Quartet’s multi-cultural chemistry is something special
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival
John McLaughlin & the 4th Dimension Festival Theatre Rob Adams
JOHN McLaughlin began by expressing the hope that as many years wouldn’t pass before his next appearance in these parts as passed between this concert and the previous one, and by the time he and the 4th Dimension departed, there was a general consensus that the next time couldn’t arrive too soon.
The guitarist’s current group has been acclaimed as his best ever. That’s quite an assessment.
He’s had a few contenders but there’s something about the chemistry between this quartet, a gathering from three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe – with influences from a fourth – America – that’s special.
Sure, there’s the expected virtuosity, the quick-fire phrases played with intensity and picked up in ensembles as if by telepathy. But there’s also directness, communication, excitement, beauty, and tenderness.
To all intents and purposes, this is a blues band, if one operating at a rarefied level and with ‘Indo-bebop’ as the blues’ prefix.
Homages to absent friends appeared throughout the set: to Jaco Pastorius, briefly in the encore; to Carlos Santana, in a marvellous ballad duet of CS between McLaughlin and Gary Husband on keys, and in the guitar tone and phrasing on Pharoah Sanders’ lovely Light at the Edge of the World; and to Paco de Lucia in the soulfully delivered El Hombre que Sabia.
The unstated absentee was Miles Davis. There weren’t many occasions when McLaughlin’s mentor’s trumpet couldn’t have slotted in and he’d surely have approved of Ranjit Barot’s vocalised rhythms and ultradynamic drum conversations with Husband, of Etienne M’Bappe’s extraordinary, meaningful bass guitar facility, and of McLaughlin’s own apparently undimmable passion, grace and fire.
New Orleans Swamp Donkeys City Art Centre, Edinburgh Alison Kerr
THE Friday late-night session at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival’s new venue for 2016, the fifth floor of the City Art Centre, was a bit of a surreal experience – before you even got to the performance by a be-kilted escapee from the Louis Armstrong lookalikes agency.
Why? Because, as with the Spiegeltents, where punters have to queue in all weathers until doors open a few minutes before kick-off, ticket-holders had to wait in line in the ground floor lobby until, eight minutes before showtime, they were allowed into the lift – in groups determined by the ticket inspectors. The easyJet similarity continued with a pre-take-off announcement that, upon disembarking, the bar would be on their right and the toilets straight ahead.
If you were flying solo and weren’t in the first few elevators, then by the time you reached your destination, and had bought a drink or been to the bathroom, the music had started and there were no seats available other than at the very back of this long, curtained-off space.
Still, as it turned out, this was probably the place to sit – if you were alone and not in ‘party flight’ mode. It meant that the Swamp Donkeys wouldn’t spot grimaces on this jazz fan’s face as their leader, trumpeter and singer James Williams, turned in 90 minutes’ worth of panto-worthy impersonations of Louis Armstrong, complete with giant white hanky.
Despite his respectable trumpet playing, and some nice ensemble moments, and although the partytastic young Friday night crowd lapped it up, there was nothing special about this touristy New Orleans band whose only advantages over a similarly unremarkable Scottish trad band were the authentic accents.
Hot Antic Jazz Band Spiegeltent George Square, Edinburgh Alison Kerr
ONE of the best-loved bands and most frequent visitors to the Edinburgh Jazz Festival during its first decade of existence returned to the city for this year’s opening weekend. The Hot Antic Jazz Band may have got off to a slightly difficult start on Friday, when the previous evening’s horrific attacks on their region of France inevitably cast a pall over proceedings, but by Saturday, it was business as usual – albeit with a suitably moving tribute to the victims in the shape of the haunting tune La Roulotte.
And what is business as usual? Well, although the band is now of a similar vintage to the jazz festival – ie, almost 40 years of age – and despite being in its third incarnation in terms of personnel (only two of the original line-up remain), the six Hot Antics still dish up the classic jazz they love and they do so with terrific style and a great sense of humour – which makes them winners with both jazz aficionados and first time jazz festivallers alike.
On Saturday, they brought the Spiegeltent down with their funny and charming take on Three Little Words, sung by the vocal trio of their front line (trumpet and reeds) with comically timed ‘wah-wahs’ from the piano player as he burst onto the front of the stage.
Like their 1980s version of Puttin’ On the Ritz, Three Little Words will forever now have a French accent for jazz festival concert-goers when they sing it to themselves in the future.
The other main highlight of the hour-long concert, which ended with standing ovations, was an exhilarating Jersey Lightning which featured some sensational unison playing from the band’s two-man sax section. Vive la France!
Marcin Wasilewski Trio Queen’s Hall Rob Adams
MESSAGE in a Bottle was a game changer. The Police hit, as played by Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s trio in this opening night concert, may have simply continued jazz’s long tradition of appropriating pop songs, but it also illustrated how this group can take material from other sources and render it almost as if they’d composed it themselves.
With Wasilewski’s powerful left hand attack pushing it purposefully along, the song also brought the concert out of an initially contemplative, careful mood, with the opening ballad giving an impression of this worldtravelling group casting thoughts towards more troubled parts, into the joyous, clear, precise and spring-heeled music-making at which it excels.
Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz have been working together for over half of their lifetimes, and they’re not exactly greybeards.
Their twenty-plus years’ partnership shows, though, in their mutual understanding with Miskiewicz’s choices of patterns and strokes especially underlining the feeling of a common artistic endeavour.
He might tap sticks on drum shells or fingertips on snare skin or use an altogether less gentle whack on the crash cymbal on an emphatic beat, but what he plays is always what the moment requires. So too with double bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, who projects a muscular yet melodic reassuring constancy.
Herbie Hancock’s idiosyncratic Actual Proof was another cover version taken convincingly into the group’s style, with only its familiar refrain giving its origins away, and of their own compositions, with Wasilewski’s keen improvising richly embellishing a knack for strong themes and pedalling momentum, the beautiful Austin, Wasilewski’s heartfelt dedication to tragic young pianist Austin Peralta, particularly stood out.
Music Belly Garage, Glasgow Keith Bruce
A PICTURE of the UK prime minister and Scotland’s first minister on the steps of Bute House may well be a distant inspiration to young girls, but it is much easier to warm to female role models not perched on the plinth of state.
There were a lot of smiley happy people of both sexes in Glasgow Garage on Friday evening, assembled in exactly the right space to witness the first official appearance of Tanya Donelly’s band since she wound it up two decades ago.
Alongside her, bassist Gail Greenwood is the self-appointed MC of the show and the pair are a superb double-act, with brothers Tom and Chris Gorman (guitar and drums) sensibly staying schtum for most of the night.
Greenwood is anxious to trace any of her Glasgwegian grandmother’s relatives, and if no Connollys – or indeed Donellys – step forward, a few of the chaps volunteer to be cousins, possibly of the kissing kind.
I’m guessing Belly never tried to be slick, but the relaxed approach to performing stops when the music starts. Donelly’s songs are superb and if her own guitar playing is often the highlight of the accompaniment to her distinctive post-country vocals, each of her bandmates make their own telling contribution.
The classic step of moving from solo vocals and guitar to full band sound in the course of a song has rarely built so beautifully. Belly the band is one elegantly balanced rock’n’roll quartet, which only makes the leader and her bassist throwing parodic macho back-toback rock’n’roll shapes during Feed the Tree all the more apt somehow.
Best of all is that the new songs Donelly unveils are among the highlights of the set, and cheered to the rafters by fans enthusiastic to pick up where they left off.