Erroll Garner: Concert By The Sea (Waxtime 772361 LP)
My baptism into live jazz began with concerts by three legendary pianists at what was then called the New Victoria Cinema/Theatre. I saw Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and Dave Brubeck, all within a few weeks. Not a bad start. Brubeck’s quartet was disappointingly off-form, Peterson was, as expected, dazzling, but it was Garner, supported by bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, who was the real revelation for me. At the time there was a tendency to dismiss him as a musical clown, what with those labyrinthine preludes and his habit of perching on a copy of the Manhattan telephone directory. This was a trend that demonstrated that it is possible for even (especially?) jazz critics to be po-faced and cloth-eared simultaneously. Maybe appearing on Sunday Night At The London Palladium (as Peterson and Garner had) put them beyond the pale for some purists.
At the time I kept seeing a lot of references to Concert By The Sea, but it was not until some while later that I managed to hear it. Now it’s again reissued for new generations to appreciate as a 180-gram LP, with a bonus track (Garner’s beautiful and durable tune Misty) recorded live in New York eight months later (May 1956) by the same personnel: Calhoun on bass and Denzil Best on drums.
In fact, those gloriously rambling introductions are largely absent here but there is an abundance of melodic invention and lush harmony. The original recording of this live concert in Carmel, California suffered from poor balance, which did not stop the album becoming an almost unprecedented commercial success. The remastering here has not entirely overcome the balance problem but there’s no need to be put off by that: Garner’s joyous explorations and wit are perfectly clear. His inventiveness and sense of fun are particularly evident on Red Top, where he toys with some bebop quotes (after all, somewhat surprisingly, he recorded with Charlie Parker in 1947) and on How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me, where The Sailor’s Hornpipe pops up at one point. For the lyrical side of his talent there are gorgeous versions of Autumn Leaves and the aforesaid Misty. A joy from start to finish.
Ilario Ferrari : Above The Clouds (Elsden Music EM11)
On Above The Clouds the Ilario Ferari Trio shares half of the Charlie Pyne Quartet: Pyne (bass and vocals) and Katie Patterson (drums and vocals). Ferrari himself plays piano, composed all the tunes on the album and also sings. As with Pyne’s own excellent recent album Nature Is A Mother (33 Records 33JAZZ302) some of the compositions were inspired by consideration of our (the human race’s) relationship to the planet and its ecosystems. The trio’s playing manages to sustain a satisfying union of elegance and adventurousness and their collective sound consistently produces alluring textures. The empathy between the members of the trio produces many passages where it seems that (cliché alert) there is one mind in three heads. From lively to languid, Ferrari’s compositions prompt much beautiful and affecting playing.
Satori: Weatherwards (Whirlwind Records WR 4822)
Saxophonist Josephine Davies spent her early years on the west coast of Shetland, and although she moved away whilst still quite young she says “I am forever drawn back and those wild windswept edges inspired the music for Weatherwards.” Satori has been going for seven years and Davies says it is where she finds herself most at home as a player. For six of the 11 tracks on this album she has added pianist Alcyona Mick to the group’s regular format of bass (Dave Whitford) and drums (James Maddren) and when composing the themes she found herself writing more harmonically dense material.
The playing here is less “abstract” than some of the contexts Davies works in, but it’s no less adventurous in its own way, not to mention lyrical and evocative: the nearest I’ve been to the Shetlands is the Pentland Firth, which isn’t very near, so I’m not personally acquainted with the places and events which the tunes are named after, but Davies’s writing and the quartet’s improvisations often do conjure up images that may not be too far removed: Holes Of Scraada, for example, whips up a pretty fierce storm which seems appropriate as it refers to a geological feature through which the sea rushes energetically, and most of us will have seen footage of the ancient winter festival which Up Helly Aa (two versions) is/are named. The Long Dark (the briefest track at 1m 45s) pithily evokes the mood of a season of short days, whilst Song For The Selkie seems to echo the human/seal creature’s longing for the sea. There is a fundamental grace to the compositions which the improvisations respect throughout, adding up to a thoroughly engaging album.
Chube, live at CICCIC in Taunton
I began this piece with reminiscences of the first gigs I attended and will end with a nod to the most recent. On 28 September Taunton’s enterprising arts centre, CICCIC, hosted the Cardiff-based trio Chube – Ben Creighton Griffiths (harp and keyboards), Ashley John Long (bass and bass guitar) and Jon Bradford-Jones on drums. They label themselves “Electro acoustic funk jazz fusion” and presented an intriguingly assorted programme. They kicked off with Milestones before exploring material from sources including classical music, film music and Led Zeppelin, with some band originals plus a version of Nature Boy (played, Griffiths announced, “in the style of George Benson”) which worked very well.
Throughout, Long played a number of enthusiastically applauded grandstanding solos on the electric instrument that never lost the thread of form and development, whilst Griffiths impressed on both of his instruments, not least when he simultaneously played harp with his right hand and keyboard with his left. (He can probably do that thing where you pat your head and rub your belly at the same time.) For all the assorted influences and sparingly used electronics this was a musically coherent session displaying pleasing melodic invention underpinned by Bradford-Jones’s reliable and flexible drumming.
