Showing posts with label The Stables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Stables. Show all posts

Wednesday 1 November 2023

Keen appreciation for Neil Brand's Laurel & Hardy show : Seen at The Stables, Wavendon, MK

Keen appreciation for Neil Brand's Laurel & Hardy show : Seen at The Stables, Wavendon, MK

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

31 October (additions, 5 January)

Keen appreciation for Neil Brand's Laurel & Hardy show : Seen at The Stables, Wavendon, MK
















Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Tuesday 6 June 2023

Kris Drever Band at The Stables [Wavendon, Milton Keynes] (work in progress)

Kris Drever Band at The Stables [Wavendon, Milton Keynes] (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 June

Kris Drever Band at The Stables [Wavendon, Milton Keynes] (work in progress)


A great evening at The Stables with Kris Drever and his friends, Euan Burton (double and electric bass plus vox) and Louis Abbott (perc, drums, guitar and vocals), including a fair sprinkling from the 2020 album Where The Air is Thin !

In the first set, Drever and his band gave us some poignant or reflective 'takes' on 'Sanday' (and its origins), 'I'll Always Leave The Light On' (and its origins) and 'More Than You Know' - after the interval, there was noticeably less 'chat', and this, as well as the energy in the songs chosen for it, helped the second set build.)










More to come...



































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Friday 22 October 2021

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 October

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet ~
Monday 25 October 2021 from 8.00 p.m. (response in progress)




Merch, with Roxanne de Bastion, at The Stables : Resorting to cash when the wireless tech disappoints









[...]


more to come


[...]








[...]


more to come


[...]































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 1 May 2019

Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables

Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 May


Right on key : Claire Martin and her 'European Quartet'* at The Stables on Wednesday 1 May 2019 at 8.00 p.m.








End-notes :

* Thinking, of course, of Keith J.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday 24 February 2019

LAU at The Stables with Midnight and Closedown

Some Tweets about Lau (@LAUMusic), in performance at The Stables, Milton Keynes

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


24 February

Some Tweets about Lau (@LAUMusic), in performance at The Stables (@StablesMK), Wavendon, Milton Keynes, on Sunday 24 February 2019 at 8.00 p.m.










Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday 24 November 2018

Phronesis : Solos aren't really their thing

Reflections on hearing Phronesis in Cambridge (November 2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


24 November

Reflections on hearing Phronesis (@phronesismusic) at Cambridge International Jazz Festival 2018 – a gig at The Mumford Theatre, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge,
on Saturday 24 November 2018 at 7.30 p.m.

In the first set, the band gave us four numbers (or 'songs'), the third of which (Jasper Høiby, leader and bass-player, suggested) was from 2014 (and which had been heard played at The Stables in 2016), but they were all in such extended forms that one was almost aware of 'Four seasons in one day' (to quote Crowded House).

By which is meant, almost necessarily, that the instrumentalists are all 'playing the long game', painting 'a bigger picture', whereas the solo is most usually a period taken out of a shorter treatment of a song, which does not necessarily have or need an overarching feel in which such individualism, rather than the compact work of the trio, is going to feel out of place¹.

They will no sooner have excitingly stepped up into an energetic, faster gear² than drop down or away, and the trick in the hearing is, when it happens, to enjoy the acceleration into that movement, but accept that it is part of a whole, in that Phronesis perform songs that are fundamentally quite modular, or moody – or modular³.


However, it is something more loose than that¹, as if the structure of the song is modelling-clay that can be shaped by the interaction of the members of the trio as they go, by listening to each other, and also looking out for each other’s signals. The things that communicate themselves in this music at its height - which is already of an unbelievably and highly reliable special quality - are that everyone enjoys the others' playing, and a strong sense of freedom and of play, which can easily move between the very melodic and the strongly rhythmic.

We had tight and virtuosic drumming from Anton Eger (@AntonEger), as one will remember when the band were at Cambridge Jazz Festival in 2016, and saw the erect and observant Høiby (@jasperhoiby) centre stage, at times casting looks back and forth between Ivo Neame (@Ivoneame) on piano, and Eger. Harmonically, and in terms of the figurations and inflections that he can adeptly work with, Neame seems like a mirror to and for Eger, and Eger for Neame, with Høiby (using the bow more often than two years ago) in the role of using his playing and presence to mediate and direct, at the cross-roads of patterned communications, and gauging with Eger and Neame when to extend a section, when to move – which they always do so smoothly – to another passage, another facet, another feeling.


This is not jazz that is pretending to be clever. It just is clever, in the sense of being good and of quality, but does not even require of us to congratulate ourselves for being there to listen (or for listening to it). It takes us to places, maybe not real ones, in the band's sound-world, and, as the new album is called, perhaps tells us We Are All ?

With the three of them, deeply bowing at the front of the stage in The Mumford Theatre, who could doubt that they had given their all, and that we had truly been with them, in - and because of - the music !


End-notes :

¹ Another musical example, if in the world of what has been written out, might be where a chamber work is in movements, but - without a break - they are run together, such as Ravel's Sonata in A Minor (Op. Posth.) ?

