Review: Dennis Rollins Velocity Trio

Dennis Rollins' Velocity Trio
(Kings Place Hall Two, Part of The Base series. June 4th 2011. Review and photo credit: Roger Thomas)

The instrumentation of this trombone-led trio, with drums and Hammond is certainly rare, and may even be unique. But Dennis Rollins' take-no-prisoners performance, backed up by the funky ballistics of Pedro Segundo and the grinding groove of Ross Stanley, gave us excitement right from the get-go, with an opener 'Hot To Trot' which lived up to its name.

'The Grass Seems Greener On The Other Side' had all three stretching out to give us a beatiful vision. Pedro played a mischievous intro with stick and mallets before Dennis flipped a switch on his array of electronic boxes to incorporate a sampled groove. The transformation was complete when Ross added a deep grooving organ for Dennis to ride over like a shifting herd of elephants sauntering through a lush grassland.

Whether it be the spiritual overtones of Pink Floyd's A Great Day For Freedom or Eddie Harris' Freedom Jazz Dance and definitely 'The Big Chill', a kaleidoscope of moods and shifts in tempo blended with some subtle electronic gadgetry made for a very exciting and larger than life sound.

Dennis Rollins plays with energy, clarity and precision. He has the backup of formidable sidemen, and there is never a dull moment. With a new album planned for release on 11th November, which just happens to be Dennis' birthday, I'm sure he has some interesting treats in store for us.

UPDATE: Dennis Rollins' Management have sent in a list of forthcoming live dates for the trio


18 June: Corsham Jazz Festival, Wiltshire
25 June - Hebden Bridge Jazz Festival
30 June - Glasgow Int'l Jazz festival
1 July - The Tolbooth, Stirling
2 July - The Coliseum, Whitby
3 July - Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (supporting Ramsey Lewis)
23 July - Hull Jazz Festival @ Hull Civic Theatre
11 November - Millennium Hall, Sheffield
12 November @ The Edge, Shropshire
16 November - Ropetackle Arts Festival, Shoreham-by-Sea
17 November - London Jazz Festival @ The Forge, Camden
3 December - The Old Mill, Oxford
10 December - Taliesen Arts Centre, Swansea

CD Review: The Quentin Collins/Brandon Allen Quartet - What's It Gonna Be?

The Quentin Collins/Brandon Allen Quartet - What's It Gonna Be?
(Sunlightsquare Records SUNCD010, CD Review by Chris Parker)

From its hard-driving opener (tenor player Brandon Allen's What's It Gonna Be? to its infectiously lively closer (drummer Enzo Zirilli's mix of 'Tea for Two' with an almost 'Sidewinder'-ish shuffle rhythm, 'Teeth for Tooth'), this album harks back to the heyday of hard bop, recalling not only the Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard albums so beloved of co-leader, trumpeter Quentin Collins, but also (courtesy of Ross Stanley's evocative organ sound) the classic albums of Jimmy Smith and his ilk.

All its tracks except a radio-friendly visit to Stevie Wonder's 'Smile Please', sung by Natalie Williams, are in-band originals intelligently programmed to move between bustling swagger and moody slower pieces, but whether they're rattling through the former or brooding through the latter, the quartet has a breezy vigour and an unfussy interactive ease that can't fail to impress.

Collins is a refreshingly straightforward player, blazing and flaring on open trumpet, subtly noodling through a mute, or crooning through his flugelhorn as appropriate; Allen is a perfect frontline partner, his rich, powerful sound enabling him to steam through up-tempo numbers and channel tenderness through quieter ones; the rhythm section (buoyed by Stanley's deft bass pedals and sparked by Zirilli's crisply assertive drumming) bristles with disciplined authority – overall, this is an unequivocally enjoyable, immediately accessible but consistently musicianly album.

Review: Alex Garnett Quartet

“It’s taken a long time to get this together.” Having recently turned 40, Alex Garnett has just recorded his debut album “Serpent” (Whirlwind Recordings) He played the tunes from the album to a small but very appreciative audience at the 606 last Thursday, the night before the Easter holidays.

