Why I am not taking the lack of cycle safety lying down.

Going a little away from my usual topic (jazz) for a post.

Last week someone I am very fond of and have a lot of respect for in my life, in response to the recent spate of cyclist deaths, tried to tell me to stop cycling in London.

I said No. Very calmly and very clearly.

No. I will not stop.

I asked the person if they knew the statistics for pedestrians/ drivers killed in accidents in the capital this year. I admitted that I don't have them to hand either (though I could probably lay my hands on them pretty quickly). Every single death on the roads is a tragedy (I know that first hand because I've lived through the aftermath of losing a good friend in a hit and run). I patiently explained that I am exceptionally lucky to live in a place where the main route I take every day takes me largely along traffic calmed residential streets and cycle paths. I do have to cross some major trunk roads but I do so carefully and at junctions with traffic lights. I obey the rules of the road. I wear a high vis jacket, a helmet and I have lights. When the person complained about cyclists going through red lights I countered that there were a percentage of idiots in all groups of road users.

But I think this was the wrong response. I focused on reassuring the person of my own personal safety and lack of idiocy.

I think it was the wrong response because I failed to mention that I absolutely WILL NOT get off the road that I have paid to be on (I'll explain that in a minute). Because if I do that, and all the other cyclists do that - the polluting, corporate, oil industry dominated, motor vehicle culture will win, by default, unchallenged. And that, I firmly believe, would not be an acceptable state of affairs.

In part I cycle because it's convenient, cheap and a frankly joyful experience to be out and about in the fresh air seeing London's many and beautiful trees and buildings changing with the seasons. I also cycle because it is, for me, a moral choice, a little piece of daily activism. It is low pollution, low emissions - a small thing I can incorporate into the daily practice of being an imperfectly responsible human. It doesn't cause too much noise pollution unless I happen to be singing on my bike (I do, I'm sorry). It takes less stuff to make a bike than a car. It frees up a seat on the bus for someone who isn't as physically able as I am. It keeps me fit and keeps me away from the inevitable lurgies I pick up when getting the tube regularly (it was mumps last time). I hope that if I continue it will reduce the burden I place on health services as I age. I want to live in a London that puts people at its heart - a London that is a nice place to walk and cycle around. I want that, selfishly, for me. I want it, altruistically, for you. If you want to, I want you to feel safe cycling in the glory of the mornings, evenings and middays.

There are some inevitable arguments that are often thrown at cyclists.

But what about....

All those cyclists who go through red lights?
Uhm...I'm going to approach this a different way. You might not like it. Have you seen the way pedestrians behave at pelican crossings? If not - hie thee to Ludgate Circus, or the junction between Tavistock Place and Southampton row, the truly evil junction by King's Cross - and watch. Every day I see far more pedestrians going through red lights - frequently without looking in all the directions traffic might be coming from than I do cyclists. Which isn't to say cyclists don't do it - but I would suggest that cyclists tendency to run red lights is largely a logical follow on from our very widespread practice as pedestrians rather than from the callous devil may care disregard for others to which it is commonly ascribed. I'm not condoning running red lights. Walking trumps cycling in the carbon emissions & vulnerability stakes and going through red lights is both risky and wrong. I'm just pointing out a different view of why some people might do it and think it's OK.

Safety on the roads relies on ALL road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists) putting safety and common decency before the illusory convenience of a few saved seconds. There are more restrictions, more responsibility placed on motor vehicles because a ton+ of metal going at 20+ mph does more damage than 100 kg or so of cyclist + bike going at 0-20 mph or a 70 kg or so pedestrian going at 0 - 5 mph. Not that physics absolves ANYONE of their responsibility not to be a dickhead on the roads.

Road tax?
There is no such thing. Churchill abolished it in 1928. There is Vehicle Excise Duty which is a tax on emissions. Even if VED were hypothecated (it's not - it is a form of general taxation) it would contribute only a third of the costs of building and maintaining the roads. The rest is met from general and local taxation. Since I pay Income Tax via PAYE, I pay council tax and I pay VAT, insurance tax and on occasion alcohol duty - I HAVE BLOODY WELL PAID TO BE ON THE ROADS. I do feel entitled to use them not only as a sometimes bus passenger and as a consumer of goods/services delivered by motor vehicles but also, if I want, as a cyclist. It's not illegal. Since the emissions (a little methane aside) are pretty low and the wear and tear on the tarmac is (bike+me < 100 kg) low I'm not sure quite why people think I should contribute more than I already do or exactly what their argument is that I shouldn't be safe.

All those cyclists who cycle wearing black and with no lights wearing headphones?
A certain percentage of road users of all types are idiots. I try hard not to be one of those cyclists. You should try hard not to be one of those road users too.

As I said above, I lost a dear friend on the roads. He was a pedestrian crossing the road. He was also the kind of friend who was a top bloke, a mostly ethical, caring, immensely creative, ordinary and extraordinary, somewhat faulty human. I still miss him. Four weeks before his death I was knocked off my bike and my leg was so badly bruised it took six months before I could walk properly. None of that put me off cycling. I am far more scared of driving than I am of cycling. The last time I got behind the wheel I was a shaking mess by the end of a very short journey. Why? In a car I am far more likely to damage or kill someone else. The person most likely to be injured if I have a bike accident is me.

Safety on the roads relies on ALL road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists) putting safety and common decency before the illusory convenience of a few saved seconds. It also relies on governments building roads that are fit not only for the purpose of whizzing around - but also fit for the purpose of keeping ALL road users safe. I do not take the matter of cycle safety lying down. Which is precisely why - at 5:30 pm today I plan to be lying down, my trusty metal steed, besdie me, playing dead outside TFL's HQ on Blackfriars road.

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As an aside, given that this week has seen the International Day Against Violence Against Women, I wish I'd asked the person this. There have been 13 tragic cyclist deaths on London's roads this year. Every week 2 UK women are killed by a male partner or ex partner. Every single one of those deaths is also a tragedy. Would anyone extend the logic of telling me to stop cycling to telling me to not get a boyfriend? Or would you assume that I am perfectly capable of making a character judgement about a potential mate or that this couldn't, for some magic reason, happen to me. That "not all men are like that" (not all cyclists, not all drivers are, either, incidentally). Personally I find road safety judgments much easier to make than character judgments.

London Jazz Festival Update #1

So far London Jazz Festival is turning out to be both a bit of a healing, joyful experience for me. Admittedly in an I keep finding tears welling in my eyes at gigs kind of a way. Spiritually educational, if you will. 

Friday 15th November. 

Hugh Masekela & Larry Willis + Zena Edwards. 
Royal Festival Hall. 7.30 pm

Zena Edwards.

Sometimes an artist says something that is exactly what you need to hear. Asks the questions you need asking.

Settle down.

Why do you need to apologise for who you are?

Hugh Masekela & Larry Willis

Iê! Viva meu Mestre

A set filled with joy. Wise elders with still young souls. Jazz is a magnificent tree with deep roots. The jazz of the day, of the now of the present, is the branches and the leaves. There are regular cycles of budding ideas, shades of green, ripe harvests, spectacular autumn hues, rest and renewal. The cycles are different for each artist making the tree at once deciduous and evergreen. The leaves turn light into energy but the roots are equally alive in the now, delivering water and nutrients from the fertile soil of the past and the compost of many cycles of leaves.

