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.