Here's the second extract from the interview with IDST band members. Here we talk about being part of the Jazz Services Promoter's Choice, about accessibility and influences, choosing what to play in a solo, and playing arranged music without an arranger.
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I interviewed the members of IDST on the sea-front at Scarborough. If you listen carefully you can hear the sea lapping against the shore.
This is a really interesting part of the interview in which the guys in the band talk about working in a co-operative way, improvising in a strongly composed structure, and turning influences into a new music. There's another extract from the interview, with just as interesting material. Tim WallComments [0]
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Listen to the full track of IDST's Bingowings, from their album Seven Dials
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Second up on the opening day of the festival were Leeds-based IDST (If Destroyed Still True). This is communal music-making of the highest order. The themes start small and evolve and extend over each piece hitting intense periods of really emotional collective playing, and then subsiding into short refrains which then connect to little miniatures recalling jazz’s past, folk melody and even classical grandeur.
This is a good size ensemble that plays like a trio, then a big band, then a full orchestra of sound timbre and rhythmic drive. There’s no individual grand-standing and the solos fit into the whole; it’s the music and musicianship that dominates.
In ‘Bingo Wings’ funk guitar jostles with ecstatic tenor sax and a rhythm section that drives like a sports car on a midnight motorway. It might be fast, but the engine purrs; it might be furious but it’s always under control, and the glorious ensemble sections kick into latin textures and a dexterous piano solo from Johnny Tomlinson before rising to another wonderful crescendo of collective playing.
It is noteworthy how many of the younger British players from across our nation’s cities operate in large music collectives out of which a number of distinctive band are made. That’s exactly IDST background, and I think it results in a fresh rethinking of the jazz tradition. In the sound of each instrument, in the compositions, and in ensemble playing there’s a real sense of all of jazz’s past achievements, but this is definitely a twenty-first century jazz. There’s an almost reckless enjoyment of sound and speed, of playing together. The tunes are marked by key moments of transition on which the band focus in eager anticipation. When they hit the pre-agreed moment they fall joyously into the new phase, picking up sound of musics from across the world, and particularly those from the middle east. ‘This one you’ was getting an early try-out, but the whole band play in an assured manner through out, especially Simon Beddoe on flugel horn, and Nick Tyson on guitar.
The Friday afternoon section of the festival is termed ‘Jazz Services Promoter’s Choice bands’. It’s a free event, and the audience was far more wide-ranging than would usually attend a jazz gig. A large group of children on a school trip mixed in with festival regulars and those who just dropped in after a stroll along the sea-front. Everyone seemed to appreciate the music, and although the band eschews showmanship they were ideal for this time. A great choice.
Many of the numbers feature strong fanfares, street struts, or carnivalesque sections which make the music grand in its form, if almost modest in its presentation. The music speaks for itself.
‘Seven Dials’ gave all the band a chance to shine, and Tomlinson on piano condensed the whole history of piano-playing style into his integrated solo. I also enjoyed Nick Tyson on guitar. You would have thought they would do best in a small Leeds club, but they were just great in this hall. Somehow the grandeur of the music echoed the grandeur of the place.
This is an assured performance, technical and yet accessible, strong on bounding emotions. They clearly love playing together, and we loved listening to them.
Tim Wall
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So Andrew, Tim and now Simon have been off filming, recording, photographing some of the sites and sounds of the festival. I'm currently stuck in the Stagedoor area with Marian. This is my first Jazz Festival so it's slightly odd listening to If Destroyed Still True through double doors. The music is obviously mooted but they remind my a bit of Koop, the Austrian jazz, dance, electronic group. Lovely double bass reverberating through the Spa building with trumpet cutting through.
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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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