Sep 20
“There’s too little clarinet in contemporary jazz”. I wish I could attribute the quote to some insightful luminary, but in truth it is just what I think. Although one or two current players double on clarinet, not too many play it as their main instrument. Ken Peplowski’s appearance, as the primary soloist in the last set of the Scarborough Jazz Festival is therefore a delight. Peplowski’s style is deeply rooted in the swing era, and in the style of a previous employer, Benny Goodman. It is great to hear him in a small group context, and supported by a great trio and a partnership with Alan Barnes.
About the only thing that blew the musicians off some swinging performance was the sudden burst of the mist machine that ensures the lighting effects work properly. This was Barnes final musical appearance of the festival, and his introductions have been the sardonic thread that ran through the whole event. Here he met his musical and verbal equal. Peplowski not only a serene soloist, but has a sharp line in putdowns and witty asides. The mist machine became the centre of their comic performance.
Just as quickly we were back to some romantic, late-night music played with elegance and sensitivity by the whole band. The audience were in hushed appreciation, except for the moments when they expressed their admiration with warm applause. This was a more than fitting end to a stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable weekend of jazz. We’ll be back for more next year.
Tim Wall
Sep 20
Izzy and Ryan looking at their recently published interview at the stage door.
Sep 20
Tony liking Tim's review of the his performance
Sep 20
All festivals need an all-star band, and I think I’ll make this one the Scarborough Festival All Stars. This Sunday afternoon set was an exploration of Charles Minus’ exuberant music by a band that did it full justice. Led (appropriately) by bass player Arnie Somogyi, with rhythm support from Clark Tracey on drums and Tim Lapthorne on piano, and a terrific frontline of Tony Kofi’s alto and wonderful baritone, Alan Barnes exuberant on alto and tenor and Jeremy Price playing fluent and often melancholy trombone.
Many bands would be setting themselves up for a fall by choosing to play pieces by a giant of jazz like Mingus to an audience full of knowledgeable listeners. But rather than falling this was a set of soaring, beautifully realised interpretations which made a respectful nod to Mingus-era performances, while giving each musician enough space to create the individual solos which are essential to the all-star line-up. Somogyi avoided pastiching Mingus, and played as himself, but when the band picked up a number in which Mingus fingers were required he didn’t disappoint. Equally the ensemble playing gave anyone who had heard Mingus’ records would get a warm glow of recognition. I was particularly taken with Price’s solos which were perfectly placed within the Mingus tribute. Kofi and Barnes were their boisterous selves. All members were taken with the gospel spirit which pervades Mingus’ compositions, and the audience clearly responded with enthusiasm.
I have to say I especially liked the more abstract interpretations offered, up and there were times when I felt they chose to be a little more conservative than was necessary. Perhaps another characteristic of the all-star band. Having said that this was genuine collective music-making, no one was there just to support the soloists and those up on stage clearly enjoyed themselves as much as we did in the hall.
Tim Wall
Sep 19
Michael Garrick’s lyrical compositions rank among my favourites, and his precise, careful playing fits beautifully with Trudy Kerr’s meticulous intonation and elegant swing. This was reason enough to look forward to tonight’s set. I am also a firm believer in the dictum that you need a strong jazz singer on stage about half way through the festival. Most popular music has featured the voice heavily, and while I’m a fanatic about jazz playing, getting back to a singer is a refreshing restorative 15 hours into a festival.
The trio were ideal accomplices for Kerr, turning reserve into a virtue, gently swinging behind her, and then filling the instrumental solo spaces with distinctive ‘voices’ of their own. Garrick and Clark Tracey echoed each other’s percussive lines, but the pianist’s pastoral feel is never far behind, while Geoff Gascoyne was responsive to every situation.
The Ellington pieces (from Kerr’s current CD with Garrick) were a joy. She made the well-known compositions her own. This is a woman who commands a stage anyway, but she loves to sing and I was drawn in to very number. But Garrick was always an equal in the musical stakes, even if he is more self-effacing up on the stage.
This was genuinely a jazz trio with a jazz singer, and everyone in the room seemed to feel that they earned their place in a very strong festival line-up. I like a singer who respects as well as uses the jazz tradition.
Tim Wall
Sep 19
As academics, we are constantly asking questions about the work we are doing. Here, photographer Mike Jackson, a frequent contributor to justlikejazz.org over the course of the past two days, picked up a camera and made us part of the unfolding narratives of this festival experience.
Sep 19
Bring together some top-flight, European-based, musicians, select some good numbers for exploratory playing, and then give each player plenty of solo space; that’s pretty much a recipe for a thoroughly enjoyable club set for dedicated jazz listeners. And that’s what you got here. What’s great about the Scarborough Jazz Festival is that the audience is relatively large, but the atmosphere is still intimate. In these circumstances a band like this plays in such a supportive atmosphere that they almost have to succeed.
Steve Grossman and Damon Brown make a great pairing. There’s a good contrast of emotional energy, but a great degree of equality in the intelligence of the playing. Each can take extended solos and keep a musicality about the journey. Most enjoyable, though, is the frequent interplay. They listen to each other just as much as they challenge. The numbers were particularly well chosen, and even the recent compositions by Brown and others fitted well into a programme of post-bop.
Leon Greening plays beautifully supportive piano, prominent enough to bolster the soloist without getting in the way. His own solos extend this role, rather than dramatically switch to a new mode. They are impressively technical, the sound forcing me to focus with intent concentration on his playing, but not in any way flashy. The strong applause at the end of most of his solos, and when he was named-checked in the band member introductions, suggest to me that most people in the room agreed.
Tim Wall
Sep 19
I took on the role of reviewing each of the bands during the three days of the festival. This is not a job to be taken lightly, though. Musicians are notoriously suspicious of critics, especially when (like me) they don’t play themselves and haven’t a clue what it’s like to create music. Even once you’ve taken the decision to publish and be damned, there are decisions to be made about what to write about and how to write it. I am not a professional critic, nor am I a particularly skilled writer. Working as a university academic means that most of my writing is for obscure journals where scholarly rigor is more important than wit and flair. As a member of the team that developed justlikejazz.org I tried to take our overall objective – to put the experience of the festival online – and focus it on capturing something of the music that we all heard in the hall.
I haven’t tried to promote the festival, or individual bands. I have written what I thought, and what struck me as I listened. I wrote the review while the concert was in full-swing (excuse the pun). I hope the individual reviews are not uncritical. I actually loved everything I listened to, and my tastes in jazz are broad and somewhat eclectic. In my academic work I have often studied jazz musicians and the music business in which they work, and the imperative there is to be as empirical as possible; to record what is actually true, not what I think.
These, of course are only my own opinions. I tried to express how the performances struck me, to add relevant details about who made the music, how it progressed and how the audience responded. I also wanted to try and put the single set into a wider context. Sometimes that means saying something of the musicians’ careers, other times locating the performances we enjoyed into the history of jazz as a whole.
If you are new to jazz I hope you found the approach informative; if you are more familiar with jazz as a whole I hope I was able to communicate something of the event as it happened; and if you were actually there I hope your experience overlapped to some extent with my own. Because I wrote these reviews on the fly, I was able to show some of them to the musicians whose performance I reviewed, or tell them what I had written. I was pleased with their reactions, because they were often gracious in receiving the complements, and encouraging about my comments.
Tim Wall
About 'Just Like Jazz'
'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