² Colour coded by the principal lighting of the back, velveteen curtain, behind the band, as blue, red, and sub-marine green (the encore was purple, then red), the three songs of the second set all had this synergistic short moment, when the trio took off together, in tempo and intensity :

Perhaps we most immediately sense how alive their creativity is in this type of sound, but it is there to act as a contrast to much else that is going on in the song, such as when they are relishing a repetition or noodling with the possibilities of tossing a fragment around, yet almost without exception conveying the feeling of being both experimental and able to cope with the play-offs that they create, the interplay on which they thrive.


³ Which is not to say that they are blocks of material in, say, a Boulezian sense, where playing one determines whether one will or will not play another (e.g. his Piano Sonata No. 3), or, within a set of reels or jigs, where a group such as Lau might take a pre-arranged, short common rest - a little like the heart 'missing a bit, or a jump-cut in the cinema - and then directly juxtapose the tempo and rhythm of what went before with those of the new.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 18 May 2016

Phrenology with Phronesis (work in progress) : Watch yourself when the (cross-)rhythms kick in !

This is a review of a gig given by Phronesis at The Stables, Wavendon, MK

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


18 May


This is a review of a gig given by Phronesis at The Stables, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, on Wednesday 18 May 2016 at 8.00 p.m.



Personnel (in surname order) :

* Anton Eger (drums)

* Jasper Høiby (db)

* Ivo Neame (pf)



This posting has been prepared from review-notes, made consistently with having to take them within blank spaces on Saffron Screen’s (@Saffronscreen’s) beautifully printed May / June programme, since a night off / out turned into a busman’s holiday… (One’s own fault, for going to The Stables (@stablesmk) and not realizing that wanting to write a review was inevitable - and, also, that its proportions would balloon beyond 'a mere sketch' of a review, which was intended 'to give the flavour' !)





First set¹ :

1. Song For The Lost Nomads

2. 67,000 mph

3. A Silver Moon

4. OK Chorale

5. Stillness




By anyone’s standards, (1) ‘Song For The Lost Nomads’ was a pretty good opener : one might have been forgiven, at the very outset, for thinking that Jasper Høiby was just quietly touching the strings of his bass, as if to check, as string-players quietly do, that it was in tune (his is a standard double-bass with a pick-up²) :

Except that he was looking across to Anton Eger (on drums), with whom he had less need to tune than with Ivo Neame (piano)… [One is reminded of Ravi Shankar famously having said, at The Concert for Bangladesh, If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more.]


Rather than with apparent tuning of any kind, (2) ‘67,000 mph’ had, if not a militaristic drum solo to start, then, at least, one that one sounded to be militarily informed. As one was to realize, from hearing the three members of Phronesis, both of the other instruments have their percussive aspect, and they rejoice in using it (please see below). Not that, just as Høiby later tapped out some rhythms on his bass’ case, one cannot, say, use the opening and closing of the valves on a tenor sax as an effect, but bass-strings, even when bowed (one can bounce the bow), can more easily lend themselves to relatively pitch-neutral sounding (and one need only look to Igor Stravinsky, or Steve Reich, for piano-tones that are embedded within ensembles).


For, Phronesis clearly does, at times, have a principle in working out an approach to compositions that uses blocks, whether of sections within the number, or bars over which it will increase or abate intensity and or tempi, and thus using the capacity of all players for ‘patterning’ the material in this way is an important aspect of the whole.

In (3) A Silver Moon, however, they perhaps felt a little more self conscious, at first, when introducing more elements of free jazz ? Before one felt that they had ‘got into’ the item, the impression was given of being a little more at a remove, and which was heightened by the seeming classical allusions as the theme became exposed. Of course, in jazz that deserves the name, it is by being improvisatory, and needing to be open to running risks, that it is alive (one does not stoop to referring explicitly to a jazz-gig where members of an ensemble around the size of a quintet exclusively played off the page), and, appreciating as much, it was fine that this central part of the set had made a little less impact.


No matter, as pianist Ivo Neame opened (4) ‘OK Chorale’, and we were into another of Phronesis’ elongated treatments, originating with his patterned (or repetitive) figurations [if there is a magic in styling it ‘Ok’, apologies to Jasper H. for having put the title into house-style] : unlike with a jazz-standard (or if one already knew the band’s discography or its members’ pedigrees), one is not – as is sometimes the case (Brad Mehldau maybe, or, more obviously, Keith Jarrett with his long-standing Standards partners) – waiting for the melody to emerge from where it has been submerged (though there is some element of that to Phronesis, too), but, as one might with formal sonata-form writing, recognizing / knowing the material that we heard earlier when it recurs.

