Doubling Downes
Vyamanikal + 2: Tom Challenger, Alex Bonney, Lucy Railton, Kit Downes
The profound sense of peace that descended over Hall 2 of Kings Place last night as the set by an expanded version of Vyamanikal glided towards its close was unlike anything I’ve encountered all year. The pianist Kit Downes and the tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger, normally a duo in this guise, were joined on the stage by the cellist Lucy Railton and by Alex Bonney, who sat at a laptop. Bonney was processing the music and sounds recorded by Downes and Challenger in 2015 in the small churches of five Suffolk villages, collecting the sounds of organs in various states of repair for an album released last year, and feeding it into the live performance.
In the absence of a church organ, Downes alternated between a piano and a small hand-pumped harmonium. For the better part of an hour the musicians wove tapestries of sound in which individual elements blended seamlessly. There were certainly gorgeous details, but they fade in the memory next to the overall impression of a glowing organic whole.
If there was a kind of English pastoral vibe in the air, it was implicit rather than declarative, and never suffocating. I suppose the most obvious precedent might be some of John Surman’s recordings, from Westering Home onwards, but really this music seemed to stand alone, without need for comparison. As they neared the end, the three instrumentalists stopped playing but the music continued, thanks to Bonney, in a many-layered drone which seemed to distill everything that had been played in the previous 50 minutes. And then came a few moments of silence in which we could find our own way out of the trance.
The first half of the evening had featured Tricko, the duo in which Railton and Downes perform a kind of sui generis cello-and-piano chamber music that manages to be intricate without inducing strain and immediately attractive without becoming winsome. “I’m aware that this music is cripplingly quiet,” Downes said at one point. “If I were listening, I’d probably be asleep by now.” That might indeed be the initial impression. But the longer you listen to them, the more awake you feel.
* Vyamanikal’s album is on the Slip Imprint label. Downes’s solo organ album, Obsidian, will be released by ECM early next year.
thebluemoment.com 
I like the sound of the harmonium/piano version of this, especially with the expanded line up. The Surman album I always think of when it comes to the organ is his duets with Howard Moody on “Rain On The Window”. But perhaps my favourite church organ/saxophone duet recording is Evan Parker’s “Psalms” with Sten Sandell on his Psi label. Remarkable music and recording.
It’s also good to see ECM releasing work of a younger UK artist. Apart from Tom Arthurs’ appearances with Julia Hulsmann I can’t think of any others at the moment.
On a different matter, I have to applaud you on the great line up for Berlin Jazz this year – if only I could travel. We certainly need to see Mr Sorey in London more, I’m looking forward to him playing with Vijay Iyer next month.