2019 Highlight: Come What May

Late-March saw the release of the Joshua Redman quartet’s Come What May. Until then it was quite a while since this Joshua Redman Quartet configuration had issued an album, some 20 years or so in fact since Redman last teamed up with Aaron …

Published: 12 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

Late-March saw the release of the Joshua Redman quartet’s Come What May. Until then it was quite a while since this Joshua Redman Quartet configuration had issued an album, some 20 years or so in fact since Redman last teamed up with Aaron Goldberg, Reuben Rogers and Gregory Hutchinson in the easy mainstream space that Redman has virtually made his own over the years.

Full of bittersweet elegiac melody landing if you like right in the middle stylistically of where jazz is these days, neither smooth nor full of extravagant avant garde gesture. Redman brings with him nonetheless an encyclopedia of saxophone prowess and in some ways nothing really has changed since we were introduced to him back in the 1990s.

Full of original tunes there is plenty here for newcomers to jazz and old hands alike. For sure one thing that Redman never forgets is how to shape a melody and draw on his emotional side and with this band manages to underline his key approach so convincingly once again. SG.

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2019 highlight: PYJÆN

Ah, PYJÆN. After a lot of promise on the singles so far leaning towards prog jazz-rock (Polar Bear at the jazziest end, Dream Theater the proggiest) on their latest sounds, but with a very individual and fresh attitude. The five-piece: Dani …

Published: 12 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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Ah, PYJÆN. After a lot of promise on the singles so far leaning towards prog jazz-rock (Polar Bear at the jazziest end, Dream Theater the proggiest) on their latest sounds, but with a very individual and fresh attitude.

The five-piece: Dani Diodato, guitar; Dylan Jones, trumpet; Ben Vize, saxophone; Charlie Hutchinson, drums; Benjamin Crane, bass; arrived first on the marlbank new band radar last year when they were touring. As mentioned back then they can do hard blowing Brecker-esque tenor, Byron Wallen-like trumpet, wiry guitar, rapport, flow, ladlings of Afrobeat, an energetic pulsing undertow to boot: these guys are not afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.

A London five-piece formed via friendship and study at the Trinity Laban conservatoire in Greenwich. Vize is a new star in the making. Surely his and their profile will soar given a bit of luck. There is also a lot of stimulating heat rising from the drums. Hutchinson makes me want to listen to a bunch of Gregg Bissonette solos. Yep, it cooks.

While the band can do all the above the direction is clearly more in a unique prog-jazz space and moves that style on a bit since the last innovations were made by World Service Project. Could PYJÆN be the Colosseum of 2019? Tremble at that crazy prospect.

Hear PYJÆN on 23 November at the London Jazz Festival.