That is as may be, but there had been a touch of holding back, from the strength in and of the first two items, in the third, and now we knew that the trio was really into it. Not, of course, just because we had a rocking, head-banging drummer before us in Anton Eger, but rather that, as we listened, and as he interleaved mini drum-solos into the texture, seeing him, and his face and expression, confirmed to us that he was on a feed-back loop with us – however that works for performers, be it seeing nods, hearing gasps or sighs, or perhaps even a sway in the front row... (It is not, one knows, only at the end, when the length and amount of applause is longer for this item than for its predecessor, that both we, amongst our fellows, and the performers come to grasp whatever might be what Russell Hoban (@russellhobanorg) liked to call the limited-consensus reality [apologies, Russ, if you likewise did not hyphenate...].)


The set closed with (5), in which Phronesis felt most free of all, and we heard Jasper H. bow his bass, even sawing with it at times, and then some low picked notes, which sounded very deep, as well as next going extremely high.

As we proceeded, perhaps another classical allusion from Ivo N., some strummed bass, and then what looked like – from the front – Anton E., playing his drum-kit with a pair of dinner-knives : metallic, anyway, and bringing that kind of timbre to cymbals and stretched surfaces alike, but just as part of that bewildering ‘build of sound’ that is Phronesis at its best, with symphonic proportions summoned by three instrumentalists.


They were lucky that we let them off the stage to take a break, though they had clearly taken much pleasure in playing (and so any need for rest came after a refreshing kind of work-out) !






Second set¹ :

6. Urban Control

7. Phraternal

8. Behind Bars

9. Kite For Seamus

10. Rabat

11. Just 4 Now



[...]



More to come soon...

Encore :



[...]



End-notes

¹ Set-lists by kind courtesy of Jasper Høiby of Phronesis (@phronesismusic). However, when the second set gets written up, there was clearly a segue that was wrongly interpreted (for reviewing purposes) as a change of mood / tempo of the sections within a number…

² But no ‘sock’, attached to the side, in which to stow the bow, which instead rested handily on the small stand by his right. One gathered that bowing the bass has come relatively recently - and also that its player does not play in a symphony orchestra (almost necessarily, the latter fact came before the former.)

(As agreed afterwards, such devices to carry the bow not only look like a holster (and how quickly does one need to whip out a bow ?), but they must also affect the sound and performance of the instrument.)




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Friday 11 December 2015

The Unthanks - live in two places (work in progress)

Live : The Unthanks at The Stables and The Union Chapel

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


12 November

Live : The Unthanks at The Stables and The Union Chapel

On Saturday 31 October, during their tenth-anniversary tour, The Unthanks made a stop at The Stables*, where they had been heard before, but probably just on one occasion. (Recollection is confused by also having seen A Very English Winter : The Unthanks at Aldeburgh Festival 2012, made for BBC Four.)

Their playing number from that incarnation (as Rachel Unthank and The Winterset) substantially remain : Rachel and Becky Unthank themselves, and Niopha Keegan, with Adrian McNally (then their producer) taking the place of their former pianist (Belinda O’Hooley), and with guitarist and bass-player Christopher Price completing the five-piece line-up.



First set :

1. Low Down in the Broom – Traditional (learnt from Nancy Kerr)

2. A sea shanty [‘One of the cleaner ones’] – Billy Rich

3. On a Monday Morning – Cyril Tawney [Cruel Sister]

4. I Wish - Traditional [The Bairns]

5. A Great Northern River – Graeme Miles [Diversions, Volume 3 : Songs from the Shipyards]

6. Mount the Air – Traditional [Mount the Air]

7. Annachie Gordon – Traditional (learnt from Nic Jones** ?) [Here's the Tender Coming]

8. Sea Song – Robert Wyatt [Diversions, Volume 1 : The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, Live from The Union Chapel, London]

9. The Gallowgate Lad – Joe Wilson [Last]


To start the gig, Rachel and Becky Unthank came onto the stage at The Stables (@StablesMK), without instruments except the duo of their voices, to sing (1) ‘Low Down in the Broom’ (which Becky had learnt from Nancy Kerr), followed by (2) a sea shanty.

They said that they wanted to remind themselves and us how they had begun as a pair of sisters, desiring a way to get into folk festivals free. This evening, when trying to start the first number, even they were surprised to be reliving having the giggles, several times – eventually, they controlled setting each other off, after Rachel had remarked that they found, back then, that stopping drinking wine before singing helps.

In the first of these a capella performances, The Unthanks were haltingly syllabic in how it was paced, with words carefully ‘placed’ in the air. They showed us that they were communicating, in strophic form, intense and heartfelt emotions, and, just hearing them, one was quickly reminded both of Rachel’s killer vocal timbre, and the ‘innerness’ of how their harmonies sound.

[On Thursday 10 December, when it came to the gig at The Union Chapel (@UnionChapelUK), it also began a capella (but they did not repeat the fit of giggling, of which there was no hint). Familiar with the format, one could seek to take in the space and look of the venue, with its feeling of inclusiveness from the fact that no one was very far from the stage.]


