After a warm reception last March at the Gateshead Jazz Festival, classically-trained Swiss pianist/composer Nik Bärtsch returned to the Sage earlier this week with his band Ronin to perform a mixture of new material alongside works taken from their most recent album Holon on ECM Records.
The versatile musician, who last month received a commission from world-renowned new music institution Bang on a Can, was in the UK for four dates on a short UK tour which finishes tonight.
Before a note is played, the unusual combination of instruments sitting on stage suggests that an interesting soundworld awaits. As you scan from left to right you wonder what the abnormally large woodwind instrument might be? It is in fact the contrabass clarinet belonging to reedsman Sha, who with incredible stamina uses it to churn out some mean riffs and growls.
Bärtsch certainly has a penchant for the lower registers and he explains to me that this is why bassist Björn Meyer is given plenty of space to improvise. For the others, improvisation becomes an exercise in restraint. Against the busy, polyrhythmic, and funky minimalist soundscapes – less is more. From quiet meditative beginnings, the pieces build in rhythmic and dynamic intensity, often ending with a live fade-out which completes the structural cycle.
In these mesmerising performances Bärtsch leads the way in exploring timbre, scraping the innards of his piano, and playing pulse like figures with muted strings. Percussionist Andi Pupato experiments too, with exotic shakers and other ethereal noise makers providing a nice contrast to the mostly traditional kit of drummer Kaspar Rast.
It is worth pointing out that despite the impressive array of laptops, effects boxes, and futuristic earpieces, the whole performance is created live without backing tracks or the aid of loop pedals. Bärtsch tells me that the computers are used just to ‘clean up’ the sounds, and indeed the overall sound quality is impeccable. After a slick non-stop set the audience is finally given the chance to applaud and the band end on a high with a hard-hitting funk groove as an encore. Whether or not this is jazz isn’t important. Genre-defying Ronin perform powerful and complex music which captures both heart and mind. – David Tshulak
Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin are at the ICA in London tonight. Tickets:www.ica.org.uk
This year’s Swanage Jazz Festival is now confirmed to take place from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 July, one of the first UK summer jazz festivals to announce its line-up for this year. Perched on Dorset’s dramatic Jurassic coastline, the seaside town has been hosting a jazz festival for 21 years.
Its line-up for 2010 mixes a generous helping of traditional jazz fare (from New Orleans and Dixieland bands to vocal groups) with younger straightahead combos such as the Henry Armburg Jennings Quintet and edgier offerings including Back Door Too, the Dave Stapleton Quintet and the Kit Downes Trio.
British jazz’s hardest working octogenarian Stan Tracey will play both octet and trio sets, while the equally workaholic Gilad Atzmon appears with his quartet and will guest with Alan Barnes, Nicolas Meier and vocalist Sarah Gillespie.
Alongside the five main festival venues (three seafront marquees plus a bar and the Conservative Club) there are numerous free gigs in the town’s pubs and in the open air, as well as a brass band parade on Saturday morning and a gospel church service on Sunday. Weekend stroller tickets are on sale until the end of May, with day tickets available after that.
Not long now to the first major event on the UK jazz festival calendar for 2010, the Gateshead International Jazz Festival which takes place between 26 March and 28 March. The festival has been an annual fixture at the Sage Gateshead since 2005 and continues to go from strength to strength, as reflected in this year’s varied and exciting line-up.
On Friday 26 concert-goers can choose between the Stan Tracey Octet and the Sun Ra stylings of Jerry Dammers’ Spatial AKA Orchestra.
The afternoon of Saturday 27 features performances by UK pianist/composer Gwilym Simcock (with his Massed Voices project), as well as ex-EST bassist Dan Berglund’s acclaimed quartet Tonbruket. South African piano giant Abdullah Ibrahim headlines Saturday evening with his seven piece Ekaya band.
North London’s Loop Collective gets a showcase during the afternoon of Sunday 28, with performances by Phronesis, Gemini and The Golden Age of Steam. The festival’s closing performances on Sunday evening come from the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in Hall One (performing Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue and a tribute to Buddy Rich) and crossover star Gwyneth Herbert in Hall Two.
In addition to the stellar headliners the festival includes performances from some of the rising stars of the North East, as well as talks, workshops and masterclasses.
This year promises to be a big year for guitarist Billy Jenkins, the maverick jazz and blues guitarist, with a series of key album reissues and a brand new album.
First up is the new disc I Am A Man From Lewisham, the latest instalment in Jenkins’ musings on his beloved south east London. His previous suburban tone poems Sounds Like Bromley from 1981 and Greenwich from four years later will be digitally reissued for the first time.
