Ensemble with an array of styles
THEY say the family that plays together stays together and that’s true, at least, for the Chicago-based Cohran brothers.
The eight sons of Phil Cohran (onetime trumpeter with the famed Sun Ra Arkestra) grew up playing music and have a 15-year recording career to underline those blood ties.
Working as the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the band ranges across funk, rock, soul, jazz, hip-hop and calypso. Having toured the world playing with the likes of Prince, Damon Albarn (Gorillaz), Mos Def and Mick Jones of The Clash, there is not much, stylistically speaking, that these musicians will not tackle.
They have played at the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, WOMAD, Lincoln Centre, Coachella and countless other major venues/festivals. However, despite the high-end venues, the band continues to tour relentlessly and play smaller gigs like the Cluny, where they appear on Monday night.
The band’s hit version of the song War (the Temptations/Edwin Starr song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong), featured in the film The Hunger Games.
They generate a vibrant, pulsating wall of sound that could animate granite and it is not hard to see why the word hypnotic found its way into their name.
Sticking with big-band sounds, Hoochie Coochie in Pilgrim Street has the combined forces of the gospel/soul Voices of Virtue Choir plus the beats of Smoove and some of his Smoove and Turrell bandmates tonight at 9pm.
The Voices of Virtue Choir – drawn from churches across the region – have performed at the Houses of Parliament on two occasions as well as a high-profile gig at Wylam Brewery with Sting (for the Graham Wylie Foundation).
Tomorrow night, the guest at the Cluny is the Shrewsbury singer-songwriter Dan Owen. He recently released his debut album, Stay Awake With Me, after touring extensively for the last few years. Owen has played guitar from the age of eight, but his soul-laden voice can often sound much older than he actually is (he is 25).
On Wednesday night, Cluny 2 has two members of the Thin Lizzy offshoot Black Star Riders in acoustic mode. Ricky Warwick (vocals/guitar) and Damon Johnson (guitar/vocals) are touring as an acoustic duo performing songs in a show they have dubbed Sonic Acoustic Attack.
It is a two-hour show which features material from across the careers of both men. Included in that repertoire are songs from the catalogues of Alice Cooper and Black Star Riders.
On Thursday night in the same venue there’s another opportunity to catch Scottish musician Roddy Woomble, who is lead vocalist with the band Idlewild.