On hand-pumped harmonium (and with additional vocals), Niopha Keegan joined Rachel and Becky for (3) ‘On A Monday Morning’, and, when she opened with the lyrics, Rachel vocally embodied the feeling of devastating realization, and its rawness, in this song of the demands of ordinary working life. To it, Becky brought her own, smoky tone-colour in turn, and the treatment was exposed and hurt, maybe more so than on the first Winterset album Cruel Sister (which the band did not seem keen to acknowledge much afterwards).

Adrian McNally, no more wearing a dress than he did at the later gig [but there saying that he had never looked as masculine as when in one], came on for (4) ‘I Wish’. With a drone from the harmonium, and echoed by Becky’s voice, one had a strong sense of the devastation in Rachel’s voice, more so than on the album. Yet the piano part came across as a little too ‘arty-farty’ to be impressionistic (which was later explained by being told that Adrian was newly playing some of these numbers live), and the whispered words of doomed hope were too obvious to work well [and had greater effect at The Union Chapel].


With ‘A Great Northern River’, part of a project with Richard Fenwick at Tyneside Cinema, we welcomed Christopher Price, a multi-instrumentalist, and also described as ‘very cheerful’. (Originally from Barnsley, and now local, as a resident of Hitchin – with the inevitable comment that this attracted.) Becky’s voice was bright, but breathy, with Rachel’s sharper than it had been, and ‘longer’, and they were accompanied by gentle, inflected violin, and quiet guitar, the song ending with a little flourish from the latter. We were told that we would hear a five-minute version of (6) ‘Mount The Air’, in which Niopha gave us turns and inflections on violin, and, when Christopher came in on guitar, he used a plucked effect. The song was unknown as yet, and so such a very short vocal was unexpected (just eight lines in A Dorset Book of Folk Songs (1958)).


The number (7) ‘Annachie Gordon’ is taken from the third album (the first released as The Unthanks), and although it is said, of he of the song’s title, He’d entice any woman, it is more about Jeanie, and her unwilling marriage. Intensely and painfully so, but (wherever the song is recorded as dating to**) one cannot take its romantic representations of love and death literally, on the other hand. Thus there is a bitter contrast between ‘When she and her maidens / So merry should have been’, and Rachel, empty, with lines such as these, and our feeling bereft and aghast at what unfolds :

The day that Jeanie married
Was the day that Jeanie died




For no discernible reason (not at this remove, anyway - despite having consulted the original document, before transcription), the review-notes here mention ‘Man is the Baby’ (in connection with The Unthanks’ live recording, at The Union Chapel itself, of The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons). In fact, Becky quite clearly introduced (and, with a directness of tone, started the vocals to) something from the complementary part of that album, (8) ‘Sea Song’ by Robert Wyatt, stressing that, suggesting that she might sing it, Adrian had first introduced it to her. [She said so at both gigs, but, at The Union Chapel, was candid in admitting not then having appreciated the significance of the idea of covering the song.]

Both sisters were fully in their stride now [in both gigs, though one has forgotten, regarding The Union Chapel, which set it was in, or how many were then on stage – though, against this, an on-line set-list suggests that it was not played at all ?], but Rachel, in particular, brought rich yearning to the lyrics, which were overlaid on violin and harmonium. Later, there was what resembled a rumba bass-line from Christopher, who, when we went into an instrumental section, gave us a spooky, tapping bass-effect. At the end, the performance went up yet another notch, with the frankness and natural strength of Rachel’s voice.


In the first verse of (9) ‘The Gallowgate Lad’, there is the line Says she, quite dejected, I’s sad, and we heard the dejection feelingly extend to and with the held word ‘sad’, and the loss, because her Gallowgate lad*** has joined the militia. Forces of softly played violin, harmonium, bass and piano provided the accompaniment, until, with time, Niopha brought her line to fore, at first simple and free, then embellished. The rendition gave a real sense of desertion and desolation, and, at the end, the violin line came back in as a way of both acknowledging and departing from it.


More to come...



End-notes

* The Stables (@StablesMK) is at Wavendon, on the western outskirts of Milton Keynes.

** It appears (according to Wikipedia®) that the ballad is not known to have a basis in history (the place-name Buchan is mentioned, however, which is in Aberdeenshire), and that the original lyrics first appeared in North Countrie Garland (Maidment, 1824) and Ancient Ballads and Songs, Volume 2 (Buchan, 1828).

Nic Jones recorded a version on his album The Noah’s Ark Trap (1977) (and so have various others, including Mary Black : for ease of comparison, the Wikipedia® web-page reports the text of the lyrics used in some of these versions).

*** Every stanza ends with a line that invokes him, with varying adjectives, e.g. My bonny bit Gallowgate lad.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday 6 June 2015

An equal partnership, full of felicity

This is a review of a gig given by Tommy Smith (tenor) and Brian Kellock (piano)

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


6 June

This is a (delayed) review of a gig given at The Stables, Wavendon, by Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock on Tuesday 2 June at 8.00 p.m.

The jazz world / market remains a dazzlingly small one, and no disrespect to Stacey Kent’s enchantingly quirky vocal-style, but there is no way that the ticket-price of her gig at The Stables (on 1 July) at Wavendon, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes (@stablesMK) should be £9.00 more than that for someone of the class of Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith ! Let alone excellently partnered as they have played together for some years by pianist Brian Kellock. (More, if one considers that an announcement offering two tickets for the price of one had been made.)




