The set by John Etheridge and Christian Garrick was one of the best recieved of the whole Scarborough Jazz Festival. They got two standing ovations and were called back to the stage for a number of encores. In the final encore guitarist Etheridge and violinist Garrick are joined by Alan Barnes on sax. This is a remarkable festival moment and you can enjoy it in all its exuberance here.
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John Etheridge and Christian Garrick were surprised by calls for a second encore.
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All images © William Ellis 2009
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This is graceful music which ignores (rather than breaks) the usual boundaries which organise our musical understanding. Yes, it draws upon folk, jazz, rock, and other traditions, but it isn’t a fusion. Primarily this is about improvisation and interpretation between two well-schooled musicians whose backgrounds overlap but remain distinctive.
It felt like a sunny Sunday morning; which suitably enough is what we had in Scarborough today. Of course there’s a cliché of the chilled-out Sunday brunch so beloved of advertisers; but this wasn’t music for lifestyle marketing. Rather, it’s thoroughly enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, and carefully conceived performance. It’s as bright as the sun over the bay, as far-reaching as the horizon, and as delicate as the breeze from the sea.
John Etheridge has a rich personal musical background to draw upon and this morning I heard echoes of many of the groups and settings he has played in before. I knew less of Christian Garrick, in fact I have only heard him before on the Small Hotel CD he recorded with Etheridge. As you would expect if you know anything about Etheridge’s background, or even just guitar and violin duos, this set featured pieces associated with jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Etheridge worked with Grappelli for several years, but he also replaced Allan Holdsworth in the jazz rock group Soft Machine. So we not only got a reworking of the Grappelli sound from Etheridge, but joyous shifts of role between guitar and violin. In fact the duo performance featured much of Garrick’s ability to seamlessly move through quite dramatic shifts of style, as well as his remarkable facility in using the violin well beyond its usual sonic and musical place. One moment he’s taking the role of folk guitarist, next Jimi Hendrix, then impressive hybrid techniques which offer a remarkably fresh take on both violin and the jazz duo.
Neither artist is afraid to work with electric pickups, effects pedals or dramatic string technique, just as much as they will tackle everything from world music or rock pieces, jazz standards, Tin Pan Alley songs, or film soundtracks. But beyond Etheridge’s introductions there’s no clowning about . This eclecticism isn’t a put-on, or a façade to hide behind, but seems to derive from two open-minded musicians exploring the possibilities available to them. If only every Sunday morning felt like this.
Tim Wall
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'Just Like Jazz' is a collaborative project between Interactive Cultures, a research unit at Birmingham City University, and the Scarborough Jazz Festival. We're media academics who happen to be jazz fans and we're working with the Scarborough Jazz Festival to explore the ways in which jazz festivals can be portrayed online.
Rather than creating a brochure website around the festival, or simply filming the festival and putting that online, our goal is to capture the spirit of the festival using a range of techniques such as photography, text and handheld, personal digital video. We have given small, cheap, portable video cameras to select audience members, musicians, backstage staff and the festival organisers and asked them to capture whatever they think is interesting: the buzz of the audience, the surrounding environment, snippets of the music performed, and any discussions that take place around jazz.
Left to right: Prof Tim Wall, Andrew Dubber, Dr Simon Barber, Jez Collins.
We're gathering together all of this video, photography and text from our contributors and publishing it live on this website as the festival happens. We're also tagging the content in order to experiment with the ways in which the characters and stories that are captured can be navigated by you, the visitor. This process gives audiences the opportunity to experience the festival in their own way and makes the event accessible to those who may wish to attend the festival in future years, or who may never have considered visiting a jazz festival at all.
Although we've worked on projects like this before, with Aftershock in Italy and with the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, we don't have a fixed idea of what we're going to end up with. We're working with a loose structure and quite a lot of improvisation - in a way, it's just like jazz.
Do come and say hello if you see us around. We hope you enjoy exploring the festival online with us,
Tim, Andrew, Simon and Jez.
http://interactivecultures.org
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