We forget sometimes, I think, that roots are living things too. 

Hugh Maskelea also passed on some sage advice from Louis Armstrong.

"If I can sing, anyone can!". 

True that.

Saturday 16th November.
Phronesis
Cockpit Theatre. 7:30 pm.

Iê! Vamos jogar, camará

Phronesis are the London leaves du jour. Deservedly so. Following a pretty relentless 2013 touring schedule, including gigs played in pitch blackness, they are - to use a technical term we used to use in Samba Reggae - TAF (Tight.As.Fuck.). Before I've thought they sounded like three disparate voices that somehow created a sound that worked even though I couldn't work out why or quite how it worked. Though work it did. The Phronesis sound is coalescing. Like a stew with a counter-intuitive combination of ingredients that's been cooked for a long time - the flavours combining to become something deliciously rich and strange. As always the beauty was burnished by the manifest evidence of mutuality, respect and collaboration. 

Judging by reports from Cheltenham where a drum fell off stage and Saturday Night when a cymbal went for a burton the gremlins have been at Anton Eger's kit again. Hopefully the good LJF vibes have exorcised them. Or perhaps it is a side effect of the trio's immense kinetic energy. 

Comparisons with wild horses are not exaggerated. 

Sunday 17th November.

ACS (Geri Allen, Terri-Lynne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding)
Barbican Hall. 4 pm.

Iê! Sabe tocar.

Wow! 

Three fabulous women. On stage. Playing instrumental jazz. You don't see that very often. Nuff said.

Esperanza Spalding is a staggeringly good musician. If there were any justice in the world Spalding's genuine talent would command the kind of attention that Cyrus, Allen et al are currently getting, and without the need for manufactured scandal. A monster bassist with the voice of a lark. She may well be a one or two in a billion talent that comes along in each generation. 

Which is not to say either Geri Allen or Terri-Lynne Carrington aren't also wonderful musicians. But Spalding is, I hope, a legend in the making. 

And this is still the beginning... 

ACS's playing of Allen's "Unconditional Love" was spectacular and I suspect will turn out to be my highlight of the festival. It was all I could do not to gape open mouthed as Spalding's voice took flight over her rumbling bass in a wonderful piece of writing filled with light and shade. 

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A further note on Phil Johnson's recent rehash of the old tired Jazz Is Dead Chestnut - each of these three very different gigs was sold out. The audiences were noticeably diverse in terms of age and ethnicity. Jazz is manifestly ALIIIIIIIVE! and I would strongly suggest that Mr Johnson writes something a little more original about the genre.  

Oh, god, Uhm...I'm sorry....epic fail resulting in epic gig update

I have utterly failed. I haven't written a thing about live jazz since July.. And it's not like we're talking about one or two gigs...

I take out my diary. Yes, I have an actual  physical paper diary. What of it? I do not own a smart phone, see. Though I do now have a phone with a proper menu system, a reasonable vocabulary, and an actual diary function. No more texts about St Pancakes station. 

So flicking through my diary....

August was a deserted wasteland of no gigs.  

September.

Sunday 1st. Green Note Jazz Jam. Oh hell. I can't remember who played. I think it involved Liam Noble. I do remember that there was a female drummer who played in the Jam. 

Tuesday 3 September. Sons of Kemet at the Vortex

I love Sons of Kemet. I love that the Vortext tried to do the music justice by taking all the tables out so people could, potentially, dance. Of course people, mostly, didn't dance. I did a bit. So did a big chap with some ace bad dad dance moves. Well I say that - but there's no right or wrong, good or bad, to people's dancing at gigs. Everybody else pretty much just stood, like at an Indie gig, and maybe shuffled a bit. Oh jazz audiences you are so bloody staid. You stand there nodding knowledgeably when the music is inviting you to jump into its open arms and dance with it. How I wanted to accept that invitation yet the staidness stifled me making me too self conscious. This stuff is the shit. Just let go. 

Friday 13th September. 

Oddarang. King's Place Festival.

These pieces, from their new album In Cinema were commissioned to accompany films. The films inside my head were pretty good too. I think my mind plagiarised one of them from a sequence in Emir Kusturica's film The Time of the Gypsies where there is a guy, in a car, and there is a red piece of fabric fluttering out the window of the car as it goes under sodium lit underpasses. 

Slowly Rolling Camera. King's Place Festival.

One of those bands I want to like more than I actually do. I kept getting distracted because I could hear the click track the band hand on various kinds of feeds in their ears. I never really realised before that people did this...had a click track as a feed like that on stage. 

Saturday 14th September.

Rob Newman. King's Place Festival.

Yes, I know, comedy not jazz. I still like Rob Newman. The teenager in me always will. Yes! It's all going to be alright! You see that, that's you that is. 

Sunday 15th September

Jason Rebello. King's Place Festival.

I enjoyed it a lot. I remember something about Mr Rebello saying he had a dream that told him to play the insides of the piano. So he played the insides of the piano. 

Thursday 26th September

Roland Perrin & Rachel Sutton. St Mary Magdalene, Munster Square

Unusual venue for a jazz gig being a barn of a victorian Catholic church in the middle of a council estate square. There was a lovely solo piano piece that was filigree and heartfelt. 

October

Friday 4th October.
Tori Freestone Trio and somebody else. Con Cellar.

I love Tori Freestones compositions. Just wish she'd play them "out" to the audience a bit more - rather than turning away - or drifting off the mic as in previous gigs. The second band had a trombone player. I like the sound of the trombone. It's warm. I could probably actually live next door to a trombonist and not go insane. 

Wednesday 16th  October. 

Empirical + Beyounes Quartet. Purcell Room. 
The best gigs are the one's with pictures. The one's where I close my eyes and let my mind drift in response to the music. There was a red ribbon/ banner/ flag. Fluttering and snapping in a strong breeze. Against a background of blue sky and grass. Then we were bowling along dappled country lanes in a 1920s open topped car with the ladies holding onto their Cloche hats. 

Sometimes it seems to me that a female instrumentalists best chance of getting on stage in a jazz-labelled gig at a major London venue is to be a classical/ crossover string player rather than an actual composing, improvising, jazz musician. Not just this gig...but Alex Wilson at King's Place a couple of years back, Neil Cowley and the Mount Molehill strings, Dave Stapleton's Flight, Avishai Cohen with strings at the Barbican this year. Over and over again the only time you see anywhere near even ratio of male:female musicians seems to be when there's strings involved. It's not the musicians' faults. It's a systemic problem with deep roots in education and general gender stereotypes. But because of it Jazz is missing out on a wealth of talent and new ideas. 

November

Friday 1st November.

Joe Wright's Nightjar & Freddie Gavita. Con Cellar. 

Nightjar were fantastic. I loved the texture of Alice Zawadski's vocals and the subtle but unintrusive sax-electronics. One song had me mentally flying over London, from Parliament Hill - swooping down to land in the middle of a traffic free Tottenham court road bathed in syrupy autumn sunlight. Another, I believe a setting of a Ted Hughes poem, had me picturing a tiny white bungalow, trying to huddle out of the wind between the hills and the sea. A single lighted window with the silhouette of a cat looking out. 

Thursday 7th November. 

Acrobat. Lume @100 Crows Rising. 

