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Posts tagged ‘Pete Hurt’

Oct 17

Rail excursion

Not often do I begin a review with a recommendation for the venue’s catering. In fact never, until now. But the Jazz Café POSK, situated in London’s Polish cultural centre on King Street in Hammersmith, extends a hospitality that includes its restaurant, where before last night’s gig by the Wobbly Rail Five I had a plate of herring with potato salad and a large slice of apple pie with cinnamon — all delicious — and came out with change from 15 quid.

In his days as a college radio DJ, Lou Reed titled his programme Excursion on a Wobbly Rail, after a tune on Cecil Taylor’s 1959 LP Looking Ahead. Ten years ago Wobbly Rail Five became the name of an occasional quintet fronted by the British saxophonists and long-time associates Chris Biscoe and Pete Hurt, with Liam Noble on piano and Steve Watts on bass. When they made an album in 2016, it was with Jon Scott on drums. Last night at POSK the drums were in the hands of Sophie Alloway.

It’s an interesting little group, playing quite intricate compositions that require sheet music and fairly intense concentration, occupying a part of the jazz spectrum also inhabited by Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols. Last night’s repertoire, based on the album, included Monk’s “Played Twice” (arranged for two sopranos, as if in homage to the group the late Steve Lacy once led with a second soprano, Steve Potts), along with pieces by Biscoe, Hurt and Noble, most of them including a nod to the high priest of bebop somewhere in their contours.

Noble is particularly good at that kind of thing, and his solos were notable for the strength of their angular architecture. Alloway responded brilliantly to the challenge of providing the detailed arrangements with the sort of cues and punctuations more normally required in a big band than a small combo, while retaining the intimacy of the conversation, swinging beautifully along with Watts and adding particularly effective cymbal textures.

Irregularly assembled, the band sounded a little stiff to start with but eventually eased into the evening in front of a smallish but enthusiastic audience, the horns warning up with Biscoe’s liquid soprano on Hurt’s woozy ballad “Lost for Words” and Hurt’s tenor digging into the contours of Noble’s “Ask Your Mother”, which bopped along like a soul-jazz tune with a dash of bitters.

A good gig, then, in one of London’s most welcoming jazz venues. And now that they’ve reassembled after a long hiatus, one hopes that the Wobbly Rail Five will get the chance to continue their journey.

* Jazz Café POSK’s future programme can be found at http://www.jazzcafeposk.org. There’s a Wobbly Rail Five page on Chris Biscoe’s website: http://www.chrisbiscoe.co.uk

Aug 1

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Henry Lowther at the Vortex

Still Waters (from left): Alcyona Mick, Henry Lowther, Dave Green, Pete Hurt.

The trumpeter and occasional bandleader Henry Lowther turned 80 a couple of weeks ago, and last night he brought his quintet, Still Waters, to the Vortex for a birthday celebration. It was the first gig I’d attended since seeing Bryan Ferry at the Albert Hall in March of last year — and when I mentioned to Ferry that I was going to see Lowther, he remembered immediately that Henry had played the muted obligato behind the opening verse of “These Foolish Things”, the title track from Bryan’s first solo album, back in 1973.

That’s Henry for you, a quiet and understated but ubiquitous presence on the British music scene for five and a half decades. You might have heard him in the bands of Gil Evans, George Russell, Mike Westbrook, Graham Collier, John Dankworth, Mike Gibbs, Stan Tracey, Kenny Wheeler or Colin Towns, with Barry Guy and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, with Manfred Mann, on Talk Talk’s albums, on John Mayall’s Bare Wires, on Richard and Linda Thompson’s Pour Down Like Silver, Van Morrison’s Avalon Sunset, Elton John’s A Single Man and countless others.

I first met him in 1969, on a plane to Germany, where he was touring with his regular employer of the time, the drummer Keef Hartley. He told me about the recent experience of playing with the band at the Woodstock Festival, where they had appeared on the Saturday afternoon, between John Sebastian and the Incredible String Band. A few months later he asked me to write a sleeve note for his first album, Child Song, released on the Deram label and now a collectors’ item.

The Vortex on Saturday night, with its reduced socially-distanced attendance, wasn’t exactly Woodstock, but Still Waters — Pete Hurt on tenor, Dave Green on bass, Paul Clarvis on drums and Alcyona Mick depping for the regular pianist, Barry Green — produced a set of lovely music. Henry’s compositions are like his improvising, characterised by an innate lyricism, and I particularly enjoyed the chance to hear a live performance of “Can’t Believe, Won’t Believe”, the beguiling title track from his most recent album. Throughout the set the trumpet solos had that typical blend of beautiful tone, song-like phrases and surprising twists. The piano solos also caught the ear, Mick deploying a variety of resources, from silvery single-note lines to beautifully formed chordal inventions, as she took every chance to add a sense of elegant drama.

As we applauded Henry Lowther’s music, all you could think was what an adornment this modest but brilliant and much cherished man has been to the British jazz scene, adhering to the highest standards while maintaining the most open of minds, his work as a player and a teacher inspiring generations of younger musicians. Many happy returns to him.

* Henry Lowther’s Can’t Believe, Won’t Believe was released in 2018 on the Village Life label.

Jul 22

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The return of Tony Kinsey

Tony Kinsey

At the Clock House: Dave Jones, Tony Kinsey, Tony Woods, Chris Biscoe

After six months off with an injury, the distinguished drummer Tony Kinsey returned to action last night, setting up his kit at the Clock House in Teddington High Street for one of the regular nights organised by the Way Out West collective, of which he is a member. WOW’s venues have included the Bull’s Head in Barnes and Cafe POSK, the Polish social club in Hammersmith; the latest location, the back room of a pub, feels appropriate to the informal vibe created by these West London-based musicians and their enthusiastic supporters.

Kinsey’s band mates on this evening were the double bassist Dave Jones and four saxophonists: Pete Hurt (soprano), Tony Woods (alto), Tim Whitehead (tenor) and Chris Biscoe (baritone). In the set I heard, they played in several different combinations.

The full sextet was assembled for the opener and closer, respectively Tadd Dameron’s “Good Bait” (arranged by the late Eddie Harvey, a co-founder of the collective) and Oliver Nelson’s “Hoe Down” (transcribed by Hurt). The four saxophones were alone on Woods’ arrangement of Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance”. The trio of tenor, bass and drums tackled “I Thought About You”. Alto, tenor and drums were heard on “Stella by Starlight”, for which Woods set Whitehead a puzzle by starting the piece in a fairly abstract kind of way, having given the tenorist a list of five songs from which the chosen one would eventually emerge — the correct answer was achieved pretty quickly. And alto, baritone and the rhythm section played a couple of tunes from Biscoe’s excellent recent album, Then and Now.

The occasional misunderstanding made a pleasant change from the blueprinted precision of so much contemporary jazz. “Moving on,” Whitehead declared brightly as Woods and Hurt debated a missed cue in “Good Bait”, to the audience’s amusement.

Kinsey, looking characteristically unruffled, played with superb empathy throughout. The elements of his style — the calm ride cymbal beat, the off-centre rimshots, the discreet brushwork, the crisp 2-and-4 hi-hat and the occasional bass-drum bomb — were perfectly deployed. This is a man who played with all the heroes of post-war British modern jazz — Tubby Hayes, Joe Harriott, Don Rendell, Johnny Dankworth et al — and with Billie Holiday and Ben Webster, and who in recent years has composed extended pieces for large jazz ensemble and string quartet.

Did I mention that, on October 11, Tony Kinsey will be 90?