Sixty-plus minutes of arresting music as blues-charged as it is harmonically literate, Blue Haven is one hell of an album from the striking Anglo-American quartet which appeared at the Love Supreme Festival in Sussex in 2018 and 2022.
Known primarily as a pianist but on organ here, the Brighton-based, widely experienced Terry Seabrook has worked with, e.g., Anita Wardell, Joe Lee Wilson and Bobby Wellins. He has a special way of mining fresh gems from familiar ground: sample Sketches Of Miles from 2010 (which opened with the hypnotic uptempo modality of That’s What, recast as the concluding piece here) or Celebrating Wayne Shorter from a decade or so later.
While Larry Young’s classic Unity, with Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw and Elvin Jones, is a favourite of Seabrook’s, the freshly turned creative passion that marks Blue Haven is many a mile from any matter of mere affinity or pastiche. The music crackles with its own intensity and intelligence, its own charts and moods. Now up and burning (Blues For Alice), now mellow (Let’s Walk), Seabrook and his confrères gell beautifully in a vivid range of tempi, tone colour and dynamics.
The widely recorded American Peter Fraize is an open-eared, potent and often super-charged player in the Rollins and Brecker lineage, his tenor sound as subtly inflected as it is meaty. Enjoy his tonal and rhythmic authority on the bustling off-set introduction to Moanin’, where multi-dimensional drummer Milo Fell also shines. Son of bassist and jazz educator Adrian (long a legend on the south coast), Jack Kendon has elective affinities that run from Dizzy and Clark Terry to Miles and Clifford Brown: whether open or muted, his lines are as crisply cast as they are thoughtfully developed, exemplified by his solo on GW RIF.
Superb and simply unmissable music. And the extra good news is that the band has recently cut a new set of pieces for a follow-up album. Can’t wait!
Discography
Blue Haven; Swank; Let’s Walk; Ethan’s Sky; Moanin’; Theme For Reggie; GW RIF; Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise; Blues For Alice In Wonderland; Revival; That’s What (67.02)
Peter Fraize (ts); Jack Kendon (t); Terry Seabrook (org); Milo Fell (d). Seaford, 27 July 2018.
Union URCD 013