I enjoyed the music but may have been too tired/ distracted to form any lasting mental pictures from it that I could tell you about. I spent some time wracking my brain for the name of the pub before successive refurbishments. I know I came here after a clown army intervention in the police station round the corner. And for a Hangover lounge thing. And at least once to dance to Two Tone/ Northern Soul/ Ska. I remember once not knowing what I wanted to drink and the barman suggested Morgan's Spiced and lemonade. The toilets now look as I imagine such facilities looked in posh 19th centuary hotels. I can recommend the hot chocolate though. I think it probably used to be the Salmon & Compass. 

I will be going to six gigs in London Jazz Festival. My new not-smart (what is the proper opposite there? scruffy? trad?) has a note function - so hopefully there is some chance I'll be able to jot down my impressions as I go along. 

Striding along flopping in armchairs.

I have been learning a song, Body and Soul, in an ol' fashioned stride piano arrangement. This involves playing the root (bottom note) of the chord in the lower bass registers of the piano with the left hand. Then jumping the hand up and playing rest of the chord in the tenor register. Your basic - ooompah - style of playing. Not unlike the left hand of may ragtime pieces. But then at some point you have to improvise with your right hand over this. Which isn't very easy even at a nice slow Ballad tempo. 

After a great deal of practice - a lot of it with my eyes closed - I can now do this fairly well on this song. In my last piano lesson my teacher was trying to get me to make this sound better. So we were talking about making the hand "flop" into the keys. Like the feeling of "flopping" into an armchair. 

As is its wont - my imagination has taken this idea and run with it. 

First of all I had a very clear picture of the type of chair. Green leather. Old but still quite firm. One of those one's with the circular covered buttons in the upholstery. In fact if you do a google image search for green leather chair you get this - which is pretty much exactly what I was imagining.

And I was imagining how it would feel, physically, to just flump down in this thing.

Or should that be phlump?

Around the chair my mind's eye constructed a room. The lounge of a Manhattan loft apartment. Lined with books of all sorts. A green leather sofa in the same vein as the chair. Those green glass and bronze reading lamps you get in an old fashioned library. A baby grand of course.

Then a grey tabby cat appeared and started padding around. And flopping down on the rugs. As cats are won't to do.

As I write this the cat is doing that washing it's inside of the hind legs (arse) yoga thing with one leg in the air.

She's just stopped mid wash and given me The Look. You know? Stoopid human

Put your tongue away, kitten. You're not fooling anyone.

This morning my mind's eye started picturing each note I played as having a tiny green armchair on it. With a tiny person phlumping down into it. Whole teams of them. There was a man in a beige v neck pullover. A woman with glasses, her brown hair in a bun, sensible shoes and a grey slight A-line skirt. I think they may all have been characters from a 1930s/40s period movie. It was all quite retro.

Initially I struggled with the song. Not only is the stride thing technically difficult but. Oh the words. The words. It's one of those unrequited love songs. Where the singer is bemoaning how the beloved doesn't even realise they exist. Now I've been in unrequited love. Many times. Often embarrassingly and painfully so. I'm an expert. And one thing I've come to realise is that this type of unrequited love (there are other types) is something you do to yourself. So accusing the object of affection of anything is a tad unfair. The whole Ballad speed thing is a strugle for me too. I find it really hard not to race away. As if my default inner pace is galloping along too fast for the song and I almost have to slow my heart beat down like hibernating creatures do.

But that mental picture of the room helps. Instead of thinking of the words I am picturing the image of that Manhattan loft room and playing that. This helped me fall in love with the melody. And then with the chord sequence. Which is an absolute delight to improvise over over even just using simple things like the chord notes to make a melody. Or playing the chords and moving them up and down the piano in their different inversions.

And I think that's a thing. With every song you have to find something, no matter how small, to fall a little bit in love with. And the great thing about that is the song, not being human, but being a song, will pretty much always reciprocate.

You want to sit on my lap pusskit? I don't really have much time.

Oh, alright then. Just a few minutes

Enough

I'm not sure it's possible to do enough piano practice.

Well. It might be possible to do too much of one thing and end up with tendonitis/RSI. 

I don't think there's much risk of me managing that. 

I do not mean this in a self critical way. I am not talking about the subconscious waggy fingered voice chiding oneself for not doing enough.

I have lists of things that I want to practice that I don't always manage to fit in (without diluting whatever else I'm working on). Like improvising round the three most common blues sequences in all the keys. Learning to comp and solo on some tunes that horn players commonly like to play so that I can go to jams and sit in. Doing every song I already know in all the keys. Doing every song I already know as if playing with bass and drums instead of the solo piano treatment. 

Weekdays my alarm goes off at 6 am so that I make sure I can do an hour every day before I go to work. Frequently if I'm 'in' of an evening I will also do more then. I am a time thief - pinching 40 minutes here while the rice is cooking or the washing machine is running to work on something. Using up the 10 empty minutes before I have to leave the house to go somewhere.

I don't see practice as "work". To me - practice is part of playing and playing part of practice. 

Practice is a particularly focussed, task orientated type of playing - the ultimate goal of which is to get better. I love and am fascinated by my body-mind's capacity to do new things. Going from not being able to do something to being able to do something is a thing of joy. I get deeply lost in doing exercises round a chord sequence or looping a independent handed groove or a tricky three bars of this or that. I love the process - the slow phasing in and out of a new musical skill until it solidifies and clicks. Like a baby learning to smile or clap - but over and over again. 

And playing is part of practice. When I play I am practising many things. Playing a tune through without stopping. Taking solos. Practising enjoying the simple pleasure of playing.

I set alarms on my phone to tell me when to stop. If I did't I'd get to where I have to go much less frequently.

And of course sometimes I don't use every minute that I could be practising. Sometimes I get home from work and fanny about too much on the internet. Or I watch repeats of The Great British Bake Off because my head is weary of the world and needs to rest. 

In my dream lottery winners life (I don't play) I'd do this all day every day.

There will always be things I could work on. Squeezing it in I have to make choices between practising different things - since I can't do it all. 

I could always find more time.

I can never do enough.

I am an addict.

Match & Fuse Festival - The Vortex 25/07/2013

Match & Fuse Mini-Fest. £15 for two of my favourite groups and two international bands I've never heard of. How could I refuse?

Yeah. OK. I like jazz. It was a 5 minute bike ride away. You're right. I didn't. 

Mopti

Caps, beards and lumberjack shirts. Norwegian band Mopti started out with a dark hypnotic groove then overlaid it with declamatory sax/trumpet lines and guitar burps/beeps. Immediately I was in my own private space movie complete with evil Space Emporer and valiant heroes. There was also some intriguing bass playing with both hands being used to slide up and down the fingerboard. Never seen that before. 

Laura Jurd Quartet

I really like Jurd's compositions. I like the mix of crazy jumbled noise and beautiful lyrical melody lines. It spills over into the improvising to create the impression someone talking to you, in a hard-boppish, good conversation, kind of a way. An echo of Lee Morgan, perhaps.

Achtuum

Despite the vaguely germanic name these guys are in fact French. Very French. I have no idea what bunch of heinous stereotypes exist in my head to make me think that of course the French go in for break-neck semi-fractured be-boppish stuff. I shall smack my own wrists for it. It probably has something to do with early exposure to Jean-luc Goddard films. The synchronicity between sax and trumpet required to achieve this effect was actually jaw dropping. It contained within it the luminous and humane seriousness of a dialogue between clowns. I'm not being disparaging. Once, long ago, I was in the clown army - fighting the forces of capitalism and injustice with no more than a red nose, a bunch of love and a basket full of blessed stupidity. 

