Eurojazz clubbing 8-14 April

London scene band the Sultan Stevenson trio: l-r: Joel Waters, Sultan Stevenson, Jacob Gryn play the Schlachthof, Bremen on the 11th ahead of a Brick Lane Jazz Festival show later this month. Photo: press Marcus Strickland Twi-Life Moods, …

Published: 4 Apr 2024. Updated: 25 days.

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London scene band the Sultan Stevenson trio: l-r: Joel Waters, Sultan Stevenson, Jacob Gryn play the Schlachthof, Bremen on the 11th ahead of a Brick Lane Jazz Festival show later this month. Photo: press

Highly influential and innovative US singer Gretchen Parlato in 2023 on Lean In with long time collaborator the Herbie Hancock guitarist and singer US based Benin jazz great Lionel Loueke proved on form. Very much a close knit affair, Gretchen's husband drummer Mark Guiliana of Mehliana fame, Guiliana and Loueke family members and close friend bassist Burniss Travis (known for his work with Common and James Francies) figured among the personnel on Lean In which was recorded in Los Angeles. Full of Brazilian music, West African sounds and more it represented the state of the art in terms of jazz vocals and also joins the dots passing the baton from singer to instrumentalism and back again in a parity of esteem and represents another peak in both Parlato and Loueke's remarkable careers. Highlights included a very fine version of Lynn Malsby's 1980s song 'I Miss You'. Parlato's sound is metrically astounding and highly expert in harnessing the power of difficult syncopated runs that still retain their communicative rather than impressive-for-the-sake-of-it appeal to gain traction and a sense of rewarding release. Also playing Stadtgarten in Cologne next night, the 11th April.

James Brown legend Fred Wesley is incredibly, yes, funky live, read a New JBs review from 2013. The real deal

One of the many acts taking part at this year's Jazzahead across several venues but chiefly sited in the Schlachthof and Messe exhibition halls that runs until Saturday. Others include Sultan Stevenson, the Tineke Postma Aria Group, Julia Kadel Trio, Rebecca Trescher Tentet, Shuteen Erdenebaatar Quartet, Andy Milne & Unison, Oran Etkin Open Arms Project, Linda Fredriksson Juniper, Mama Terra and Matt Carmichael. Bart's 2022 album Documentaries featured not just a very fine harmonica player and composer but also finding a musical situation that defies easy categorisation, Bart harnessing a new melodic, chamber jazz and occasionally Sephardic ('Nine Souls') feel. Surrounding the Israeli's compositions are a rhythm section enhanced by cello. Trumpet is the brassy element on top. That horn player Itamar Borochov adds a lot of life to the sound but does not take over at all. Extraordinary harmonies in the arrangement almost casually strung together on 'Between Light and Shadow' where Bart proves if she were a saxophone player would be a Joshua Redman-type player melodically. Meditational and mindful it's a fantastic world class record (the best Bart improvisation is on the magisterial 'Teardrop').

Howell, here leading his own band, excelled in Ravi Coltrane's band playing the Barbican in 2022. With the drummer are altoist Regis Molina, pianist Kevin Sholar and bassist Charles Sammons.

The US altoist in Paris with pianist Fred Nardin, bassist Matteo Bortone and drummer Francesco Ciniglio. We liked For All We Know (Savant) reviewed in January which had Snidero with drummer Joe Farnsworth and bass icon Peter Washington giving ideal support on a set of familiar standards. What Snidero was able to do in his reactions to the themes in his improvisations is the really interesting customised bit - what he does to 'You Go To My Head' in particular one of the highlights on, yes, a real ''bebop heads'' album is a track you will be returning to time and time again.

English keyboards jazz great Jason Rebello is in his former Sting colleague guitarist Dominic Miller's band here for this Vienna gig - bassist Nicolas Fiszman and drummer Ziv Ravitz completing the American-Irish Argentina born 'Shape of My Heart' co-writer's band.

With every record on ECM it seemed to us listening to 2023's Vagabond that Miller seems to go deeper into his own world. And on what was a 2021 recorded Manfred Eicher produced studio album that sense of individuality coated in a Mediterranean dreaminess is the gateway to everything that unfolds. But there's an intensity too say on 'Lone Waltz' when pianist Jacob Karlzon added a heat and the crescendo sweeps us into a new intimacy. A very different in atmosphere feeling and listening experience is engendered to say what you'll hear on a record by another consummate guitarist such as Julian Lage or indeed Miller's extensive work with Sting you don't, in other words, acquire swinging freebop or dive into the singalong heart of a rock anthem - not by a long chalk.

