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Posts tagged ‘Olie Brice’

Sep 14

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Olie Brice / JLG

Jean-Luc Godard once compared watching the great Hungarian football team of the 1950s to listening to free jazz. A few hours after the announcement of the great director’s death, it was possible to reflect on the meaning of his comparison during a performance at the Café Oto by the trio and octet of Olie Brice, launching the bassist’s new double album, Fire Hills.

Nowadays when we use the term free jazz we tend to mean music created from scratch, on the spot, with no prepared material. Back in the early ’60s, it tended to mean the use of composition to inspire improvisers to stretch the traditional boundaries, using the material as a launch-pad rather than a template while freeing soloists and accompanists to exchange roles. All that could be heard in the music made by Brice’s groups, both of them benefitting from his ability to use his role as a composer to guide rather than prescribe.

The first half featured the trio, completed by the tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger and the drummer Will Glaser, moving with great empathy through compositions dedicated to Johnny Dyani, Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill. Linking two of the pieces, Glaser delivered a extraordinary solo that began with mallets rolling fast around his snare drum and two tom-toms, using the three pitches to produce something that had the quality of a song, before reversing one of the mallets to introduce a kind of counter-line. Drum solos are seldom poetic, but this was.

Between the two sets, the Oto sound system quietly played selections from the soundtracks of Godard’s movies, including Georges Delerue’s gorgeous orchestral compositions for Le Mépris: a nice touch on a day when a key figure of contemporary culture left the scene.

The six horns of Brice’s octet were assembled in a single line, but it soon became apparent that he would be using them as two units: a pair of trumpets (Kim Macari and Alex Bonney) and a baritone saxophone (Cath Roberts) to the left, an alto saxophone (Jason Yarde) and two tenors (George Crowley and Rachel Musson) to the right, with the drummer Johnny Hunter joining Brice in the rhythm section.

The short ensemble passages — sometimes just punctuations between the improvisations — had the kind of loose-woven, slightly ragged ebullience that could remind you of Mingus’s bands or Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, without borrowing moves from either. That made sense, since Mingus and Haden also figure strongly as inspirations for Brice’s own playing, in which virtuosity and passion are equally mixed.

The first two solos, by Macari and Musson, were the kind you want to wrap up and take home: on-the-nose power from the trumpet, beautifully controlled tonal distortion from the tenor. There were many duets, notably one between the soaring Yarde and the agile Bonney. One or two of the solos outstayed their momentum, but with this music that’s a risk worth taking. And what the evening showed was that Brice has his own way of applying organisation to music, shaping it in interesting ways without compromising the crucial spontaneity of expression and interaction.

* Olie Brice’s Fire Hills is on the West Hill label: https://westhill.bandcamp.com/album/fire-hills

Jun 23

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Jazz in Britain, Part 1

Jazz in Britain 1The title of this two-part series is a homage to John Muir, a friend of 40-odd years ago. As a BBC radio producer, Muir saved John Peel’s career at the corporation in 1968 by giving him a Radio 1 show called Night Ride. He also booked Roxy Music for their first broadcast on Sounds of the Seventies, and supervised a series titled Jazz in Britain, devoted to the emerging generation of John Stevens, John Surman, Tony Oxley, Trevor Watts, Howard Riley and so on. John died recently, aged 80. I thought of him as being the best kind of BBC person: calm, civilised, culturally literate and unobtrusively fearless. Here are eight new albums by artists he would certainly have booked for a series of Jazz in Britain in 2017. Together they demonstrate that we are experiencing a new golden age of British jazz.

Binker & Moses: Journey to the Mountain of Forever (Gearbox). Dem Ones, a first album of duets for tenor saxophone and drums by Binker Golding and Moses Boyd, deservedly won praise and awards last year. This follow-up starts in a similar vein, with a further disc of two-part inventions, even more confident and assured. But the second disc is where things get really interesting as they add guests in various permutations. Byron Wallen (trumpet), Evan Parker (saxophones), Tori Handsley (harp), Sarathy Korwar (tabla) and Yussef Dayes (drums) join Golding and Boyd on a trip through tones and textures, creating a beautifully spacious set of improvisations, uncluttered but full of interest. The exotic titles suggest some kind of fantastical narrative is going on, but the music tells its own story.

Alexander Hawkins: Unit[e] (AH). Another two-disc set, its first half consisting of seven pieces recorded last October by Hawkins’s excellent and now disbanded sextet, featuring Shabaka Hutchings (reeds), Otto Fischer (guitar), Dylan Bates (violin), Neil Charles (bass) and Tom Skinner (drums). “[K]now”, featuring a recitation by Fischer, is a highlight. The second disc consists of pieces recorded this January by a 13-piece ensemble in which Hawkins, Bates, Fischer and Charles are joined by others including Laura Jurd, Percy Pursglove and Nick Malcolm (trumpets), Julie Kjaer (flutes and reeds), Alex Ward (clarinet), Hannah Marshall (cello) and Matthew Wright (electronics). This is dense but open-weave music, containing a composed element but sounding almost wholly improvised and writhing with invention. It’s on Hawkins’s own label (information at http://www.alexanderhawkinsmusic.com) and it’s outstanding.