Kairos Quartet

First up - hats well and truly off to Corrie Dick who drummed with them on one afternoon rehearsal. I will write about the new album Everything We Hold soon. I promise. I am off work this next week. It's lovely. Go buy it. After the excitements of Achtuum and as a portion of the audience rushed off before their tfl carriages turned to pumpkins - it was gorgeous to slip into the warm waters of the familiar.

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Some gripes

I'm sorry. But as a music lover people continue to do things at gigs that mar the whole process. 

. 

Sadly I spent some of the evening wishing for the Gig Bat (TM) as the persons at the table next to me insisted on chatting through sets, waving of arms, and ultimatley spilling of wine prior to disappearing before Karios 4tet made it to the stage. I know this is a social space, I know it's fun...but also out of respect for the musicians and those who came to listen to all of the music...STFU. 

There also seemed to be annoying number of people intent on documenting everything in a way that meant I was constantly having to shift out the way to accommodate photographers and videographers. The way I see it, the audience are what make a gig - live music, jazz in particular, is by it's very nature ephemeral - that's the whole point. So please feel free to document away - but be discrete have a little more respect for the chumps in the audience who have paid to be there. We, the music loving audience, keep the entire caravan on the road because we want to be there listening to and sharing in what musicians have to say. The clown in me assures you that things do still happen even if they're not captured and distributed via the internet. The untweetable bits are often the best.

Gig Update June - July #1

Oh. Crap.

I am over a month behind with my gig writing up.

I blame combining a full time job with 6 am starts to accommodate not enough piano practice. By the middle of most jazz gigs I'm warmly muzzily tired (especially if I add a glass of red into the mix). I enjoy it immensely - but I don't always remember much.

Kairos 4tet, Saturday 8th June, King's Place
As desired I bought a copy of the new album Everything We Hold - which probably deserves a separate post of it's own if I ever get round to it. It's a lovely thing, get hold of it yourself. Or go and see them live - plenty of opportunities in the UK this summer. I did gently raise an eyebrow to hear that despite an entire suite of tunes dedicated to the occupy movement the bonus track was only available digitally via a corporate, legally tax avoiding, behemoth. I'm fairly certain, however, that I'm conflating two issues here.

Jazz in the Round, Monday 24th June, Cockpit Theatre
I went primarily to hear Cath Roberts Quadraceratops - a band who I've now seen twice and who left me with a big grin on my face both times. If you need cheering up - I recommend checking them out. Then Alan Wilkinson who did some extraordinary free jazz type solo sax stuff that induced a rather dyspeptic expression in most of the audience. Interesting. Then there was Mathew Hallsall doing floaty electronicy things with trumpet and ensemble - like being wrapped in a squooshy musical duvet. Though that may have been the tiredness again.

George Crowley Quintet, Reuben Flower Octet, 5th July, Con Cellar
I had a really nice time and the music was excellent but at this distance I'm afraid I don't remember anything specific that would make for an interesting blog.

Rachel Sutton Band with special guest John Etheridge, 7th July, Pizza Express
I must declare a bias here - the pianist is my piano teacher - so the band and singing were obviously excellent. Venue - could do better by single gig goers - a rather sour sounding booker when I phoned up to buy one ticket and said I would not be joining anyone else. The person who showed me to my table seemed to be a bit grumpy too. My seat was, un-suprisingly given my "on my tod" status - right behind a massive pillar where I couldn't see the band. Fortunately the waiters seemed to have a better grasp of how customer service works.

Briefly considered writing updated lyrics to "I'm a Woman" possibly involving wimmens doing Particle Physics or holding High Office rather than washing socks. I wish to take nothing away from the song as it is - a rousing testament to the damned hard (unpaid) work women have always done. But the idea of a second interchangeable version where the protagonist is good at inorganic chemistry, raising children, being the C.E.O of an FTS100 company or jazz drumming because she is a W-O-M-A-N amuses me. In the interests of fairness, in this day and age, there are obviously also men who can wash socks and stretch meagre incomes mightily.

Kit Downes Trio + Ben Van Gelder at The Vortex 22/5/2013

What, really, writing up a gig within days?

Well yes now the rate of gigs/ month in the officially gigtastic year of 2013 has dropped a little this might be manageable. It's also a rainy Friday lunchtime in March May.

I've been in a right grump for much of the week. It's exams processing season - the moment where my usual patience with a technicolour array of slightly shonky databases runs out. Everything ends up taking me twice as long as my brain thinks it ought to. Twice as long as in a normal world it would.

Fortunately it turns out that there is a cure for being in a right grump. Thelonious Monk tunes played by a bunch of fantastic young musicians. A sprightly rendition of "We See" had me grinning from ear to ear. As my  relationship with jazz is still quite young I have not yet become well acquainted with Ornette Coleman tunes. I will be searching some out on you tube very shortly.

In the second set Van Gelder's first composition "All Rise" really put me in mind of the eddies and currents experienced when swimming in the sea. I have not swum in the sea for too long. I doubt I will get the chance to remedy that any time soon. The weather is not promising.

And that's it. I've forgotten everything else I wanted to say about it. Well other than this gig cheered me right up from my right grump.

Kit  Donwnes (Piano)
Tom Farmer (Bass)
James Maddren (Drums)
with Special Guest Ben Van Gelder (Alto Sax)

The richness of eagles (and a small annoyance)

To sustain an intense personal voice and musical vision across such a wealth of material is awe inspiring.*

Avishai Cohen did this at the Barbican tonight. With energy, groove and virtuosity to spare.

Wow!

Every standing ovation richly deserved. Several encores and still leaving the audience wanting more.

An oboe solo that soared, riding the desert thermals.

A sentence I never imagined I'd write. Ripping it up on the Cor Anglais.

String Quartets, no matter the context, lean to counterpoint.

It bears repeating.

Wow.

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I will try to forgive the intensely over excited chap in the seat next to me. I say "In" the seat advisedly, since mostly he appeared to be leaping out of it to roar. We will pretend that I did not mentally deploy the gig mallet (TM) or entertain fantasies of tethering him to his seat with bungee cords. Nor did I feel the urge to grab him at the wrists as if he were an errant toddler advancing towards a Manet with poster paint on his tappety tap tapping hands.

This is merely an iteration of sod's law. Toast lands buttered side down. I get seated at gigs next to the tutters, whingers, fidgeters, chewers and those who insist on picking the digital nose of social media when their phones should be off.

/rant

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I will try to forgive because to cycle in evening sunshine to amazing jazz gigs is richness beyond measure.*

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* Read what the grownups in the real reviews write to find out the details of the breadth of influences. I'm simply too dumb, too young in jazz to know them all. 

** Actual price, £10. 

Gig Update 6/5/2013

Gosh keeping to this idea of writing up all the gigs I go to this year is proving more difficult than I thought. Life is conspiring a little bit to get in my way. But I shall push on through and make an effort to keep up - before I go to any more gigs and get any more behind....

Saturday 20th April.
Trish Clowes Quintet at King's Place.

I was feeling pretty poorly and groggy at this one. So my memories are a little bit hazy.

