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.
____________________________________________________
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment