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Posts tagged ‘Tony Kofi’

Dec 10

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Kind of Dukish

The idea of jazz as a repertory music is so fraught with dangers that it tends to evoke my instinctive distrust. Sometimes, though, you can only give in and enjoy it. The Pocket Ellington, as the pianist Alex Webb calls his septet devoted to the music of the immortal Duke, turns out to be a very good idea.

This is not a recreation of the great Ellington splinter groups of the early 1940s, whose recordings were issued under the names of Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart and Barney Bigard. At the Pizza Express in Soho last night the Pocket Ellington entertained a sold-out house with Webb’s artful arrangements of some of Duke’s (and Billy Strayhorn’s) best known compositions, rendered for the trumpet of Andy Davies, the trombone of David Lalljee, the alto and baritone saxophones and clarinet of Alan Barnes, the tenor saxophone of Tony Kofi, the double bass of Dave Green and the drums of Winston Clifford.

To miniaturise what were originally big-band compositions can have the effect of bringing unexpected facets into the light. I enjoyed the way the ensemble brought out an elliptical quality seeming to anticipate bebop in the melodies of Duke’s “Cotton Tail” and Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately”, written in 1940 and 1942 respectively, an impression heightened by the work of the rhythm section behind Kofi’s solo on the former.

Webb resists the temptation to stretch the material to suit modern time-frames. Miniatures such as “Ko-Ko”, “Le Sucrier Velours” (from The Queen’s Suite, written in 1959 for Elizabeth II), the title piece from Such Sweet Thunder and “Chelsea Bridge” retained their original exquisite proportions. Even the medleys of “Main Stem”/”Rockin’ in Rhythm” and “Harlem Air Shaft”/”Drop Me Off in Harlem” remained brisk and crisp, leaving the listener wanting more.

The singer Marvin Muoneké joined the line-up for “Jump for Joy”, “I’m Beginning to See the Light” and other favourites, making an excellent job of Webb’s amusing lyric to “Johnny Come Lately” and handling the stately contours of “Sophisticated Lady” with appropriate delicacy.

Naturally, Webb’s chosen format can’t provide the heft and occasional lushness of a full big band. But there are plenty of compensations, including Kofi’s pensive unaccompanied coda to “Chelsea Bridge” and everything Barnes did, including an eloquent alto passage on “What Am I Here For”. And, of course, the presence of Dave Green, an important figure on the British jazz scene for six decades and still, at 83, keeping his bandmates honest.

Jazz mustn’t become a museum, and more fine young musicians than ever need the world to pay attention as they try to move the music forward. But when the past is respectfully addressed and reinvigorated with such skill as that shown by Webb and his colleagues, principles can happily be suspended.

Sep 30

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Remembering Bobby Hutcherson

orphy-robinsonOrphy Robinson must have known he’d had a great idea when he put together an octet to celebrate the music of the late Bobby Hutcherson at the church of St James the Great in Hackney on Thursday night. But I don’t think he can have expected the large crowd who turned up to respond in quite the way they did.

Fans of contemporary jazz generally listen to their music with a silent attentiveness, occasionally applauding a solo but mostly reserving their signs of approval until the end of a piece. That wasn’t the case on Thursday. The unusual fervour of the music was matched by the response of the listeners, who shouted approval and encouragement during solos in a manner associated with the tenor battles of the 1940s.

Somehow, on this occasion, the musicians had accessed a different spirit. To me, it was the spirit of gospel music: the wave of emotion that can lift you to another level of feeling, in which inhibitions are broken down. Doubly appropriate, given the venue and the fact that the organisers were the promoters of a series known as Church of Sound.

Putting together the evening’s repertoire, Orphy mixed Hutcherson’s own compositions with those from other writers that the great vibraphonist recorded during his long career. I was only able to stay for the first of the two sets, so I missed the versions of Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni” and “Hat and Beard” from the classic Out to Lunch. But I loved the arrangements devised for Eddie Marshall’s boppish “Knucklebean”, James Leary’s “So Far, So Good” and Hutcherson’s oft-recorded “Little B’s Poem” and the rousing “8/4 Beat”.

The line-up was a dream. Byron Wallen (trumpet), Roland Sutherland (flute), Tony Kofi (alto), Nubya Garcia (tenor), the leader on marimba and electric vibraphone, Robert Mitchell (piano), Dudley Philips (double bass) and Moses Boyd (drums) set up in the middle of the church, facing each other, surrounded by their listeners. As with the monthly Jazz in the Round series at the Cockpit Theatre, it made this seem the best possible physical format for jazz.

Kofi came close to blowing the doors off the place every time he took a solo. Orphy unleashed dazzling cross-hatched patterns of melody that skittered around the vaulted ceiling. Mitchell played one lengthy solo — on “8/4 Beat”, I think — of such ferocious emotional intensity that it threatened to melt his small electronic keyboard. And in an immaculate rhythm section, it was a special treat to hear Boyd playing straight time with such a lovely feel for swing, blending the alert crispness of Tony Williams with the beatific serenity of Billy Higgins.

The sound wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t matter a bit. Sometimes, for whatever reason, music goes beyond all the things that make it up and finds its way into a fourth dimension. This was one of those times.