After the GMF weekend I walked into King's Place and immediately had a big grin on my face. I love this place. Thank goodness for that long boozy lunch in The Rotunda a couple of years ago that introduced this to me.

What really stood out for me was the variety of different feels and textures in the compositions. From lyrical to funky to delightfully disjointed shifting across the beat. Once again James Maddren impressed me with his combination of intricacy and subtlety. This is clever, supportive drumming that doesn't overwhelm or shout unless the spotlight is upon it.

Wednesday 1st May
Sam Crowe Quintet at The Vortex

There's nothing quite like turning up at a gig, with your Kindle charged and ready for the interims, to be met by the smiling faces of friends and a good piano chinwag between serious adult learners.

The overall feeling of Crowe's music seems to me to be meditative. Even when it takes on darker, funkier, hues - it still had me thinking of lying on a shingle beach, sun warm stone in either hand. Or unwinding (literally) in some Somerset field while everyone else appeared to be dancing on the ceiling.*

Friday 3rd May
Grooveyard & Money Jungle at the Con Cellar
Part of the Green Chimneys Festival

An excellent start to the Bank Holiday Weekend.

Grooveyard set off at a terrific lick and didn't let up. Not even on the ballads. Not sure I've ever heard so many notes played over a slow pulse before. Fantastic stuff but I was ready for something a little mellower in the second half. And Money Jungle didn't disappoint. Nice to see a bunch of top notch young players, composers and band-leaders taking on some Monk, Mingus and Ellington tunes. No seriously, I had vaguely been beginning to wonder if amid the abundance of new composing in the contemporary scene anyone ever did "standards". They do. And they do them well.

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*Somebody may have been selling skunk brandy-snaps at the particular festival involved. 

Gig Update

24th March - Quadraceratops at The Salisbury

I found out about Quadraceratops through the intriguing hit and miss processes of twitter. You tweet something, it gets retweeted, people look, follow, I look and sometimes follow. And so I found out about this emerging band lead by saxophonist and composer Cath Roberts.

Quadraceratops sound, well, cheerful.  I hope this is not, in the world of furrowed brow seriousness that can be jazz, to do it a disservice. Misery does not necessarily equate to quality and joy can be as profound as sorrow. I liked the way the texture constantly shifted - between a more unison 40s big band sound and intricate counterpoint. There was a great tune called "Chairoplanes" (wheeee!). I have an abiding aural memory of "Dinner With Patrick" - the most sinister tune of the evening - describing an imagined meal with the protagonist of American Psycho. It pops up unexpectedly as if it's following me somehow...

28th March - 1st April GMF Festival at King's Place

Participation in the Global Music Foundation Easter Workshop also includes tickets to the Easter Festival gigs. But since doing the workshop also involves negotiating a thorny thicket on the hill of learning jazz this is all rather muddled up in my head. Which got very full over the course of the weekend.

The Bobby Watson All Stars with Bruce Barth (piano), Steven Keogh (drums) and Chris Hill (bass) and  later Jean Toussaint joining the jazz legend! Just ace! From her fabulous opening number (Do Wrong Shoes?) Claire Martin made me want to make the effort go and see more singers. In this gig Bruce Barth giving a masterclass in how to be a singer's dream pianist. What else was there? Pete Churchill being great and entertaining. I particularly like the idea that there are some songs such as Young and Foolish that you have to wait until you're old enough to sing them. There was Perico Sambeat's quartet and a gig-lecture on Latin rhythm from Francesco Petrini. Lots of lovely singing throughout the weekend from Guillermo Rozenthuler. And to me, still making me smile the most - the amazing and lovely Montreal based trumpeter Kevin Dean. He was my generous and supportive ensemble tutor for the weekend and it was a complete privilege to hear him play and to learn from him.

The final student concert in Hall 2 was a personal triumph for me even if Kevin's Eleven did take 10 solos on each of our two tunes It felt like an nanosecond to me but the audience may have perceived time differently. I might have played the odd exceedingly unusual chord voicing but I kept going. I took two solos that were satisfying by my standards, and experienced a sense of real pleasure playing with my new friends. I am slowly recovering from a prolonged misery of stage fright - so whatever it sounded like - for me this was momentous.

4th April Laura Jurd & Phronesis at the QEH

The 4th April, it turns out, is poet Maya Angelou's birthday. The internet therefore did that thing that the internet occaisonally does - furnished me with some well written wisdom. Including, aptly enough, this...

"You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you."

I was so pleased when I heard that Phronesis had invited Laura Jurd to play on the (free) Friday evening QEH foyer stage! Maybe because my mum has owned at least two VW Polos I particularly liked a tune called Little Red Car dedicated to such a vehicle. Easy to picture myself driving between hedges along country lanes in the sunshine. Jurd's compositions and playing are bright and clear mixing elegant melodic lines with freer elements. I like them. And she's very young so hopefully there's plenty more to look forward to. 

For me Phroensis conjure up the restlessness of being unable to sit still in situations that require it. Their evident pleasure in the art of collaboration itself is a joy to behold. At their highest energy it sounds the way wanting to run very very fast for the sheer hell of it feels. This barely caged kineticity* allied with a hint of subversion in the tune titles and inter-tune banter, pleases the residual activists among the army of clowns that live in my head. 

10th April Nora Bite & Laka D at The Vortex

It wasn't until Nora Bite got up on stage that I realised just how infrequently I've seen a woman play jazz guitar. As in there's a first time for everything. Rock guitar and electric bass, yes, many times. But jazz guitar? Can't recall hearing any before.This evening I got two (Deidre Cartwright played later with Laka D). A mixture of the gently atmospheric and funkier grooves. Great interaction between the band band members. Rob Paterson adding to the ever growing list of monster (I believe this is the correct term) bassists I've heard recently. 

In the blurb Laka D describes herself as the choirmistress from hell. I know from first hand experience back in the day that this is a lie (she'll challenge a group, yes, but with challenges there's always the pay-off). She's also a bloody fantastic musician and entertainer. Why do I always forget what a lovely song Kurt Weil's Speak Low is? And dammit why, even when invited to do so, did I and others not get up and dance? Oh jazz audiences, do we tend towards being a little too prim? A little too staid for our own good? The clowns think we are. 

Plus - all time record for wimmen instrumentalists in a band....3 onstage at once - whoop! 
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* It's a word now.

Adventures in A Thorny Thicket on the Hill of Jazz

Learning Jazz is like walking up/ climbing a mountain.

The mountain is endless.

At any point you're free to stop and build a camp. Or settle permanently and perhaps build a log-cabin or a mansion to live in.* Some people build their homes near base camp. Others simply keep going until they run out of life for walking with.

If you have a very powerful telescope and you point it up the hill of jazz, waaaaay past the treeline and a bunch of glaciers, you might be able make out a small group of figures, older guys with a little stiffness about the hips, still strolling gently uphill. You'll maybe catch a glimpse of Sonny Rollins' shock of white hair or Herbie Hancock, iPad in hand. Still walking, still learning.

Everybody's journey up the Hill of Jazz is different.

This weekend I did the Global Music Foundation's Easter Jazz Workshop.

This was a thorny thicket on my journey up the Hill of Jazz. Not that I knew entirely what to expect when I decided to take this particular route up the hill.

