Zoe Rahman: Hull Suite Live
This suite was commissioned by the Hull Jazz Festival to mark World Piano Day 2024 and was originally designed for solo piano. Rahman subsequently incorporated bass and drum parts and for this performance at London’s venerable Vortex club she was joined by longstanding colleagues Alec Dankworth and Gene Calderazzo, the suite book-ended by three more of her compositions. The vigorous and slightly bluesy Synergy provides a lively prelude, with some nice bass-lines, and is matched in impact by the spirited Fresh Start and Red Squirrel, depicting a seemingly disgruntled creature … perhaps understandable given their endangered status.
Rahman plays with her customary blend of elegance and passion sustained by considerable pianistic panache and rooted in a musical background incorporating classical music and Bengali and Irish traditions. The suite has been influenced by the history of her family and a wider perspective: Rahman writes about her family background, including her father’s journey from Bengal to Australia and her mother’s from England to New Zealand and the occasion when, after her father made a trip home to Bengal, her mother had to sell her piano so that he could convince the Australian authorities that they could be self-sufficient. She also took inspiration from two statues in Hull, one commemorating the 2.2 million people who emigrated from Hull to the USA between 1836 and 1914 and another commemorating fishermen, seafarers and trade shared between Iceland and Britain.
As you might expect, Dankworth and Calderazzo provide strong but sensitive and supportive enrichment to Rahman’s beautiful and engaging playing and compositions. The material for the suite unfolds organically, encompassing varied moods and approaches. There are never any overly obvious narrative depictions of the music’s inspirations but, in light of the background described above, I found Piano Story, Voyage and Waves particularly affecting. The sprightly East Coast concludes the story on an optimistic, even triumphant note.
Various live performances and recordings over the years have led me to have high expectations of any new venture by Rahman, and this album meets those expectations outstandingly. If I were given to such pronouncements, I might dub her a national jazz treasure.
Discography
Rahman (p); Dankworth (b); Calderazzo (d). Vortex Jazz Club, London, 21 June 2025
Energy; Hull Suite: Across The Humber; Out To Sea; Piano Story; Voyage; Waves; East Coast; Fresh Start; Red Squirrel (47.06) Manushi Records MANUCD008
Michael Arbenz – Bach Suite III: A Living Organism
This is the second Bach-inspired album to come my way lately. As with the Neil Cowley Trio’s Built On Bach, the tracks are based on or triggered by compositions by J. S. Bach, and the improvisations are based on these numbers rather than directly on JSB’s works. Arbenz has taken his inspiration from Bach’s Orchestral Suite number 3 in D, and the relationships between Arbenz’s compositions and the original Bach movements are indicated in the discography below. (It was a rearrangement of the air from this suite that became famous as the Air On The G String, and that melody is clearly heard played by Lubowicz during Respire.)
The session opens with a pretty straight reading of the overture by the Atom Quartet before the Arbenz brothers kick in. On Upbeat Bounce and elsewhere the members of the string quartet demonstrate that they can swing like the proverbials when required. The quartet isn’t confined to an accompanying role and is responsible for some quite funky elements.
Reportedly a great improviser himself, like other baroque composers Bach was not averse to rejigging his own (and others’) compositions, re-scoring and rearranging them for different occasions, so he would probably have little objection to this set … so long as he got the royalties.
Discography
Sonic Prelude (Overture); Upbeat Bounce (Gavotte); Inner Engine (Bourree); Respire (Air); Final Spin (Gigue) (41.42)
Michael Arbenz (p); Florian Arbenz (d); Atom String Quartet: Dawid Lubowicz, Mateusz Smoczynski (vn); Michal Zaborski (vla); Krysztof Lenczowsk (clo). Hammerstudios, Basel, 27 March 2026.
Independent
