greening.

A loping bass introduction gave just enough time for the audience to adjust their seat belts before the band hit ‘Soul Time’, an out-and-out swinger in 3/4 time that shook the rafters.

We entered calmer waters with ‘Malice Towards None’ a beautifully reflective piece featuring the long sinuous lines of Steve Fishwick on flugel horn, composed by Tom McIntosh with whom Timmons worked on the ‘Born To Be Blue’ album.

Another swinger in the form of ‘One Mo’, led inexorably to the climactic finale of a magnificent and truly heartfelt tribute to Bobby Timmons. What else could it be other than ‘Moanin’’, a jazz standard of iconic status with a timeless and universal appeal.

Soultime! keep the flame of Bobby Timmons’ spirit burning brightly. They also remind us of how fortunate we are to have such world class musicians in our midst!!

Our thanks to the Progress Front of House team for their hospitality and to Joe, stationed in a lonely box at the back of the auditorium, for the sound and lighting.

On behalf of the Jazz in Reading may I extend season’s greetings to all our supporters. We promise more great jazz adventures in 2025.

TREVOR BANNISTER

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