Initially I got snagged on some pretty big thorns (Voicings wuh argh urgh? Ear skills way more advanced than I have?...uhmmmmmmmm heyulp!). So I took a deep breath and started fighting my way through. Grasping branches (ouch, ouch) and nettles by the hand and just starting to try and haul myself up the sharp ascent. After a couple of days of thrashing about like this I was very tired. I pretty much wanted to slump in a heap, weeping gently and slide into the nearest available hollow to sleep among the tang of leaf mulch.

At some point though some form of inner resourcefulness kicked in. I remembered to look into my rucksack and pulled out some tools. A very useful exercise from my piano teacher that probably saved my arse once I figured out that this was the most efficient way to spend whatever practice time I could snatch.** A pair of psychological gardening gauntlets that protected my hands from worst spikiness of the thorns. I had no idea I even owned those gloves. Interesting.

Once I was nicely tired out things start feeling slightly surreal. But that's also when you start to notice the beauty - little forest flowers caught in shafts of sunlight. Snatching a few minutes to play whatever the I wanted on the most glorious perfectly tuned oh oh oh Steinway ever! Sneaking into Hall 2 to practice on the freshly tuned piano on the stage (shhhhhh!).

Then I started to really sense that I wasn't alone in the thicket and to hear clearly the voices of the others struggling their way through too. The sounds of their battles and the whoops of encouragement. And then finally hearing that what had initially sounded like barked instructions from the tutors were morphing into a constant stream of "Yeah! Go on! Yeah!" ***

Going uphill through a densely wooded thorny thicket is still hard-work. However you approach it getting through is knackering. Right towards the end I got in a horrible pickle with a masterclass tree that looked looked OK from the outside. It even had pretty blossom on it. But it turned out to have the sharpest thorns of all - stage fright thorns that you just don't see until you touch a branch. I thought I heard the growling of bears under the Steinway too. My brain froze up and I wanted to run away. My head was so full of new ways to grasp nettles and beat back creepers that it completely dumped an entire tune. I disentangled myself by simply jumping into improvising and on the way back out the tune came to my fingers just fine. From this I learned that muscle memory can be useful (believe me if someone is aiming a well timed capoeira kick at your head it can really really help you get out the way) but in jazz you also need a backup of some kind.

Then, almost unexpectedly, it was all over and I burst forth into warm sunlight.

I walked up on stage with my lovely encouraging ensemble group and tutor. I sat down at the piano. I looked out at where the audience were but they were hidden behind the wall of light (how did I forget that this phenomenon existed?). Then I looked at my new friends in my ensemble and I realised....

Oh. I belong here. This is right.

I played the piano in Hall 2 at King's Place.

I did not get eaten by bears!

And it was FUN!****

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* I am now imagining a log cabin big enough to house a Steinway baby grand. Oh...that's a fantasy to while away many happy hours. Me, in the woods up a hill in a warm and cosy place with a fantastic piano. Heaven. (I will also have cats)
** Oh Handout 14b, how I love thee. 
*** I wish to note here that Canadian trumpeter and educator Kevin Dean is ace in more ways than I  have time to write here! Fantastic musician, patient and encouraging teacher and a true gentleman. 
**** I gave up playing the piano aged 18 because I had become demoralised by stage fright brought on several years earlier by a failed violin exam. The fact that this was fun...that it felt right...I can't begin to explain here what that means to me....

Gig Update

The plans of mice, men and Jo oft gang awry.

So my idea to write something about all the gigs this year has got to the stage where a little catching up needs doing.

Metamorphic - Vortex 24th February 2013

I'll say it, I'm not massively into jazz vocals. I like them well enough but they're not generally my first port of call. My big thing is for instrumental jazz. And I have to admit to having a bit of a bug bear that aside from a few notable exceptions - the main role women have in jazz is as singers - which seems a little limiting to me given the panoply of things out there to hit, blow, pluck and scrape. And men can sing jazz too - though it seems the don't get the chance that often. So I was on the look out for female instrumentalists to go and see and so jazz pianist Laura Cole and the plentiful stuff on soundcloud had me going to see this band. I have to say I came out of this gig thinking that Kerry Andrew might well be a vocalist I will seek out in future. The compositions from the forthcoming album Coalescence are fascinating little narratives that mix spoken text with singing. Kerry Andrew's voice is rich and clear and her delivery is focused and unpretentious. 

Metamorphic Are.
Kerry Andrew, vocals 
Laura Cole, piano/composer/arranger
Tom Greenhalgh, drums 
John Martin, tenor 
Paul Sandy, bass 
Chris Williams, alto 

I wussed out of going to Snorkel as the second part of the double bill. Due to some mortgage issues I'd not slept very well over the weekend and decided that it was better to go home before I fell asleep and to not spend an entire week regretting going out to a gig on a Sunday night.

Compassionate Dictatorship - Vortex 5th March 2013
I've waffled before about compassionate dictatorship when I saw them in January. Enjoyed this again. Bought the album. Once again was feeling like I could just, you know, really do with a bit more sleep. 

Sons of Kemet (+the Industrial Tubas), The Forge Camden 15th March 2013.
Reeds (Shabakah Hutchings) + 2 drummers (Seb Rochford, Tom Skinner) + Tuba (Oren Marshall) + 6 more tuba players. So that's 7 tuba players on the stage at the same time. The basic line up is energy enough with two drummers and the New Orleans vibe provided by (oversized) tuba for bass. Shabakah's playing (tenor and clarinet) covered the whole range from dancingly fleetfingered clarinetism to stonking/screaming tenor improvisations. At one point I thought that the energy rolling of Rochford/Skinners kits might actually mean that Shabakah needed tethering down the groove was so hard. And Oren Marshall's elephant tuba holding it all together. The 7 tubas - like a whole herd of elephants singing for joy together. The whole thing at once (seriously 7 tubas?) bizarre and yet deeply deeply righteously right. 

And all finished off with By The Rivers of Babylon like you've never heard it before. Can you play a low A flat? Says Shabakah to the massed ranks of tubas. Yes they can - a low humming noise (those elephants again) over which Shabakah then takes the melody and so so gently spins it into a spellbinding improvisation. The tubas pick up on what is happening and start to add harmonies and the drummers a steady gentle pulse. A testament to the power of yes. Yes, we can put 7 tubas on stage. Yes we can take something and run with it. 

And now looking back already I can nod nod nod my head and know that this is going to be one of my gigs of the year. Because even thinking about it leaves me with a big dopey, I saw 7 tubas playing jazz on the same stage, grin!

Jazz & Butternut Squash

Here are some thoughts on the tunes I managed to remember in an over-tired and cold befuddled state when I got home from hearing Ivo Neame Octet at the Vortex last night. 

Notes on individual tunes.

That Syncing Feeling.

This is apparently about technology. Lyrical clarinet melody & solo evoking either a) nostalgia for life when the kit was simpler and had bigger buttons or b) a bitter-sweet reflection on the dysfunctional co-dependent relationship we have with have with our computers/gadgets. #knowthefeeling

Resignation

Despite assurances that the papal resignation was just a co-incidence with the title of this new tune the lights did start doing strange things in the second set. So who knows? Loved the LH piano, bass, bass clarinet tripling of riffs. I was a tiny bit disappointed that they weren't restated at the end. 

Charm Defensive

This piece is steadily growing on me after an unpromising initial 'nice, but, meh' reaction when i first heard it on Walking Dark. The rich octet arrangement with the rising melodic lines stated in unison by the reeds is especially lovely. I keep finding more in it.  