Yazz Ahmed: La Saboteuse (Naim). A friend of mine describes this as “Silent Way-era Miles w/Arabic textures”, which is a fair summary. Yazz, her quarter-tone trumpet and her fine octet are investigating ways of blending jazz with the music of Bahrain, her parents’ country. At a late-night concert in Berlin last November the audience didn’t know them and they didn’t know the audience, but after an hour the musicians were able to walk away in triumph. Dudley Phillips’s bass guitar and Martin France’s drums keep the grooves light and crisp, Lewis Wright’s vibes solos are always a pleasure, and the combination of Yazz’s trumpet or flugelhorn with Shabaka Hutchings’s bass clarinet gives the ensemble a pungent and distinctive character.

Olie Brice Quintet: Day After Day (Babel). I love this band, led by a brilliant bassist and completed by Alex Bonney (cornet), Mike Fletcher (alto), George Crowley (tenor) and Jeff Williams (drums). What it has is the loose-limbed fluidity I associate with the New York Contemporary Five, the band that included Don Cherry, John Tchicai and Archie Sheep, with just a hint of Albert Ayler’s Bells ensemble. But it’s not derivative. It’s a continuation, and a worthwhile one. Brice’s own playing is exceptionally strong (he can make me think of Wilbur Ware, Henry Grimes and Jimmy Garrison), his compositions provide the perfect platform for the horns, and Williams swings at medium tempo with such easy grace that you could think you were listening to Billy Higgins.

Denys Baptiste: The Late Trane (Edition). Almost 50 years after John Coltrane’s death, there is no real consensus about the music of his last two years, when the turbulent spirituality took over and blurred the outlines that had been so clear on A Love Supreme and Crescent. Baptiste takes a conservative approach to the late material, enlisting a fine band — Nikki Yeoh (keyboards), Neil Charles or Gary Crosby (bass) and Rod Youngs (drums), with the great Steve Williamson (tenor saxophone) on a couple of tracks — to support his own tenor and soprano on Trane’s tunes (including “Living Space” and “Dear Lord”) and a couple of originals. Rather than taking them further out, he draws them nearer in through the subtle application of more recent styles, including funk, reggae and a touch of electronics. The sincerity of the homage is never in doubt.

Chris Biscoe / Allison Neale: Then and Now (Trio). One of the unsung heroes of British jazz since his arrival as a promising saxophonist with NYJO in the early ’70s, Biscoe sticks to the baritone instrument on this release, joined by Neale’s alto saxophone as they explore the mood of the albums Gerry Mulligan made with Paul Desmond in the late ’50s and early ’60s. With Colin Oxley’s guitar, Jeremy Brown’s bass and Stu Butterfield’s drums in support, the approach is deceptively relaxed: this music may not bear the burden of innovation but it demands high standards of execution and integrity. The intricate improvised counterpoint on “The Way You Look Tonight” refracts Mulligan/Desmond through the Tristano prism.

Freddie Gavita: Transient (Froggy). Fans of the Hubbard/Hancock/Shorter era of the Blue Note label would enjoy investigating the debut by this young graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and NYJO, the possessor of a beautifully rounded tone on both trumpet and flugelhorn. His shapely compositions hit a series of fine and varied grooves, lubricated by Tom Cawley’s piano, Calum Gourlay’s bass and James Maddren’s drums. The obvious comparison, for Blue Note adherents, is Empyrean Isles: not such a terrible thing with which to be compared, is it?

The Runcible Quintet: Five (FMR). Recorded live in April at the Iklectik club in Lambeth, this is music in the tradition of the Karyobin-era Spontaneous Music Ensemble, which means that Neil Metcalfe (flute), Adrian Northover (soprano saxophone), Daniel Thompson (acoustic guitar), John Edwards (bass) and Marcello Magliocchi (drums) require sharp ears, focused empathy, fast reflexes and a command of extended instrumental techniques. It’s funny to think that this tradition is only two or three years younger than those heavily referenced in some of the preceding records, but in such capable hands as these it retains its ability to startle and provoke. Edwards, as always, is staggering.

* Part 2 of this Jazz in Britain series will deal with reissues.

Feb 4

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Olie Brice at the Vortex

Olie Brice QuintetLast year I enjoyed the playing of the double bassist Olie Brice in several contexts, notably the excellent quartet of the trumpeter Nick Malcolm. Now Brice has an intriguing band of his own, and they launched their new album with a gig at the Vortex on Tuesday night.

On the CD, called Immune to Clockwork, Brice’s quintet is completed by Alex Bonney on trumpet and cornet, Waclaw Zimpel on alto clarinet, Mark Hanslip on tenor saxophone and Jeff Williams on drums. The instrumentation, and the strong commitment to collective interplay, remind me at times of the occasions on which Ornette Coleman led a band with both Don Cherry and Dewey Redman in it (e.g. the Crisis album), of the New York Contemporary 5 (with Cherry, John Tchicai and Archie Shepp), and occasionally of Albert Ayler’s Bells/Spirits Rejoice quintet. But that doesn’t mean they sound like those bands. This isn’t a ’60s thing in any sense. Brice’s thoughtful compositions and the high-grade improvising of all the individuals see to that.