Staff of The Stables, talking about the gig beforehand and the fact that it was two sets of fifty minutes, seemed puzzled that it was piano and sax, not a trio they had clearly not figured that a jazz trio is, typically, piano with bass and drums, whereas it is larger groupings, from a quartet upwards, where one has a voice (human or instrumental, since clarinets, saxes, trumpets, trombones, flutes, etc., have much in common with our voices), or a pair of such voices.


The gig tended to alternate slower / quieter numbers with livelier / faster ones, and the first transition needed to bed down, after a number by Michel Legrand (he had a piece in each set, as did hits for Glenn Miller). For there is something banal about ‘I want to be happy’* (from Tea for Two), and, after quite a right-ahead statement of it, the duo took a time to work their magic, before getting it away into jazzified territory : they did it, because they can do anything, but the shock of the new did not subside straightaway.

After that, and with Hoagy Carmichael given an elaborate piano introduction of that dizzying kind, where one can both not catch the tune or even confidently state any more what ‘Stardust’ should sound like, they treated the repertoire as raw material for their ever-inventive treatments.




At times, they came very close to home, sweetly rendering the melody, but, with the same reverence, embellishing, enlivening and abandoning all but its shape. Both men have a strong rhythmic quality to their playing**, not just, with Brian Kellock, elements of boogie-woogie, blues or stride, but in their phrasing, and in fitting so well together, though both are from the harmonics and note-pattern of their chosen standards creating before us, with and through their practised feel for chordal variation / progression, and changing accentuation.


If the staff at The Stables had been worried about any lack of difference, from piece to piece, in the sound of a duo, they need not have been standard orchestral playing can easily be less varied than that of a small ensemble, if one is attuned to the dynamics, pace and resources of chamber musicians :

In December 2014, hearing Jan Garbarek, majestic again with The Hilliard Ensemble*** , one reflected on his distinctive sound-quality, sharp in a sort of way that maybe (as we know it to be so ?) suggests Scandinavian and what it is that gives those players who have their own voice a tone that is all theirs, even if, of course, it will be cast in a variety of hues. Sound-production is always going to be subject to a number of factors, but, with Garbarek, it is only partly his attack, and more, at the heart of it, how he breathes with the instrument, and infuses his phrasing with the felt physicality of the breath.



Calling Tommy Smith’s tone ‘straight’ might sound as if it implies that he is square, but consider the word in phrases such as He looked at me straight or In a straight-ahead linking passage, and think again. Nothing simple / simplistic in what he does, but a clear and candid way of delivery that gets right to the point, and, bringing to his approach, a wealth of skill and experience that lets him place juxtapositions of register, breath-quality, intensity and feeling with strong, intuitive assurance.


Something that Tommy Smith did in one piece, very atmospherically, was directing the sound of his tenor into the body of the piano. At first just so that his playing came off the lid onto the strings, but, later, pointing the outlet from the horn onto the strings, and even with the bell of his instrument inside the frame.


During the interval and quick to get to the foyer, one found Tommy Smith, all ready to sign CDs for just £10 (and Brian Kellock soon joined him). He was asked about his breathing, because his breath-control and the way that, sometimes almost speaking, he breathes through his sax had been a joy to witness. As he was going to say in the second set about the ensembles that he had been playing with (from a quartet to new compositions with a symphony orchestra, where he needed to use a harder reed), as well as that talk of directing his sound into the piano, he answered that it depends what one is playing and with whom. But he was very alive to the idea of someone watching him as he played, breathing through these longer phrases, and having wondered how he did that.



When we resumed, we were told that some had come up, made themselves known, and bought CDs and got them signed, so we were also given an explanation of the title of the new one, Whispering of the Stars not a piece of vanity that the pair are stars, but how, in the North of Norway (where Tommy Smith apparently spends some time), the effect of exhaling into the cold air is described.


We were also told us a little more about blowing into an open piano :

* As a twelve-year-old at a school in Edinburgh that did not have many resources, there had been the stringed frame (no more) of a piano on the wall, and Tommy Smith had liked playing notes at it (which, he swiftly revealed, had been the opening ones of the only tune that he knew, the ‘Pink Panther’ theme)




* In a concert with The Stables’ own Sir John Dankworth to celebrate 150 years of the sax (so in 1991 ?), he had a piece for eight saxes, JD and his Eight Dwarves, but also a solo piece, likewise played with a pianist (but in the dark), and also into the body of the piano which was reported in the press as having used a synthesizer...