Deep Space

We were politely asked to imagine we were floating in space for this one. Quite frankly if deep space is this groovy I'm moving there. Engage the warp drive and make it so, captain. 

Butternut squash *

I have been thinking recently that bass clarinet is the butternut squash ingredient of jazz. Bear with me. I shall explain. Butternut squash -  whilst it doesn't go with everything, improves a lot of recipes. It is rarely a mistake in soups (Ok you might not want to add it to your favourite chilled minted pea, dolcelatte and parmesan concoction) or hearty stews. Equally good as a main ingredient or supporting player. Many savoury dishes are even better for having butternut squash in them and it is my opinion that bass clarinet brings a similar property to jazz ensembles.

Ivo Neame Octet

Ivo Neame - Piano, accordion & Compositions

Tori Freestone - Saxophone, flute & birthday 

Jon Shenoy - Clarinet

Jason Yarde - Alto saxophone

Shabaka Hutchings - Bass Clarinet

Jim Hart - Vibraphone

Jasper Hoiby - Double Bass (just imagine the line through the O, I'm being lazy today)

Dave Hamblett - Drums

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* I am currently making butternut squash, lentil, apricot and orange soup. Also has cumin and corriander in it. It is lovely. Twitter has quietly censored the picture I posted of the rudest butternut squash ever, which I just had to buy from Lidl to prevent it corrumpting the minds of small children/nuns. They never said anything about it - but it's never properly displayed on my timeline.

In which I am wowed!

Django Bates Beloved: The Vortex. 8th February 2013.

Like paintings by Cezanne. If Cezanne had been a touch more abstract. Architectural almost landscapes.

More layers of sound that it ought to be possible for 3 people to produce.

I doubt Cezanne wore an acid green T-shirt covered in cartoon sheep. Perhaps he wore a woolly hat with a single, scraggy, tassel atop.

I don't know.

I don't know very much about Cezanne. I just remember once getting raptly lost in his paintings in this way.

We are not lost, we're just finding our way

Django Bates Beloved

Django Bates Piano
Petter Eldh Double Bass
Peter Bruun Drums

Gig's In Brief

Since I would like, at the end of the year to be able to list all the gigs I've been to - before I lose track here are some scribblings about my visits to the Con Cellar so far this year.

If you don't know about the Con Cellar you should. The cellar of a pub It's a teeny tiny space with old church pews and rickety chairs beneath a Camden boozer that hasn't yet succumbed to the Camden disease of becoming a tourist version of itself - a mixture of rock 'n' roll and local. Whilst it's not the most comfortable place to hear jazz - it is unlikely that you will be physically closer to the band without actually sitting in their laps anywhere else. Which when it's the likes of Troyka or Ivo Neame Ensemble is a bit special. Be warned though, that the resident piano is verging on shonky enough to be worthy of a Morley College award for decrpit pianos.*

18/01/2013
Black Eyed Hawk + The Strobes

Black Eyed Hawk
I have to confess It took me a while to warm up to Lauren Kinsella's vocals - my first impression involved the word pretentious. But the more I listened - and the more I reflect back - the more I like her unusual instrumental-like approach - the exploration of the range of sounds available in the words used. This is nothing like conventional scatting - more the sound of struggling to express things that words and melodies don't fit. There is an understated but rock solid understanding in the interaction between her and Laura Jurd. Jurd's compositions were standouts of the evening, I like them more every time I hear them. If she does not end up being BIG in the UK Jazz scene I will eat my hat (and be very, foot stompingly, poutingly disappointed).

Strobes
I very much enjoyed the Strobes set but did not form any distinctive impressions of their music beyond the incredible fleetness of Dan Nicholl's hands. This may be a second set on a Friday night after a long weeks' work thing.

01/02/2013
Mike Chillingworth Sextet + Martin Speake Trio

Mike Chillingworth Sextet.
Some very interesting elements reminiscent to me of Trad Jazz and Bepop. Really good stuff but not quite fused coherently within the pieces. Distinct sections bolted together rather than welded/melded. Be interesting to see where this goes - there's good stuff here - but I'd like to see it smooshed together a bit more.

Martin Speake Trio.
Again I enjoyed this without massively forming a distinct impression beyond that I'm starting to hear a difference in the sound between an 'older' generation of composers and more recent conservatoire graduates. What precisely that difference is I haven't quite defined for myself yet. Though this was an 'intergenerational band' as it were with Kit Downes on keys. When Kit Downes is an international jazz legend (it's surely only a matter of time) I will be able to look back and say in my best mad old jazz crone voice "he took my stool so he could sit down and play once, you know,"... Oh man...I'm looking forward to being a bonkers old jazz crone. It's going to be fun!
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*anyone who has done a course involving non digital pianos at Morley College will know what I mean...it's just time for some pianos to go to piano heaven where they will be forgiven their agedness, looked kindly upon after a life of mistreatment and lovingly played by Errol Garner.

Music for life - OAE, Mozart & Sir Simon Rattle at the RFH

Tuesday 29th January. Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Royal Festival Hall. London. 

The last two and a half years my listening and playing have been a whirlwind start to a mighty voyage of musical discovery. Jazz, for me, is where my ears and soul are at right now. It's a journey that's simultaneously like coming home.

My musical life didn't start here.

The first piece of music I remember being able to name is the third movement of the Mozart's Symphony No 41. The minuetto allegretto. I probably heard this in the womb. It was, I'm told, my older brother's favourite piece of music when I was very small. Blame the Wombles, I do. By the time I was old enough to be paying attention to such things we had moved on to the "grown up" orchestral version as well.

My parents love Mozart. The famous late Mozart symphonies (38,40,41) have always been part of the fabric of my listening. There was a vinyl LP that had 40 on one side and 41 on the other. I can picture the dark green cover. I appropriated it and timed my homework to it. One of the first Compact Discs I bought (back when CDs were newfangled) was  Jane Glover conducting the London Mozart Players playing those two symphonies.

Amid the many stupid things I've done in my life, admitting to liking Mozart to my school peers was one of the dumbest. It became yet another stick they used to bully me. The vicious (supposedly inverted) musical snobbery of teenagers can be punishing. It's not cool. 

It didn't put me off Mozart. I'm not sure anything could. His music is an abiding love. 

I booked tickets for this gig 9 or so months ago. By the time it came to going I'd forgotten who was conducting and where I was sitting. So both Sir Rattle and the Choir were a surprise (I'm a muppet). Yes, in the choir you do not get an entirely 'balanced' sound. Especially not if you're sitting directly behind the Timpani. Do I care? No. I paid £9 and was closer to the orchestra than I would have been in the front row. And it was lovely.  Just blimmin lovely. The joy of 41 leaving with me a big grin on my face. The whirling joie de vivre of that minuetto. :oD. A concert that was like snuggling into a velvety, fluffy, dressing gown with a cup of tea. Right. Like a well done sum.*

This may all have started with those Wimbledon based recycling gurus (who were well before their time, environmentally). But their advice on many things holds good.

Womble to your partners
Young wombles were told
If you minuetto allegretto
You will live to be old.

Weeeheeehehehe

And so, also jazz. What can I say? I guess only that I choose to construe minuetto allegretto broadly.
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*Sylvia Plath "You're...."

