The Manchester jazz renaissance continued last night at Ronnie Scott’s with the launch of Big Ideas by the main motivators of the city’s new jazz scene Beats & Pieces Big Band. With a recent strong showing by fellow Mancunian Stuart McCallum at Jez Nelson’s Jazz in the Round last month the scene has successfully exported itself to London venues and Beats & Pieces, who returned to Ronnie’s after a much talked about appearance last year in the Frith Street club during the Brit-Jazz fest, are clearly the motor that drives the current scene.

What is remarkable about the band led by Ben Cottrell is the original sounding charts that keep jazz at its heart but has the scope to incorporate experimental rock, notably their take on Radiohead. Big bands in recent years have never been the most cutting edge of outfits bogged down by boring swing rehashes, dodgy band tuxes, and clapped out charts that most young jazzers run a mile from. Beats & Pieces who were fairly unknown outside Manchester until they won a competition in the German city of Burghausen have managed to inject a vim and vigour to the big band construct, and they can truly claim to be a successor to Loose Tubes, although their style has less of the shambling anarchy and inspirations of Django Bates and co about it. But it does share the same spirit of adventurousness, although essentially B&P is less of a free jazz unit than an oversize prog jazz behemoth with the odd customised nod to the likes of Quincy Jones and even Stan Kenton. The band also manages to tap obliquely into its northern hinterland with recalibrated nods to brass band music along the way.

There are lots of great idiosyncratic players tucked away in the band and last night saxophonist Ben Watte, drummer Finlay Panter, and trumpeter Nick Walters stood out while the writing (‘Bake’ in particular) had an ingenious way of cross fertilizing rhythms and gaining traction across reeds and horns. There were some lovely flugelhorn passages and plenty of variety throughout. Cottrell did well to keep his cool to settle the full house when there were problems with both the bridge of the bass and snare drum at the beginning. No one was remotely fazed and you couldn’t help come away with the thought that big is most definitely back.

– Stephen Graham

Beats & Pieces play the Gateshead Jazz Festival on 24 March and the Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple on 28 March

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