* Brian Kellock, he observed, had been using moments of opportunity to determine his use of the sustaining pedal


Come a second Gershwin song, ‘They can’t take that away from me’, it seemed (he was not quite clear) that Brian Kellock might have heard Tommy Smith sing at some point, when the latter admitted that he did not know the words anyway. (Behind, and unheard on stage, a woman said The way you wear your hat.) In the light of this observation, it was curious that Tommy Smith chose to tell us that he was puzzled by what the title might mean, for, in fact, the lyrics are plain enough : the song must have a context, where, even if one separates a couple, the memory of qualities that one observed in, or of experiences with, the other cannot be negated (I’ll miss your fond caress).

What, if permitted, would have made a great photograph was Tommy Smith, standing the base of the bell of his sax on the floor, and leaning on the neck, during an extended piano solo. After the gig, one joked with them about the longest that he had had to wait, and Brian Kellock quipped As long as possible !



In the first set, one could see Tommy Smith, with respect tinged with amusement, look down the length of the instrument, under the lid, for an indication from his colleague it did come, but it was a long time coming, both times, as the other really got absorbed by his solo, and away into a distant fairway, from which he yet came back.


They finished with nothing as late as a tune from 1927 (Tommy Smith had managed to suggest, earlier, that one’s relation to a date subsequent to one’s birth made a song from that year not earlier, but a later one), but from around five hundred years ago, whose title, in Gaelic, he did not try to pronounce. The meditative tone of the piece and its playing brought the gig to a different type of close, where each, as we applauded, could celebrate the other’s artistry and the whole evening.


On leaving The Stables, they were getting into their hire-car (Tommy Smith behind the wheel), so they were saluted next stop was Brighton, and one wished them well for that.


End-notes

* Which Tommy Smith was getting at, in the second set, when talking about musicals and ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ (from Oklahoma (Rodgers and Hammerstein)) : revealingly, given that he has even less reason to be called what he is than Chick Corea** (Tommy Smith is not his real name), he told us that he had had to watch his uncle in Les Misérables, as Jean Valjean, fifteen times, because he had been in the show as many times (although he begged to see the backstage effects on the last occasion...).

We also learnt that he had been forced, in childhood, to side with his father against a maternal predisposition towards The Stylistics, and (to which Tommy Smith ascribed a painful side) The Twist, in favour of Glenn Miller and other jazz influences, so we had a lively take on a well-known Miller number :



** Especially so in a Rumba by Chick Corea called Armando, which, as was rightly suggested, is his Christian name ('Chick' is a nickname that has stuck, not uniquely in jazz).

*** In their final collaboration, and also in the concert after which the singers were to cease being a vocal quartet : until one first saw them, it was barely credible that just four men could produce such a rich and consistent texture.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 26 March 2015

A tight, five-piece band of incurable romantics ?

This is a review of a mystery gig at The Stables on Wednesday 25 March 2015

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


26 March (29 March, much-needed textual revision)

This is a review [sort of] of a mystery gig at The Stables (@StablesMK) on Wednesday 25 March 2015 at 8.00 p.m.


Declaration of interest : If you can work out the genealogy (which will be deliberately made confusing), you are better at it by far than The Agent : to the father of whom one member of the line-up is a second cousin (and, customarily, vice versa), and whom The Agent saw in a related band, at this venue, probably six years ago (as well as once before, in childhood)


Handshake I :
Nowadays, despite the loss of Sir John Dankworth, he is still there to point the way, as ever, to good music at The Stables (@StablesMK) ! :




Introductory



Well, at least it is legible (even if its compiler reports being ribbed for using >36pt bold caps !) whereas previous sets of gig- or screening-notes have looked daunting (with comments written across, or over, others), the ones from last night, inexplicably, are much more likely to be pretty impenetrable to interpretation, except, when properly construed, to provide an odd reminder.




An odd reminder, that is, as to when Andrew Davis had treated us to a generously rich solo (most often, but not exclusively, on electric guitar), or to poignant phrases in the lyrics (now sadly but scribbled), or to how James Warren (usually, but not exclusively, the lead vocalist) rendered them James’ vocal quality being almost unchanged from when The Korgis (@TheKorgis) were in the charts in the UK (and significantly so*), as well as elsewhere in the world …




For, yes, we are talking of The Korgis (but also not exclusively, for there is also http://www.stackridge.net/ to bear in mind), whose current personnel (by surname, in alphabetical order) are, and to whom reference will be made, through propinquity, by Christian name :

Andrew Davis ~ guitars (electric and acoustic), vocals
Glenn Tommey ~ keyboards
Eddie John ~ drums
Clare Lindley ~ violin, guitar, vocals
James Warren ~ bass, vocals


The main event

For reasons elaborated, trying a number-by-number canter through the (impressive) set-list may not lend itself easily to The Agent’s ‘hand-written’ material (and, no, it is not a legacy of the gig !). Yet, although it would be better by far not to look to rely on it, if at all, beyond passing comments to give a flavour of the two sets (where possible), shall we venture what can be conjured up... ?