Later in the summer Jenkin’s Uncommericality series will be issued as digital downloads along with Jazz Café Concerts Vols 1 and 2.
A new blues album is planned for the autumn and the first download issue of the three Blues Collective albums.
Jasper Høiby’s group Phronesis have been making a name for themselves as one of the most exciting piano trios on the scene. Last week they recorded live for the first time in the atmospheric setting of Camden’s The Forge venue in London.
The buzz was amplified by the addition of US drummer Mark Giuliana alongside double bassist Høiby and pianist Ivo Neame. The Forge’s high ceiling, wood-panelled walls and gorgeous acoustic made it feel as though we were crowded into a recording studio. And we were: the best recordings from the two shows will make up a live album.
At times on Thursday it was clear that Høiby was feeling the pressure of the recording equipment, tapping the mike hesitantly before each announcement and restarting ‘Love Song’ after a minute. But there was no tentativeness in the music itself.
The first set started small, Høiby’s driving riffs and tricksy time signatures relentlessly building tension all the way to the storming first set closer, ‘Abraham’s New Gift’. The second set climaxed with the no less explosive ‘Smoking The Camel’, featuring an astounding polyrhythmic solo from Giuliana, whose playing throughout combined antsy energy with surgical precision.
With Høiby providing the rhythmic anchor for his compositions, Giuliana and Neame were free to exploit the full colour palette of their instruments, Neame infusing the busy grooves with a Jarrett-like melodic sensibility. The album is due for release in August, on Edition Records.
The Barbican has unveiled further details of this summer’s international residency partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The United In Swing season features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests in a specially conceived concert series along with a programme of creative learning in London schools and at the Guildhall School of Music. There will also be performances in east London partner venues including a swing dance evening at Stoke Newington Town Hall, jam sessions at the Vortex in Dalston, and a special family concert at Hackney Empire.
The three main Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concerts will tell the story of the American jazz orchestra, celebrating 80 years of great big band music, from Jelly Roll Morton to the present day, curated by Wynton Marsalis.
Concerts include Thursday 17 June: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Swinging Beginnings (Barbican).
Friday 18 June: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Bebop and Beyond (Barbican).
Saturday 19 June: Big Band Britannia: Inspirations and Collaborations (Barbican) with eight decades of British big band music celebrated by a specially-assembled big band led by composer, arranger and trumpeter Guy Barker. The evening will also feature a special tribute to the pre-eminent figure in British big band jazz, the late Sir John Dankworth. A range of special guests from successive generations will include Stan Tracey, Peter King, Bobby Wellins, Soweto Kinch and Jason Yarde.
Sunday 20 June: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Modern Jazz Masters (Hackney Empire).
Sunday 20 June 3pm: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Jazz for Young People (Hackney Empire), an afternoon concert featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s specially prepared family programme, Nursery Song Swing.
Other events include A Midsummer Night’s Swing at Stoke Newington Town Hall on 17 June and jam sessions at the Vortex and the Hackney Empire Review Bar, as well as a jazz leadership day at the Barbican Theatre on 18 June and Essentially Ellington UK on 19 June.
There’s no doubt that US pianist Vijay Iyer has become one of the more talked about pianists in recent years excelling in different formats and drawing on hitherto little known pathways into jazz via his south Indian roots. His long time playing partner Rudresh Mahanthappa, playing last night at the Vortex for the first time with Iyer in the duo they call Raw Materials, is an ideal foil to the cerebral Iyer, adding gruffly melodic decoration to Iyer’s sometimes impenetrable but always captivating runs.
Fast, with a beautiful sour tone and thick voicings, Mahanthappa dominated the early sections of the gig but if you listened carefully, what Iyer was doing was equally fascinating, drawing harmonic depth from his deep well of ideas and skipping before and after Mahanthappa in deft out of time sequences and darting start-stop themes.
The improvisations were long but full of variation and imagination and the pair had the packed Vortex rapt throughout. While at times you could hear Indian rhythms and melodies emerging from the wealth of ideas the pair produced, the merging with post-bop jazz was a seamless mix which worked beautifully throughout. Judging by the reception given to the pair surely it can’t be long before they’re back again.
A special French jazz week at London’s Kings Place from 5-8 May has been announced by the French Music Export Office which will feature performances and collaborations with French, British and American names.