The leader and his musicians certainly make use of the freedoms that were fought for in the ’60s. But they don’t share the social environment and conditions in which Ayler, Shepp and the rest worked, and they don’t try to counterfeit its effects. Their music works so well because it has a very different flavour: the textures are gentler, the attack less aggressive and more measured. The compositions, employing a welcome variety of techniques (including a Mingus-like fondness for loosely plaited horn lines) within a clearly defined emotional range, are more reflective in tone but encourage the individuals to listen and react to each other with just as much intensity. The result is music than cannot be defined by era, its own or any other.

At the Vortex, Zimpel and Hanslip were replaced by Mike Fletcher and George Crowley, with no loss of quality. Zimpel’s alto clarinet and Fletcher’s C melody saxophone give the ensemble a subtly unusual blend: the latter horn, fairly common in pre-war dance bands but now seldom seen, could be described as sounding like an alto after a quarter-bottle of brandy, its voice slightly deeper and hoarser, although still lighter than a tenor.

I could only stay for Tuesday’s first set, but that was more than enough to confirm the strongly favourable impression made by Immune to Clockwork (which is released on the Multikulti Project label). A playful version of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” — a First World War song which the young Brice heard his grandmother sing, later discovering to his delight that Sonny Rollins had recorded in 1958 (in a trio version with Henry Grimes and Specs Wright) — lightened the mood set by something like the skittering Ornetteish lines of “Crumbling Shyly”.

The leader introduced a slow piece called “What Might Have Been” with a well constructed and emotionally compelling solo that showed how artfully he has reconciled the salient characteristics of Mingus and Charlie Haden in order to emerge with his own voice. Joined by the discreet but inspiring brush-work of the impeccable Williams, he was able to provide a sensitive framework within which Crowley and Fletcher could display their imagination and character.

There a track from the album, called “The Hands”, currently on Soundcloud (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). It’ll give you an idea of why this quintet, which stays resolutely clear of empty displays of spectacular technique, has become one of the most interesting and satisfying bands on the current UK scene.

 

Jun 3

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Trumpet + rhythm

Nick Malcolm QuartetBe it Chet Baker with Russ Freeman on Pacific Jazz or with Dick Twardzik on Barclay, Booker Little on Time, Joe Wilder on Savoy, Tony Fruscella at the Open Door, The Musings of Miles, Lee Morgan’s Candy, Freddie Hubbard on Herbie Hancock’s Empyrean Isles or Tomasz Stanko’s Soul of Things and Suspended Night, the line-up of trumpet, piano, double bass and drums has a great attraction for me. There’s something clean and uncluttered about it. That certainly struck me again last night, while listening to the Nick Malcolm Quartet at the Vortex.

Malcolm teaches trumpet at Wells Cathedral School and he has a lovely bright, rounded tone that any student would do well to emulate. He also has an outstanding rhythm section: Alexander Hawkins (piano), Olie Brice (bass) and Ric Yarborough (drums). The gig was part of a short UK tour arranged to coincide with the release of their second album, Beyond These Voices, on the leader’s own Green Eyes label, which was recorded with the band’s earlier drummer, Mark Whitlam, and also features guest appearances by the outstanding vibraphonist Corey Mwamba.

The quartet began with a piece yet to be recorded, a long slow blues anchored by a deep, sinewy bass line with a clever rhythmic twist. Malcolm started conservatively but balanced his phrases quite beautifully, while Hawkins found the common ground between Monk and gospel music with some rousing two-handed phrases. I wanted to hear it again straight away.

There would be other new compositions alongside material from the album (and its predecessor, 2012’s Glimmers). Brice and Whitlam underscored the ingenious arrangements with enthusiastic precision, always attuned to the occasional need for silence but deploying, when appropriate, a momentum that encouraged the trumpeter and pianist to loosen up as the set progressed. Malcolm incorporated growls, flutters, microtones and other effects into his lines, occasionally unfurling long, seamless legato phrases reminiscent of Kenny Wheeler and on one occasion, while playing an unaccompanied interlude, blowing directly at the open lid of the club’s Steinway, the sound reflecting down to produce sympathetic tones from the piano’s strings. Hawkins, freed from the responsibility of leadership, seemed to enjoy himself enormously, unleashing a homage to Erroll Garner on a boppish piece called “There’s Lead in Their Pencils” and elsewhere deploying his range of techniques with such elan that his hands disappeared into a blur.

The only non-originals were interesting choices: the sombre title piece from Andrew Hill’s 1999 septet album Dusk and Ornette Coleman’s bouncy “Checkout Time”, from Love Call (1968). Both proved to be ideal material for this line-up, the latter inspiring Hawkins to a brilliant extended solo consisting of one unbroken single-note line from his right hand while the left lay completely idle, creating a sense of spaciousness that was both unusual and quite typical of a thoughtful ensemble whose consistently compelling work deserves wider attention. Not “trumpet and rhythm” at all, of course, but a highly evolved mechanism in which four voices create a sense of perfect integration.