Despite familiarity with The Korgis’ canon, only 40% of those played were not new to The Agent (four songs in each ten-song set). (Some of these would not have been known to anyone outside their usual entourage, because they had, one was told, needed to run over them new in the sound-check.) To begin with, numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9 were unfamiliar (those without an asterisk) :


Need to check titles / add dates

First set (dates in parentheses are release-dates of singles, or (if not) of albums [in square-brackets]) :
1. One Life (1992)
2. Rainy July
3. * Art School Annexe [1979]
4. * I Just Can’t Help It (1980)
5. Lines
6. Hold On
7. * Young 'n' Russian (1979)
8. The Road to Venezuela
9. Rover’s Return
10. * Mount Everest Sings the Blues (1980)


‘One Life’ (1) had an opening riff (from Andrew ?), and was our introduction to Clare with strokes on violin, though by no means illustrative of her later demonstrations of dexterity, such as, gypsy style, in ‘Rainy July’ (2), with its quirky feel (hardly unusually for The Korgis, which have made a base-camp in Quirky), and tapping rhythms this first song, though, spoke (and perhaps dreamily) of One chance to make it work, and referred to ‘power and dominion’.

Art School Annexe (3) was the first piece to utilize three-part vocal harmony (from Clare, James, and Glenn), and both guitars had a ‘twangy’ feel to them (for want of a technicalese term). This was by no means an attempt to reproduce, note for note, the track from the self-titled album in 1979 [link to the web-page on Wikipedia®] where James' vocal characterization is more 'eager' but to work with the musical forces and personalities in the group.

It also provided the gig’s point of entry both for the expression of, and our appreciation of, what are, probably, quite candidly lyrics in relation to the Englishness of maybe not Sir John Betjeman (just too whimsical ?), but the likes of P. G. Wodehouse, or Dame Edith Sitwell. And quite, quite different from ‘I Just Can’t Help It’ (4) :

More so than (3), this song feels like hallmarked Korgidom [a word that sounds better than it looks !]: both James and Andrew were now singing, Clare had switched to (acoustic) guitar, and we had soaring synths. Sometimes with three-part, sometimes with four-part harmony, it was calling out for a solo from Andrew, which came to meet us, then reverted to the latter, only for us to have an even finer solo from him, closing with the four voices a captivating combination of the already experienced and the spontaneous, as befits a title such as ‘I Just Can’t Help It’.


After these well-known numbers came ‘Lines’ (5) and ‘Hold On’ (6). The first, a calypso, had another riff from Andrew, a wow-wow effects-pedal that altered Clare’s playing (and which we heard, later, in (10)), and a floated vocal from Glenn the music was mesmeric in style, choosing to conflict with throatily telling us that the song’s persona knew, because he was right behind you (reminiscently of threat, of retribution, in Matthew Fisher's solo album I’ll Be There [Fisher as in that litigated organ-solo in 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'], and the track of that name ?)…

A very different tone from that of ‘Hold On’ (6) (which characterized the contrasts, in this set, between neighbouring numbers), solidly in the band’s repertoire of what is reassuring and (non-pejoratively) ‘easy’. In three-part harmony (Clare, James, and Glenn again), a sincere pleading of being ‘without love’ : Please don’t leave me, and an invocation of Just a little magic.

Not to be lightly passed over is ‘Young and Russian’ (7), but, for the nonce, remarking on the Moscovian, sub-zero blue hue to the lighting, and Clare playing violin motifs with a pronounced intonation a song as relevant as ever to the rise of post-Soviet societal normative aspirations, with a nod to Pravda newly heard in The truth is revealed. Another change of mood, not to mention continent (and in unknown song-territory), was in ‘The Road to Venezuela’ (8), with its ‘multi-coloured smiles’, and a most welcome mention of Lewis Carroll’s Bandersnatch (from ‘Jabberwocky’) whatever exactly that may have been about, guitars alternated sections with violin, leading to a distinct military beat, and, before the tragic feel of the close (?), very lively playing from Clare.

The set closed, in ‘Rover’s Return’ (9), with an instrumental, complete with red lighting, Clare’s psychedelic violin, and (at the end) sampled bark (and a bell) from Glenn [all of which, with these good people, may have been some allusion to the sonnet / programme that underlies the Largo of Vivaldi's Op. 8, No. 1 (RV 269) ?], and with ‘Mount Everest Sings the Blues’ (10) : up tempo, and a funky solo from Andrew (back on electric guitar after 9), and then from Clare (after more wow-wow pedal).


A good place to end the set and one where to tempt you if you want to catch The Korgis live ?



* * * * *



Need to check titles

Second set (dates in parentheses are release-dates of singles, or (if not) of albums [in square-brackets]) :
11. Fundamentally Yours
12. Perfect Hostess (1980)
13. Dumb Waiters (1980)
14. If It’s Alright With You, Baby
15. * Cold Tea (1979)
16. * Boots and Shoes [1979]
17. Something About The Beatles (2006)
18. * Everybody’s Gotta Learn Some Time (1980)
19. * If I Had You (1979)
20. True Life Confessions (1985)


After tea with Johnny D. [a coinage offered to The Korgis for a tribute-song to @StablesMK], the first four numbers were all unknown, and, as Clare was to comment afterwards, some songs are rather short (and she also plays with @Stackridge, who have some epic tracks, in absolute terms**), particularly, one agreed, nos 11 to 13 (which had in common that they created ‘a mood’, before ‘If It’s Alright With You, Baby’ (14) :

Fundamentally Yours*** (11) was played ‘straight ahead’, with violin embellishments from Clare, and came directly from base-camp at Quirky. Conceivably as with ‘O Maxine’ (? from the 1979 album), a meditation on what some will do to satisfy [their] friends, but not for themselves (or, more specifically, those nearer to them) or, put another way, on partners to whom we are [allow ourselves to be ?] drawn, but who frustrate us ?

