Some very good news for Saturday: singer Gretchen Parlato is appearing on the Barbican freestage this Saturday at with a trio of top-flight New Yorkers Taylor Eigsti, Piano, Kendrick Scott Drums and Alan Hampton Bass.
It's just part of the Barbican Charlie Haden weekend.
Here's the full programme, which has been expanded and added to quite a bit since we did THIS PREVIEW. There's a live recording of Jazz Library with Charlie Haden:
Saturday 21 May
6pm - Gretchen Parlato, Barbican Freestage FREE
8pm - Quartet West, with guests Melody Gardot, Liane Carroll, Ruth Cameron Barbican Hall
Sunday 22 May
5.30pm – BBC Radio Jazz Library with Charlie Haden, Fountain Room FREE
6.45pm – Robert Mitchell 3io, Barbican Freestage FREE
8pm – Liberation Music Orchestra, Barbican Hall
More about Parlato: Sarah Ellen Hughes' review of her 2010 London Jazz Festival gig was our most-read piece about the festival. It's a great read:
Sarah concluded: "Parlato [...] forces us to re-think some of the basics of what jazz singing is about. And that can only be a very good thing."
And China Moses wrote in a comment: "She's is great! I have such a singer's crush !!"
Esperanza Spalding (Barbican Centre, Friday 08 April. Review by Fran Hardcastle, photo credit: Roger Thomas)
Esperanza Spalding entered the Barbican stage in darkness, kicked off her shoes and poured a glass of wine. What followed was a short taste of honeyed chamber music for string trio (Jody Redhage, Sara Caswell and Lois Martin). The mini living room set brought a dash of theatricality, but it was a warm, welcoming and original touch, typical of the performing style that allowed her to defy the odds, and to win her the Grammy for Best New Artist.
While the music she performs draws influence from her classical roots, adding inflections of folk and world, the concoction is distinctly creatively fresh. Complex challenging time signatures sound organic. The sweetest songs avoid becoming overtly saccharine by the use of meaty harmony. The occasional use of vocals from Leala Cyr as part of the musical texture added to the orchestration of works like Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Spalding’s characterful voice slipped from soft smoky hues to wild free gut- wrenching cries of emotion. Her mature and heartfelt interpretation of Wild is the Wind belied her 26 years and brought me to tears. Whilst her vocal virtuousity was reflective of early Norma Winstone in the pitch perfect vocalese of Chacarera. On the bass, solos had her flying fingers dance around the instrument, or pulling out a warm sonorous tone with her bow.
Spalding displayed her flair for the dramatic in a captivating performance of Apple Blossoms, taking a seat to perform the song as though narrating a story. Her touching use of body language brought the lyrics to life. The exchange of spoken introductions for monologues building to recitative passages to segue into charts was effective if towards the end, a tad overused.
The highlight of the evening, the vibrant latin tinged What A Friend, saw a welcome opportunity for pianist Leo Genovese to let rip supported by brief spurts of fire from percussionist Richie Barshay. It was a shame there weren’t more chances to hear from these pretty spectacular musicians, but this didn’t mar the rapture of the audience in watching Spalding really hitting it on the bass, revelling in the interaction of her powerful band. Along with Winter Sun, it doesn’t seem far-reaching to liken her writing to Stevie Wonder in the ability to produce jubilant music that lives on in your head long after the performance.
Penguin Cafe/ Portico Quartet (Barbican Hall, February 9th 2011, Review by Jack Lowe, photo below by Roger Thomas)
A packed Barbican Hall went gleefully wild for Penguin Cafe from the very first number, featuring Neil Codling on a pair of penny whistles. But it wasn't until the slightly later, in 'Swing The Cat' that the energy on stage and the tempo of the gig really picked up and brought the power and scale of the music, as well as Arthur Jeffes' bandleading skills to the fore.
Jeffes prefers slightly fuller chord progressions than his late father who founded Penguin Cafe Orchestra in the early 70's. 'Landau' grabbed the attention completely with a repetitive heart-beat like rhythm, juxtaposed against an elongated melody from the strings . There was a wonderful sense of travel akin to Reich's 'Different Trains.' In this piece I certainly got the sense of having to 'listen back' to fully appreciate the grand design of a superbly simple piece of musical architecture.
Anoher moment to remember was when Jeffes switched back and forth between playing the Steinway and tapping a strip of reinforced glass. A later piece for ukulele quartet gave a lesson in the effective gradation of dynamics. Classic Penguin Cafe Orchestra tunes such as 'Music For A Found Harmonium' were given a fresh reboot. By the end of the night half the audience were up on ther feet to give an ovation.
The first half, from Portico Quartet, also took time to settle in. Jack Mulvie opened the show with a plangent sax tone reminiscent of 'An Englishman in New York,' but there was more twenty-first century technological wizardry than eighties cheese in their performance. With three quarters of the band wielding effects pedals as well as their instruments, they laid out an impressive palette of sounds.
