Pianist Will Butterworth returned to the Assembly Rooms for the third time in twelve months with his most ambitious project yet. Butterworth’s previous visits (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) had been with trios, the first with drummer Howe and saxophonist Jake McMurchie (of Get The Blessing fame), the second with the young bass and drum team of Matt Ridley and Jon Scott. Both were hugely enjoyable evenings of jazz and improvised music but this time young Mr. Butterworth had decided the Presteigne audience were ready for something a little more challenging.

In a pared down format with only drummer Dylan Howe for company Butterworth treated us to renditions of Igor Stravinsky’s most famous works “The Rite Of Spring” and “The Firebird Suite” both arranged for jazz piano and drums only. With each lengthy piece occupying a whole half of the performance ( there was a twenty minute interval) this concert tested the concentration and physical resourcefulness of the two players to the full but they rose to the challenge and in turn an attentive audience responded to them.

After the duo had been introduced by promoter and MC Tony Walton of Tigerfish Productions Dylan Howe made a short explanation about the nature of the project. This was the first performance of these pieces outside London ( the duo had already played successful shows at London venues The Vortex Jazz Club and Café Oto) and it is hoped that an album will be released in 2010.

Preliminaries over it was straight into Stravinsky’s “The Rite Of Spring”, a controversial piece that provoked riots on it’s premi?re in 1913. The work is a musical interpretation of pagan rituals in pre-Christian Russia and although it no longer provokes the outcry it did in 1913 the piece is still regarded as one of the most challenging and uncompromising items in the classical canon. Stravinsky (1882-1971) was an early experimenter with unusual or plain bizarre time signatures, in turn inspiring Charlie Parker and the bebop crowd. It’s no wonder that contemporary players like Butterworth with a foot in both the jazz and classical camps find him so fascinating.

I’m a jazz listener and I can’t claim any great familiarity with the original versions of either of tonight’s works. My friend Sarah who was also present at tonight’s show described the orchestral version of The Rite” as being full of “muscular violence”, a nice turn of phrase that I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing. Howe and Butterworth certainly seemed to encapsulate this with the pianist’s rumbling left hand figures and the drummer’s intermittent drum explosions utilising either soft heads (in the manner of an orchestral tympanist) or conventional sticks. Not that it was all sound and fury, there were passages of comparative serenity featuring Howe’s delicate brushwork plus reflective passages for solo piano. In the main though it was pretty full on with jarring staccato passages, seemingly improvised sections when the two protagonists traded ideas, plus a powerful, almost brutal drum solo from Howe at the close.

Butterworth had played with the score open in front of him but didn’t appear to be studying it too closely. Howe played with no manuscript at all.
I think it’s fair to say that they used Stravinsky’s themes as a kind of musical map, sometimes wandering off the beaten track into more improvised, jazz territory- there were even a few moments of conventional jazz swing. A quick word with the players after the gig confirmed these suspicions with Butterworth mentioning the enormous effect Stravinsky had had on jazz musicians in general and Parker in particular. Indeed he (Butterworth) seemed to regard Stravinsky as some kind of godfather of jazz music.

During the break something occurred that just couldn’t happen in London. The venue hadn’t applied for a bar on this occasion so everybody trooped to the Duke’s Arms next door for a drink. The landlord let us bring a pint back for the second half as long as we took our glasses back afterwards, at which point he was sincerely hoping we’d fill them back up again! This nice little “I’ll scratch your back” arrangement came about as the mixing desk for the evening had been borrowed from The Dukes, itself a popular live music venue. Only in Presteigne.

Dylan Howe introduced the second half by explaining that he been exposed to “The Firebird Suite” as a very young child. Dylan is the son of Steve Howe, guitarist with Yes and back in their seventies heyday Dad’s band used “The Firebird” as their introductory music. Indeed I remember hearing a snippet of it on the 1973 triple live album “Yessongs”, sad to say my only real experience of Stravinsky’s music until this evening! However it was the Yes connection that was the seed for tonight’s project, that early exposure whetted Dylan’s appetite to do something with the piece and in Will Butterworth he had found the ideal collaborator.

“The Firebird Suite” (1910) was written as a ballet and is a more inherently melodic piece of work than “The Rite”. This time neither musician played with a score and the jazz and swing quotient was consequently higher. After Howe’s solo drum intro Butterworth expounded upon one of Stravinsky’s most melodic themes. The pianist’s soloing was intense and feverish, his left hand taking over the bass duties ( there were moments tonight when I missed the re-assuring presence of a bass player-Matt Ridley would have been excellent in this context) whilst his right improvised in dazzling fashion. Butterworth’s hands seemed to function completely independently of one another. I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member to be sat there in slack jawed admiration thinking “just how the hell does he do that?!” After another drum interlude from Howe the duo played out the theme in decidedly celebratory fashion.

I think it’s fair to say that most of the audience enjoyed the second half of the performance more than the first by virtue of the fact that “Firebird” is inherently a more melodic and accessible piece of work, it was written to be danced to after all. Nonetheless one couldn’t help but be impressed by the duo’s performance of “The Rite” and the intensity and virtuosity they brought to it. Stravinsky was a comparatively young man when he wrote these works, fearless, exploratory and not afraid to shock. Maybe he was a proto punk as well as a nascent jazzer. 

Although tonight’s music was not as immediately accessible as that played on Butterworth’s previous two visits this was still a fascinating and frequently spellbinding performance which was a total success on it’s own terms.

Butterworth’s next visit to the Welsh Borders will reveal yet another side of this talented young player’s musical personality. On Saturday December 5th 2009 he visits the Globe at Hay On Wye for a quartet performance which will see him getting funky on Fender Rhodes accompanied by Tom Harvey on alto sax, Marcus Penrose on double bass and Pete Ibbetson at the drums. For more details contact Tony Walton at Tigerfish Productions tel; 01568 770177 or go to http://www.globeathay.org tel; 01497 821762  

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