The festival, ‘Partager: New York, Paris, London’, features Sylvain Luc (5 May); Laika with Robert Glasper (6 May); Matthieu Donarier Trio (6 May); Emile Parisien Quartet (6 May); Baptiste Trotignon and Mark Turner Duo (7 May); Jean Marc Folz and Stephan Oliva Duo (7 May); Sophie Domancich, William Parker and Hamid Drake (8 May); Julia Sarr (8 May); Donkey Monkey (8May); Zoom! (8 May).
Following a very active 2009 in the UK for French jazz, with 108 concerts including the Parisian Jazz showcase at Kings Place last June, the French Music Export Office is lining up even more activity for 2010 including forthcoming dates by Louis Sclavis at Kings Place on 19 March; Bojan Z, Yaron Herman and Baptiste Trotignon at Pizza Express Jazz Club, 18 April; a Renza Bô tour from 25-29 April and Raphael Imbert dates at Charlie Wright’s, London on 27 and 29 April.
In addition the Banlieues Bleues Festival in Paris from 25-26 March will feature showcases and meetings aimed at developing strong relations between the UK and French jazz scene while the highly rated Jazz Sous Les Pommiers Festival, that takes place in Coutances, Normandy from 8-15 May will feature a special UK jazz strand with up to 10 Brit jazz groups performing.
US drum legend Roy Haynes and young British stars Portico Quartet will be among the acts performing at this year’s Brighton Festival, which runs from 1 May to 23 May.
Guest artistic director Brian Eno has chosen an eclectic range of artists for the festival’s musical line-up – from the realms of classical, electronic and world music as well as jazz.
Eighty-five-year-old Haynes, who has played with everyone from Lester Young and Charlie Parker onwards, appears on 18 May with The Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band, featuring Jaleel Shaw on saxes, Martin Bejerano on piano and David Wong on bass.
Portico Quartet, nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2008, will be supporting Tunisian oud virtuoso Anouar Brahem on 4 May. Brahem, a star of the ECM stable since 1991, will be performing material from his latest album The Astounding Eyes of Rita with an international quartet.
Then on 16 May Polar Bear’s electronics shaman Leafcutter John will be joined on percussion by fellow DJ and producer Talvin Singh, for a performance in the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion. The programme of concerts takes place alongside dance, theatre and literary events.
Continuing to fly the flag for quality jazz in the midlands Birmingham Town Hall has announced a strong spring programme that kicked off back in January with Jan Garbarek’s current band and continues this Wednesday, 3 March, with Courtney Pine’s Transition In Traditionband that features both pianist Zoe Rahman and vibrant Cuban violinist Omar Puente.
Popular crossover jazz singer Melody Gardot also appears on 19 April and the vocal jazz continues with a spirited Tribute To Ella And Louis from Anita Wardell, Australian trumpeter James Morrison and the BBC Big Band on 23 April.
Legendary South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela reprises his acclaimed collaboration with saxophonist/composer Jason Yarde this time with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a concert that will also feature the Town Hall Gospel Choir and City of Birmingham Young Voices on 7 May.
Budding jazz musicians in the South West and South Wales will get increased opportunities to play plus the chance to win a generous cash prize thanks to an initiative launched by hotel chain Future Inns. The region-wide competition to find the most talented and original unsigned jazz musicians will reach out to the four corners of the area with the lure of a winners prize worth £5,000 that also includes recording studio time and a mentoring session with a top UK Jazz artist. With hotels in Plymouth, Cardiff and Bristol, the winners will also be given accommodation in these hotels – and have the opportunity to perform their own gig at Jazz@Future Inns, situated in the Cabot Circus Hotel, Bristol.
Del Brett, managing director at Future Inns, said: “We are passionate about jazz and have opened an acclaimed new jazz venue, which has been designed to cater for music lovers, at our new hotel in Bristol’s Cabot Circus. “Jazz music is often seen as a niche art form and our aim with this competition is to help promote the talented musicians and performers that live in the South West and South Wales. “With a great prize package to offer, we anticipate hearing different styles of jazz and hopefully find a truly unique and talented winner.” Ian Storror, manager of Jazz@Future Inns and well-known jazz promoter, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to champion the talent and musicianship of many of this region’s incredible jazz artistes – from solo musicians to full jazz bands. The club is already attracting established names on the International, National and local scene and we hope that by helping new talent come to light we can put the spotlight on the next future stars of jazz.”
The deadline for entries is March 28 2010, with a semi-final gig on May 8 and a finals night to be held following that. Interested entrants need to go to the Future Inns, Bristol website and download the entry form and then submit a recording of a minimum of one original composition of jazz music and either one or two other pieces.
For more information log on to: www.futureinns.co.uk or email
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