Some commentators complain about the harmonic limitations of the hang drums. In Portico's case it isn't a constraint - the band compensates by continually creating diverse contrasts in dynamics and timbre, often in wave like forms, and particularly so in their third number where the drummer (Duncan Bellamy) laid down a jarring, gameboy-esque melody on glockenspiel (featuring live reversal techniques) before the band opened up a wonderful progressive movement over of it.
The band is fastened down by it's solid rhythm section. The beautifully diverse bass playing from Milo Fitzpatrick coupled with Bellamy's knack for hiding the end of phrases creates a phase effect amplified by the hang drum's rich sound and Nick Mulvey' s ability to soak them between the other instruments. I'd have liked Wyllie to have faced out towards the audience more, to build more involvement, but his lines had a smooth and winding quality: by the last two pieces I was being captivated by the band's ability to create moments of astonishing beauty.
This was a nicely contrasted programme which sent a large crowd away very happy.
This week's prize draw for newsletter readers is a pair of tickets for Kurt Elling with Richard Galliano and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra at the Barbican Centre on March 14th. More details on the Barbican's advert down there on the left.
Paloma Faith and the Guy Barker Orchestra (Barbican Hall, Friday December 10th 2010)
Nobody creates schisms among the readership of this site quite like Paloma Faith. A review from October by Fran Hardcastle brought out raw aggression in both the Palomistas and their antagonistas. So I was intrigued to hear more, and went to the Barbican on Friday.
The stage persona Paloma Faith adopts in the "Down the End of Lonely Street" show is a deliberately hammed-up cockney sparrow. She is the latest in that honourable line which stretches from Liza Doolittle through to Barbara Windsor and Martine McCutcheon. Her character is helpless in matters of love, and is continuously asking for the audience's forgiveness and sympathy. Faith's script (mostly read or ad-libbed from -or in one instance itself hopelessly lost...) is then a jumping-off point for songs about being abandoned.
The mistakes, the vulnerability are part of the charm. This is a character which London audiences invariably take to their hearts; Paloma Faith is no exception to the tradition. Occasionally, the damsel and the first beat of a bar have to be rescued. It happens. At one point in the show she stands with a microphone in one hand, a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other. Yes, only one of these will be the right one to lift towards the mouth at the start of a song. Oh dear.
But an audience which sees things go wrong knows it is getting something live. And in an era when trust has broken down, an audience's first reaction is to be thankful that it isn't being conned. Correction: that's true for those of us who were paying attention. There's always part of a December Friday night EC2 crowd which is mentally at a 24/7 office party.
Friday night's show had sold out well in advance. It featured Guy Barker's 42-piece big-band-plus-string-section, and was an extended version of the "Lonely Street" show, which was originally commissioned to be the closing gig of the 2010 BBC Radio 2-supported Cheltenham Festival. There is a lot of interesting writing in there. I'd be very curious, for example, to hear the second half opener Underdogs under the fingers of a German radio big band, given a few more days to rehearse it and to bring out the detail. That's not to belittle the excitement which this top London band always delivers; the economics on the continent lead to a different kind of performance.
There were three spectacular vamp burlesque outfits on show: a black velvet one-shoulder sheath cocktail dress with a padded bejewelled red shoulderpiece bow and a satin and net turban for the first set. That was in its turn upstaged by a Statue-of-Libertyesque silver fan headdress with mock ostrich feather and tulle burlesque floor length split front skirt dress. And, when that got ripped (aw) , it was outshone by a shimmering two-tone pink and silver luminescent backless batwing floorlength mermaid dress. Even Guy Barker got into the shimmying when that dress appeared. Hair (Paloma's) in 1940's victory roll, and vertiginous heels throughout. (Thanks to NS for all that.)
Yes, there was shameless nostalgia in the air, but also some cleverly chosen songs. Faith made the Leonard Cohen/ Madeleine Peyroux-ish "Dance me to the End of Love" work well and hauntingly. The Willie Dixon/Muddy Waters/Etta James "I Just Wanna Make Love to You" brought one of the strongest baying ovations one will ever hear in the Barbican Hall. And the encore (above) Upside Down had the whole audience on all three levels of the hall up on its feet.
The show, clocking in at three hours including interval, was slightly too long. A guest appearance by vocalist Charlie Wood seemed superfluous. In truth, the show had already flagged a bit before its only real low-point, the musically thin Do You Want The Truth? which a lighting operator interpreted as the moment to strafe us with searchlights. Thanks.
But there was genuine heroism in the band. Ralph Salmins is a superhuman presence on drumkit, powering every heartbeat of Guy Barker's band, just as he had been in Jazz Voice in the London Jazz Festival. Mark Frost had a disaster falling off a defective chair just before the interval, but with a borrowed 'bone, was back on form in the second half. With fellow bass cleffers Jay Craig on baritone sax, bass clrinet and alto flute, and Phil Donkin on bass, the lower end of the sonic spectrum is in superb hands in this band. Sonia Slany led a fine string section, and all of the trumpets blazed fabulously. It's a great band.
This is a successful show, and is deserves more outings. But I keep asking myself another question : could the whole show with its appeal to cockney sensitivities work abroad? My guess is that it could.