Five lessons capoeira has taught me about jazz.

Lesson #1

When I'm asked what capoeira is, or what I think it is, I usually say this:

To me, it's a game played inside a groove.

I might expand on that and say it's a physical and musical game that combines elements of rhythm, song, fight, dance, acrobatics, and clowning.

There are two words for "play" in Portuguese. 1) Tocar (to play a musician instrument) and 2) Jogar (to play a game). You will have to bear with my rubbish written Portuguese.

Quando eu toco berimbau eu jogo capoeira tambem. 

When I play (meaning 1) berimbau, I play (meaning 2) capoeira as well.

Eu toco piano. Eu jogo jazz. 

Climb inside the groove. Play.

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Lesson #2

I was a total dunce at PE in school. I have  been learning capoeira for 10 years. I'm still crap at it. I just don't care. Every tiny little scrap of improvement has been hard won. I can't spin on my little finger or do back flips. There are basic moves I still struggle with. I have been immensely lucky in training with teachers who have not made an issue out of the slow speed of my progress. If you'd told me 10 years ago that I'd be able to do some of the moves I can now do. I wouldn't have believed you. Part of me still doesn't.

I feel like a musical dunce a lot of the time and I have to work, methodically and slowly at lots of aspects of learning jazz piano. I have to apply all the resources of intelligence and persistence I can muster. I have, at best, a gift for picking up information and concepts quickly. But the actual execution of jazz improvisation in real time. I am toiling at every scrap of progress.

Age 18 I stopped playing piano. I had failed a violin exam and after that barely scraped passes in piano exams. Stage fright blocking my way. If you'd told me, 18 years ago, that I'd learn to improvise one day. I wouldn't have believed you. Two and a bit years ago I started a jazz course. I thought I might be able to learn enough about chords etc to be able to play something simple from chord symbols. It simply didn't occur to me that I might be able to improvise. Not even in my wildest dreams, my most passionately optimistic fantasies. It was simply something other people did. Not me. I got lucky again. I'd found another remarkable teacher.

I am by no means a fluent, competent, confident improviser. But I have already traveled so far in that direction that it makes my head spin. It shakes loose something in the fundamentals of who I think I am. This is exciting, and terrifying.

What seems impossible is sometimes only improbable. With hard work the improbable becomes more probable. 

You do not have to be good at something to enjoy doing it. 

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Lesson #3

Pay attention to how far you've come as well as how far you have to go. We focus, in music especially, on how much more there is to learn. On other players who are 'better' than us, or more advanced. We worry about the "Grade we're on". We want to play like our heroes. It's good to keep looking forward and upwards to want to be the best you can. But it's like climbing a mountain. You get up a steep slope and find a plateau and then another ridge beyond which is probably another plateau. The mountain is endless.

From time to time turn round and look back. Look back at how far away the base camp is now. Pause. Enjoy the achievement so far. Take in the view. Then, and only then, turn your attention back to the climb.

Pay attention to what you can do today that you couldn't do yesterday, or last week. Even the smallest thing.

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Lesson #4

You think you know, because someone tells you, or whatever, what capoeira is. You set off on a journey towards that thing. When you get there you hear that it's actually somewhere else. And so on and so on. And everybody tells you something different. Your picture is a composite. So is everyone else's.

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Lesson #5

Sometimes the stars get aligned. You find yourself completely in the moment. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the now and you, and the groove, and the friend you are playing. You have left your troubles behind. You see opportunities you wouldn't normally see. You find yourself doing moves you didn't know you could do. You are more than the sum of all your parts.

It hasn't happened when I've been playing the piano, yet. But I can see it in other musicians. I can hear it. I can taste it. It is something that happens, sometimes, where groove and improvisation meet. It has many names.

One of them, is freedom.

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New Year’s Resolution #40,000,307: write your impressions of gigs and put them somewhere public they can be safely ignored.  

A recent BBC radio 4 programme asked the recurring question “Is Jazz Dead?”. The programme itself and a corner of the internet where I like to hang out responded with a fairly resounding “No!”

This is my tuppence worth, as a regular jazz audience member. From where I’m sitting, unless wellbeing is measured solely in terms of vast, in your face, commercial success, Jazz looks perky enough. Health, in the case of the arts, seems to require a balance be struck between solvency and creativity. If you were to measure jazz’s state solely in terms of creativity and commitment then, to quote many a pulpish portrayal of Frankenstein, “IT’S ALIIIIIIIIVE!”

To my ears, anyway. I cannot speak for yours.

In fact, Jazz may well be hanging out, having a pint and bringing some of the UK’s ablest musicians and most active composers to your local pub or small venue. Entrance often costs a mere £5 - £8. For less than a typical London cinema ticket you can have at once complex yet accessible music and a nice drink. Win. The downside is that I find the anticipation of walking into a pub on my own a smidge less than comfortable. The voice of propriety speaks loudly in my head: “nice gels do not go into pubic houses alone”. Yesterday, this non-hurdle nearly put me off. But I bravely ventured through the cold to The Salisbury on Green Lanes to see Compassionate Dictatorship.

I have now run out of blather. I now have to write about the music. Which is where I come unstuck. I must reiterate that these are my ‘impressions’. Forgive me if I descend into pretentiousness hereafter.

Perhaps it was the slightly scuffed red walls with broken flower fluted lampshades sprouting at intervals. Perhaps it was the glass of red wine. Perhaps it was the real fire and the cheery welcome from the gig organiser on the door. But the word that sprang to mind on the way home was amniotic. If one can have an amniotic groove? Surprisingly mellow given that the website promised everything up to and including rock wig outs. Amniotic infused with a sense that something much, much, filthier was being gestated. Filthy as in funkier, harder edged. I suspect this had a lot to do with the intricate subtlety of the drumming which broadened into even more intricate soloing. Bassist and bass, a partner dance, man and instrument. An arresting solo that opened with fading dynamics on a single note – reminiscent to me of the reverb on the opening chord of a thumping reggae* choon. That moment where your cervical spine lets go sending your head towards your feet, nodding. A solo that ran out of steam and into a wry smile just before the apparent finishing line. The guitar and tenor sax lines were melodic, grounded in, bouncing off, floating over the rhythm section, sometimes all of these verbs  at once. A moment of Balkan inflection, appropriately enough, on a tune that, according to the banter, told the tale of woe involving an Eastern European beat-boxer. An arrangement of a Joni Mitchell (I think, help, my memory of events less than 12 hours ago has faded). If I have a minor gripe then it’s that the saxophone microphone might have been underused. I wanted to hear even more of the lovely melodies. Overall a tight unit with no single player overwhelming the whole.

Compassionate Dictatorship: Jez Franks (Guitar, compositions), Tori Freestone (Sax, compositions), Jasper Høiby (Bass) and James Maddren (drums). 

http://www.compassionatedictatorship.co.uk/

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Added bonus 25% of the band is female. An instrumental jazz rarity. Yay! And yes, this was part of my reason for going. Because one thing I figure I can do about the small numbers of women instrumentalists playing jazz is to find out about their music, and if I like the sound of what I find out - go to their gigs and buy their CDs. Which in no way means I'm going to stop going to gigs with men or stop buying their CDs. Just that I'm going to take "women in jazz" as a jumping off point for exploring more often. 

* I hear this word in my mind in Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation as “heggae”. Just so you know.