Garnett seemed to want to apologise for his hesitancy. Why? He has had a career as a trusted and in-demand sideman for most of the past two decades. He has that rare ability to be completely at home on alto and tenor. He always has a story to tell when he plays. If he has not rushed into the role of leader, not been in a hurry to get a CD with his name on it into a marketplace which is small and hesitant, even at the best of times, it is something understandable, maybe evan to be praised.

The story of the production of the album is that Garnett went to New York with Michael Janisch, and that they recorded the new album in Brooklyn at Systems Two Studios. Appearing with Garnett and Janisch on the album are pianist Anthony Wonsey and drummer Willie Jones III.

Garnett talked about the mad energy of New York, and one larger than life character -a Latino Brooklyn carwash proprietor - who had unwittingly given his inspiration to a title for a tune: The Pimp.

The equivalents of Wonsey and Jones on the UK tour (*) have been Ross Stanley on piano and Enzo Zirilli on drums. The tightness, balance and expressiveness which this band could achieve at the unforgiving tempi of the faster numbers stays in the mind. While Zirilli resorted to using sheet music for a few of the numbers, Garnett, Janisch and Stanley played the whole gig from memory, and the interaction was constant, energetic and inspiring.

The tunes on the album are all originals but draw on a wide range of inspiration - and he leavened the mix with a couple of standards. Garnett mentioned the influence of a particular line of tenor players – Hank Mobley and Dexter Gordon – as well as Joe Henderson, for whom "the serpent" was a nickname. (The title also refers to the ophecleide or serpent, which Adolphe Sax was experimenting with when the saxophone emerged as one of the by-products.)

The interplay of Garnett and Janisch, particularly on the tune "Three or a Moor" which Garnett dedicated : " to my father's record collection," caught the ear. Garnett's style carries more than just a memory of that unique tenor player Hank Mobley, whose career was cut lamentably short by lung problems. One of his traits as a player - and Garnett is in the same mould - is often to use the first beat as a springboard, to hang behind it, to respond to it. Janish was laying down a strong first beat to the three-four bar, and just leaving the space, staying completely clear of the second beat so that Garnett could weave beautifully turned and infinitely varied responses to it. A further reminder of Mobleyishness came on a standard which Mobley himself recorded: "I Should Care."

This music is a personal statement which comes from very deep inside a fine musician. What you see is what you get, rather than concessions to fashion or edginesss. I thought of Paul Desmond's quip: "I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was." These musicians don't chase fashion. They are what they are, and do what they do as well as anyone.

It has been worth the wait.

The new CD won’t be officially released until September. For the moment it is available from Michael Janisch’ Whirlwind Recordings website

(*)The Alex Garnett Quartet's eleven-date UK tour was made possible by the Jazz Services touring scheme.

More details of the album are on Ian Mann's Jazzmann site

Review: Quentin Collins/Brandon Allen Quartet

Quentin Collins/Brandon Allen Quartet
(Ray's Jazz Cafe at Foyle's, 28th March 2011, Review by Chris Parker

In an interview in April 2007 to mark the release of his debut album, If Not Now, Then When?, trumpeter Quentin Collins (above) was already thinking of a follow-up recording which, he hoped, would be 'more melodic', with fewer 'over-complicated chord sequences' than his first Sunlightsquare CD. To achieve this aim, he could not have chosen a more suitable frontline partner than Australian tenor player Brandon Allen. In a jazz world that seems to be increasingly dominated by music-school graduates determined to explore the tricksiest chord sequences they can think up, Collins and Allen are something of a bracing tonic, their approach harking back to the classic jazz of the 1950s and 1960s epitomised by the output of the Blue Note label, but with its roots in bebop, Basie and Ellington.

In that same interview, indeed, Collins, after citing Miles Davis, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard as important influences ('powerful, great music'), said unequivocally: 'I'm basically an Ellington disciple and love bebop. I think the history's very important, so I always listen to old records, right back to the 1930s.'