Andrew took the lead vocal on ‘Perfect Hostess’ (12), which came at this subject of relationships / partners from a yet more ironic (even sombre ?) direction, despite Clare elegiacally weaving an extended violin solo over it. Then James resumed with ‘Dumb Waiters’ (13), which was the ‘A side’ from the single that these two songs had shared, and where the irritated mood seemed to be with life generally, but transferred (as Freud might say) to waiters [not a Pinteresque Dumb-Waiter, but the ordinary, two-legged variety] as if it to break it, before we moved on, Clare remarked in passing That was a fast one !


Next came what James announced as an homage (though one forgets now quite to whom / what…) in ‘If It’s Alright With You, Baby’ (14), singing very raw and high Is it asking too much / To be more than a friend ?. And, there, The Agent's notes evaporate in incoherence, but the song was, again, in this vein of the kind of relationship that one wants, but wants to be different.

It was followed by an exceptional version of the noir ‘Cold Tea’ (15), not employing the Doppler-like siren of the 1979 single, but played laid back, and easy on the beat, and with Clare using effects-pedals (reverb, and slight distortion ?). At one point, near the end, her playing went stratospheric, with her violin a foil to the all-male voices of Glenn, James, and Andrew. Once more, too, a counterpoint to the romanticized idealism (?) of ‘I Just Can’t Help It’ (and two numbers to come (18 and 19)) ?




‘Boots and Shoes’ (16) set its tone through driving violin and synths, and vocals from Andrew (supported by James) the band was really rocking this song ! And it had an eerie, lengthy coda, complete with soaring and accented solo from Andrew, playing with spirit, but it did not stay with him, closing instead on Clare.


The unknown ‘Something About The Beatles’ (17), which asks Why did the apple fall to the ground ? (reminding us of Newton at Trinity College, as well as of the demise of Apple Corps), had quiet, spacy synth from Glenn, and Clare on acoustic guitar. It seems to allude to George Harrison’s ‘Something’ [You stick around now, it may show] in But I do not stick around The Beatles [lyrics caught there or thereabouts ?], and, after a suspension, we had another vibrant solo from Andrew, groovy synth from Glenn, and a ritardando to end.


The international hit ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Some Time’ (18) was brought to us in a moody vein****, Eddie John playing cymbals and the smaller drums with padded beaters, and Clare on obbligato violin to James’ lead vocals. In a solo from Andrew, he made intense use of vibrato, and, when Clare came back to prominence, it was with material in the mode of reflective jazz.

Andrew then played meditatively and sweetly in a second solo, and the high sheen of the original recording was brought to us by Clare with bright, shiny effects-pedals, as James sang I need your lovin' / Like the sunshine, closing with chorused repetitions of the title-words. From, perhaps, a slightly dark opening trio of songs, we had been brought into solid, delightful territory from The Korgis and, as it is ideal for a gig to build, and for one to be left with strong sensations, there had been no harm in that, for the audience at The Stables was solidly behind this band.

Probably The Pleasure Principle had thoroughly consumed the approach to making notes by now, because they reveal only that Andrew played slide guitar on ‘If I Had You’ (19). Which, however, can be supplemented by the fact that, for much of the song, the band sang the chorus thus (i.e. changing the last word although, because of its inflection, it is not natural for one to sing it so) :

I could change the world
if I had to
I could change the world
if I had to



‘True Life Confessions’ (20) had the feel of a fiesta to it, with colours from Glenn and Clare, and developed in an easy-going manner : in Andrew’s vocal, we heard True life is just like that. But, even if that is life, things could not stop there, as the crowd called out for more



Encore / reprise of :
21. Mount Everest Sings the Blues (1980)

The Korgis genuinely seemed not to be expecting this (but to make a get-away to The South-West ?), yet, to a little light-show, they gave up this number vigorously, this time with solos that had more jazzy intonations.


All in all, a good night out with a musical cousin of some sort, plus talented and pleasant chums, deserving of a break for cold tea...


Handshake II :



End-notes

* ‘If I Had You’ (no. 13, 1979), and ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn Some Time’ (no. 5, 1980), to name the greatest successes (in those terms) [courtesy of Wikipedia®].

** ’Revolution 9’, eat your heart out ?

*** Tellingly, or for want of space, rendered on the set-list as ‘Fundament’ ?

**** And, we were told, James was going back to what had been the second verse when the song was written, but he had been overruled…



Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)