Brad Mehldau (Barbican, part of London Jazz Festival, 13th November, 2010, review by Thomas Gray)
Londoners have been spoilt for chances to catch Brad Mehldau recently, thanks to his extended residency at the Wigmore Hall. In contrast to those intimate chamber concerts, his appearance at this year’s London Jazz Festival (serving as the European premier of ‘Highway Rider’) was an opportunity to experience his ambitious musical vision writ large, with support from the Britten Sinfonia, regular trio partners Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums, with Matt Chamberlain on percussion and Joshua Redman on saxophones.
‘Highway Rider’ is an extended work uniting jazz with classical and rock, two influences that have long coloured Mehldau’s solo and trio output. This concert featured the work in its entirety, played exactly as on the album, with the obvious exception of Mehldau’s and Redman’s improvisations. Although this may be unusual for a jazz concert, it was sympathetic to the work’s journey-themed narrative.
For a person prone to fierce intellectualism (see the liner notes to his early albums as an example), Mehldau writes remarkably accessible and engaging music. He has previously hinted at the romanticism of Brahms and Schumann as an inspiration. This came across in several poignant solo interludes and cadenzas. Yet, the overriding sound of ‘Highway Rider’ was distinctively American, notably on ‘We’ll Cross the River Together’ with its Copland-like theme evoking the wide-open spaces of Mehldau’s home country.
During long periods of the work, the classical musicians sat on the sidelines as the music broke down into different small group configurations, offering much variety. A quartet featuring Mehldau and Redman with Ballard and Chamberlain on hand percussion provided some of the evening’s creative high-points, with Redman on daring form as his beguiling soprano lines swooped and tumbled over Mehldau’s driving accompaniment on ‘Capriccio’. The bustling, drum-and-bass infused ‘Into the City’ was the only piece featuring Mehldau’s regular trio. Here, Mehldau’s thrillingly warp-speed improvisation showed that in addition to his composing, he remains committed to pushing forward the vocabulary of jazz piano.
However, it was when the full ensemble combined—with Mehldau’s dense and brooding string arrangements set against the tandem rock rhythms of Ballard and Chamberlain on separate drum kits (on ‘Walking the Peak’ and ‘Always Returning’) —that the music packed its greatest emotional punch. The Britten Sinfonia has made crossover projects such as this their speciality, and their rendering of this score (under the baton of Scott Yoo) was flawless.
Throughout the best part of two hours, ‘Highway Rider’ captivated the Barbican audience, and even after a slightly overwrought finale, nobody could begrudge Mehldau the ecstatic standing ovation he received. For an encore, he stripped things down with a sublime contrapuntal solo account of Lennon and McCartney’s ‘Martha My Dear’. As with the work that had come before, it was difficult to suppress the word ‘genius’ from my mind..
London Jazz Festival Preview Barbican Creative Learning Day, Sunday November 14th, (Preview by Sarah Ellen Hughes, Photo Credit: Rosie Reed Gold)
The Barbican's education department merged recently with the Guildhall School Creative Learning division. The merged entity's first major enterprise occurred during the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s United in Swing residency. It largely went unnoticed - we wrote about it HERE).
Now, during the London Jazz Festival, this Sunday is Creative Learning Day. One of the newly integrated team's ventures, the East London Creative Jazz Orchestra will continue its work, this time with the Grammy Nominated pianist Robert Glasper.
The orchestra is made up of undergraduates from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and young players from across ten east London boroughs. It has spent six days rehearsing with Glasper, and with the Blue Pepper band – a performance and workshop sextet made up of the cream of our very own jazz scene.
This work will culminate in a performance on Sunday on the Barbican FreeStage – part of this year’s Creative Learning Day (timetable and listings below).
The rest of the day’s programme includes The Boxettes - an a cappella girl group led by 2009 Beatbox World Champion Bellatrix. Each girl has routes in jazz and soul, so their music is interspersed with moments of brilliant scat and improvisation. The main draw though, is the amazing ability to drive each tune with a solid hip-hop beat enough to get the audience grooving – no instruments required!
Following this is Living Room which features Hang player Manu Delago. (Read all about the Swiss percusson instrument HERE.) Living Room is Manu Delago on Hang and effects, and Christoph Pepe Auer on bass clarinet and pepephon (not content at being second to a UFO, Auer has invented this colourful plastic wind instrument himself. I cannot offer a guess at what it sounds like). The repertoire is a mixture of chamber and popular music, including songs by Nirvana and the Beatles. Seriously fascinating stuff!
This is followed by young saxophone star Joshua Jawson, and the Soul Rebels Brass Band. Sunday at the Barbican will culminate with the double bill of the Robert Glasper Trio and the Terence Blanchard Quintet in the Barbican Hall. and the ELCJO orchestra will round off their day as members of the audience at one of the best double bills of the festival.
Creative Learning Day – Sunday 14th November 2010
Barbican Freestage2pm: East London Creative Jazz Orchestra 3pm: The Boxettes 4pm: Living Room 5pm: Joshua Jawson Quartet 6pm: Soul Rebels Brass Band
Barbican Hall 7:30pm: Robert Glasper Trio/ Terence Blanchard Quintet