Given these predilections, it was no surprise to find the Collins/Allen quartet (completed by organist Ross Stanley and drummer Enzo Zirilli) delivering over an hour of unfussy but melodic hard bop, delivered with grace, but infused with zip and bristling with bustling energy. They began proceedings with the title-track of their new album, What's It Gonna Be? (Collins appearing to have a penchant for the interrogative in his titles), on which both Collins's rattling vigour and flaring brilliance and Allen's driving power (Tubby Hayes seems to be the model most frequently mentioned in accounts of his playing, and with good reason) were given free rein. The rest of the set, particularly a Zirilli take on 'Tea for Two' entitled 'Teeth for Tooth' (don't ask), was similarly vital and unpretentious. All four participants -plus the impressive trombonist Trevor Mires who made a guest appearance - were striking sparks off each other, both in their swiftly traded solos and in their longer excursions over the accommodating sequences provided for them by Collins and Allen's bright, accessible themes.

A ballad, 'Dark Shadows', brought out Allen's more contemplative side, his solo a little gem imbued with bruised tenderness, but overall, this was an irresistibly lively, even sassy performance, and a great showcase (as it was intended to be, of course) for the band's forthcoming album.

Dylan Howe Quartet Tour

Preview: Dylan Howe Quartet: Pizza Express Dean Street, Tuesday March 15th

The Dylan Howe Quartet is in the early stages of a twenty-five date UK tour. Yes. Five times five. Twenty-five gigs.

While others sit around lamenting the decline of civilization... I absolutely take my hat off to Dylan Howe. The sheer drive and entrepreneurial flair he shows in having put this together, in being so utterly devoted to the process of allow four musicians to grow into music and to grow with it by taking it out on the road are like gold dust in these times.

I was able to catch the fourth date, Herts Jazz in the Civic Centre in Welwyn last Sunday. Londoners, the date you will - I hope... I recommend! - be putting in your diaries is Tuesday March 15th. It's the nineteenth date of the tour.

Howe has taken the repertoire which really speaks to him, assembled a group to play it. Looking at the promo video (above), there has already been onward progress from it, more confidence, more freedom to explore, in the gig I heard last week. The collective "band sound" is starting to gel properly. Brandon Allen can use his rounded, focussed tone on tenor saxophone to state melody, to be urbane, but he is also adept at turning up the heat and the aggression. Ross Stanley on piano and synth has a wide tonal palette, and brings out the contrasts. It is somehow hard to believe, seeing how assured he is, that bassist Tim Thornton was still a conservatoire student until last summer.

Dylan Howe himself has huge creativity and energy to bring to all of these situations. His irrepressible energy and positivity doesn't just fix the gigs. More importantly, it inspires the others in performance, spurs them on, brings life and vivacity to everything he (or his sticks or his brushes) touches.

But a project like this stands or falls by the quality of the music. Howe has sought out huge variety in the tunes which the quartet takes on, from the good-humoured waltz-time sway of the first set opener, Harry Warren's Summer Night, through numbers by Charlie Parker (Segment) , Joe Henderson (Shade of Jade), through to what is the darkest, most challenging music on offer, David Bowie tunes such as Warszawa, Weeping Wall and Subterraneans.

The Bowie numbers from the "Berlin" period in the late 1970's are an interesting project in their own right. Warszawa, is an intricate narrative, probably taking more than one hearing to grasp fully. It was last in the programme at the gig I went to, and made a suitable culmination to it. I'm fascinated to hear what it will sound like in London next month, after it has been played live many times. It is bound to start to really cohere and tell its story - it will be memorable. The band are due to record the material after all of the tour dates have been completed, and that too will be worth waiting for.

The Dylan Howe Quartet Tour (follow the link for dates) is supported by Jazz Services and the PRS Foundation

Review: Ma. CD launch

Ma.
(CD Launch of The Last, Stoke Newington International Airport, January 22nd 2011, Review by Roderick McKinley)

Last week saw the launch gig of Ma’s new album, The Last. The venue – Stoke Newington International Airport – is tucked away in a corner of north east London; half of the fun of finding it is seeing the looks on people’s faces when you ask for directions. Once there, scissor chandeliers, stencilled art walls, and other randomly placed artefacts reaffirm the sense that you’re an insider on to a well-kept secret.