But you do get detailed development of the themes as they often veer into more interesting waters out of the safe harbour of their pristine melodicism. In Miller's soliloquising and interior mood music he sometimes has a lot in common with a world Andrés Segovia painted so luminously or a Joaquín Rodrigo classical work in its more starker disciplined moments. Bassist Fiszman and drummer Ravitz, whose touch when it comes on 'Clandestin' is just right, prove a gruff contrast to the tracery of the rhapsoding piano lines that so naturally dance around.

Playing the music of V. S. O. P. The Quintet, north country English drummer Gary Husband dabbing on the toms here and hitting the hi-hat ''cymbalically'' in Cologne with fellow countryman Germany based erstwhile Brum head Percy Pursglove plus Germany scene jazzers Paul Heller, Hubert Nuss and Ingmar Heller. Husband is known for his work with Billy Cobham and John McLaughlin, and has a fine new album featuring his superb Evansian-esque piano playing on Songs of Love and Solace just released. V. S. O. P. was a Herbie Hancock band that in the 1970s celebrated the Miles Second Great Quintet and featured Freddie Hubbard.

Tags: gigs

Emile Parisien Quartet, Let Them Cook, ACT ***1/2

The Emile Parisien Quartet l-r: Julien Touéry, Julien Loutelier, Ivan Gélugne, Emile Parisien. Photo: ACT The more contemporary side of the French saxophonist Emile Parisien is on display here. The quartet together for some two decades is Parisien …

Published: 3 Apr 2024. Updated: 26 days.

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The Emile Parisien Quartet l-r: Julien Touéry, Julien Loutelier, Ivan Gélugne, Emile Parisien. Photo: ACT

The more contemporary side of the French saxophonist Emile Parisien is on display here. The quartet together for some two decades is Parisien on soprano and effects with pianist Julien Touéry, double bassist Ivan Gélugne and drummer Julien Loutelier who also contributes some triggered electronics. There is great humanity in Parisien's sound particularly in his soloing on 'Nano Fromage,' a morse code like insistent repeated riff from Gélugne enhancing a labyrinth in all tendresse.

Kept fairly concise (in jazz terms), the longest tune clocks in at just under 6-and-a-half minutes. There's plenty of blowing and that's good given that 41-year-old Parisien is a formidable soloist. Mysterious electronics on 'Ve 1999' are OK but perhaps a bit old hat to some. That is a problem with using electronics as the technology changes so quickly and it is easy to sound dated even when this isn't. Fine drummer Loutelier on 'Pistache Cowboy' (amusing title) reminds us of the touch of Marc Michel a bit. The two-part 'Wine Time' suite begins with walking bass from Gélugne and some very tasty responses from Parisien who harmonises well with Touéry.

I lost patience a bit - shoot me - with some of the later tracks. Métanuits is an EP favourite of ours from the saxist's work on the Siggi Loch founded label issuing this latest recording, ACT. But the French jazzer's best work that we know of was live album Sfumato, a 2018 release - recorded in Marciac a three-hour drive from Cahors in the Lot département where Parisien hails from. Playing Sidney Bechet’s ‘Temptation Rag’ on that record was a for the ages moment and makes us join the dots with the way Bechet has inspired generations of top musicians in France and even as far west as over the sea to Ireland.

Sidney Bechet, Sunday afternoons in winter

And the tuning in of stations in Europe on the wireless

Before, yes before this was the way it was

As the poet put it. From 'See Me Through, Part II (Just a Closer Walk with Thee)' - Hymns to the Silence (Van Morrison 1991, 1 min 48 sec mark)

Bechet is the father of the soprano saxophone. And so it it is more than applicable to think of his sound when someone as good as Parisien plays. The way Bechet inspired not just tradsters like Chris Barber and Van Morrison even when the context is wildly different - in Van's case above, highly gospelised and poetic. But also such iconoclasm jumped the snark to span across the arts to some of the great poets - Philip Larkin springs to mind particularly.

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes

Like New Orleans reflected on the water,

And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

From 'For Sidney Bechet' - The Whitsun Weddings (Faber, 1964)

In Parisien's case on that fantastic version of 'Temptation Rag' with Wynton - New Orleans, Bechet and Wynton's home town, and early jazz is a blink away.

The ACT label has had a very quiet year so far in terms of a succès d'estime anyway despite the usual flurry of activity and a number of current and upcoming releases - there is always something in the pipeline and Little North came closest to blowing us away most on While You Wait. But the only thing that we have really got excited about is the pre-release track 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: the Ecstasy of Gold' from the new Grégoire Maret-Romain Colin Ennio out this month. It sends shivers up the spine - a track that we have playlisted time and time again. Nevertheless returning to Let Them Cook, Parisien rarely disappoints and doesn't on said platter. It would be churlish - and without bending over backwards at all to kiss the bishop's ring - to admit when such sheer jazz gastronomy as these morsels tantalise to move to suggest otherwise.