From exuberant scatting to The Beatles via New Orleans
Edinburgh Jazz Festival
The festival’s opening events included a “Celebrating Women in Jazz” round-table discussion featuring eight female singers and instrumentalists. The tone was generally positive while acknowledging that women often still have to “overprove themselves” in a male-dominated jazz world.
No-one, however, had to prove anything when two of the participants, Laura Macdonald and younger fellowsaxophonist Helena Kay, fronted a twin-horn quartet with bassist Mario Caribe and drummer Doug Hough in a Laura Macdonald Presents programme ( **** ).
Filmed in the airy light of Stockbridge Parish Church, they opened with the far from uncertain-sounding Indecision, Macdonald’s alto sax sounding a feisty introduction before being joined by Kay’s mellow but deliberate tenor. The show also saw Macdonald duet with pianist Zoe Rahman, whose cascading introductions ushered in a floating sax tone in Duplicity, and in the sublime Land of Beauty. If Macdonald and Rahman seemed well keyed into each other, so too did multi-award-winning vocalist Jacqui Dankworth and her husband, American singerpianist Charlie Wood ( **** ), streaming from Assembly Roxy and opening with a purposeful It Takes Two to Tango, punctuated by rolling stride piano.
They complemented each other deftly, from the exuberant scatting and joyfully harmonised conclusion of It Don’t Mean a Thing to Wood’s soulful holler and dramatic vocal sparringinthesixtiesstandard Windmills of Your Mind.
Also time-travelling back to the Sixties, with funky panache, were Brass Gumbo ( **** ), a New Orleans-style band who romped their merry way through The Beatles’ back catalogue.theirarrangements wereconvincinglythoughtout, with one of the Fab Four’s most complexrecordings,strawberry Fields, working surprisingly well,.
The acclaimed alto-saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch cut something of a shadowyfigure,lurkingunderasunhat, in his Assembly Roxy collaboration with Edinburgh’s lively Playtime collective ( **** ) of tenor saxophonist Martin Kershaw, guitarist Graeme Stephen, bassist Mario Caribe and drummer Tom Bancroft. Kinch’splaying,however,could take on pungent assertiveness, as in Trade, when not playing in unison or sparring with Kershaw, who came out with some eloquent reedwork of his own. Kershaw’s tune, Bin Monster, was suitably gutsy, the two horns elbowing off each other and Stephen providing some muscular guitar work.
Vintage jazz specialist, singer Ali Affleck ( **** ) swung us zestily back to the music’s roots with her Hot Town Tigers, the vibe set by the opening Cooking Breakfast with the One I Love, trumpet sounding perkily as dancers swung languidly. In contrast was the soulful, velvetyglideofmoodindigo,while A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight yanked jazz’s pedigree back to the 19th century – and with gusto.