When the quartet Ma arrived onstage, the atmosphere was piqued with expectation; pre-charged by the fierce and frantic jazz played by the earlier bands (the French band Loup and Webster/ Holub McLaren). Ma’s start immediately shifted the polarity. People arranged themselves to sit comfortably, instantly aware that a different and distant sort of journey lay ahead.

From the quietest instant by which they began, Ma’s sound evoked a vast and fathomless expanse which pervades their aural world. It is a strange and distant place with odd faint echoes of familiarity, as fickle forms effervesce in an almost-presence. It often feels orientation-less – the saxophone’s “past” melodic lines are often re-sampled and replayed with the “current” ones, in filtered, fragmentary forms – creating a feeling that all time is somehow set out at once.

The electronics, percussion, and keyboards, played with an impressive unity, creating a melded sound seemingly coming from a single source. Generally, Ross Stanley on organ provides grounding, space, and duration to the texture with sustained chords, while Dave Smith, percussion and Matt Calvert 's electronics interleave a complex echofabric with their rhythms. The soundscapes range greatly in character; from a still emptiness with fleeting almost tangible forms, to swirling, immense, crashing turbulences. Occasionally the sound coalesces into concrete rhythmic and thematic forms for a while, before subsiding back into a primitive warp and weft.

Tom Challenger 's saxophone-playing entwines intimately with these soundscapes, at times a part of them, though often slightly apart – like a wandering voice journeying through these surroundings. It formed a point of reference and identification for the listener, feeling at once familiar and remote. The emotions evoked ranged widely, at different times, intrepid, wistful, yearning, and defiant – the result was always genuine and compelling.

The overarching sense of vastness is further reinforced by the Ma’s use of duration. Motion happens in a very gradual way as one set of features slowly merges into the next. Often this moves in a direction of growing tension which somehow finds reserves to keep building on itself into an overwhelming intensity. Yet throughout the sense of space remains, like a clear, all-filling light that somehow just keeps getting brighter and brighter… until it dispels back into a stiller, fainter expanse.

Ma play full immersion music – I saw many others around me with their eyes closed whenever I opened my own. They return to music making which explores the wider spans of time, taking listeners on an expansive, introspective journey to distant reaches, far removed from the familiar world – a true listening experience.

Stoke Newington International Airport
Tom Challenger's Myspace has video of this launch gig

London Jazz Festival Review (29): Gareth Lockrane Big Band

Gareth Lockrane Big Band
(Spice of Life, Sunday 21 November. Review by Fran Hardcastle)

Two years after their London Jazz Festival debut in 2008, the Gareth Lockrane Big Band made a welcome return last Sunday, to the relaxed atmosphere of the Spice of Life. The Big Band provides not only a vehicle for Lockrane’s virtuosic flute solos, but a perfect platform for the rest of the band's hand picked players, for whom Lockrane’s utterly satisfying original compositions are written.

‘I remember the X-Men’, on a slightly 60’s groove set the afternoon off with a buzz. A predictably enjoyable hard blown solo came from Brandon Allen on alto sax. My personal favourite of the day, Roots opened with a righteous solo from popular pianist Ross Stanley, a man who can preach gospel-vibed piano like no other, before locking into tight bluesy groove. Robbie Harvey's eloquent trombone solo was followed by a riotously hot moment from tenor sax player, Ben Somers.

Lockrane told us that the last chart of the set, a dedication to bassist Denis Irwin, came out of his slight obsession with the gospel turnaround, with a sample provided by Ross Stanley, which he referred to as ‘the augmented axis’. Entertaining theory lesson finished, a tasty hook from bassist, Ryan Trebilcock set up the next chart, which included a great battle between tenor sax players George Crowley and Ben Somers. Gavin Broom settled into the groove with a laid back trumpet solo.

Scottish guitarist, Kevin Glasgow was featured on one of the charts in the second set. A fine player, and definitely a name to look out for. Lockrane's standout soloing performance came in Dark Swinger, a tricky chart with a super speedy theme, which also provided a great platform for trumpeter Steve Fishwick.

I would like to hear more of Lockrane’s smile inducing Big Band. In fact I would like to carry them all around in my pocket and have them play to me every day. Where is that elusive first album?