This, the second album from Rattigan’s Pavillon, was released in the middle of an eight-date tour running from the latter part of 2019 into the start of 2020. The leader is prominent throughout both in the ensembles and the solo department.
It’s a relative rarity for a jazz group to be led by a French-horn player, but the sound soon seems familiar in the leader’s hands, where tonally his chosen instrument could be mistaken for a trombone, and we can concentrate on the matter in hand. All the music comes from Rattigan’s pen, offering up a varied palette, rhythmically, harmonically and melodically.
Just a glance at the personnel tells the potential buyer of a quality line-up promising a depth to the collective passages written by a former member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. None of the sounds are particularly ground-breaking but the overall effect is one of a pleasing experience for the aural senses.
The soloists are similarly satisfying, including trumpeters Robbie Robson and Percy Pursglove with whom Rattigan rubbed shoulders in a number of Mike Gibbs aggregations, an experience which led him to form his own sizeable band, after a period where he had fronted his own quartet.
Leaving the often hidebound environment of the symphony orchestra has done Jim Rattigan no harm at all.
Discography
Timbuckthree; See You Suddenly; Oh Yeah Great, Thanks; Eclipse; Sweet Tamarind; Ballad Blue; Why Ask; Crout’n Confusion; The Freedom Of Movement (50.49)
Rattigan (frh); Martin Speake (as); Andy Panayi (ts); Mick Foster bar); Percy Pursglove (t, flh); Steve Fishwick, Robbie Robson (t); Mark Nightingale (tenor tb); Sarah Williams (btb); Hans Koller (p); Dave Whitford (b); Martin France (d). London, 24 June 2019.
Three Worlds Records, no number
