2019 Highlight: Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band

The Gordian Knot by the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band proved session players heaven: the sort of band that should not by rights exist any more and would not if it were not for the movies. Includes a tribute to Tower of Power, plenty of samba …

Published: 2 Dec 2019. Updated: 3 years.

The Gordian Knot by the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band proved session players heaven: the sort of band that should not by rights exist any more and would not if it were not for the movies.

Includes a tribute to Tower of Power, plenty of samba grooves, lots of odd time signatures for Goodwin's film work factored in and then there is 'Sunset and Vine' featuring Kevin Axt, bass, Gordon Goodwin, piano, Andy Martin, trombone… one of the many overall pleasures of what is a very fine album.

Goodwin notes: ''I wrote this song in the style of West Coast Jazz of the 1950s and named it after a particularly famous intersection in Hollywood, CA.''

If you are a big band agnostic you may well discover a faith in the genre for the very first time given the skill and sheer joy of this album that has a real personality to the writing. SG

Tags:

Empirical, Django Bates, Evan Parker/Orphy Robinson/Laura Jurd/Alexander Hawkins, Jazz in the Round, Cockpit theatre, London

From 2016. Hello, goodbye: a recording for the last broadcast of BBC Radio 3 programme Jazz on 3 after 18 years. London Jazz Festival director John Cumming, paying tribute to presenter Jez Nelson and the show in an unscripted bit of ‘improv’ in a …

Published: 2 Dec 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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From 2016. Hello, goodbye: a recording for the last broadcast of BBC Radio 3 programme Jazz on 3 after 18 years. London Jazz Festival director John Cumming, paying tribute to presenter Jez Nelson and the show in an unscripted bit of ‘improv’ in a short speech at the end of the recording at the Cockpit theatre during the regular monthly Jazz in the Round night, presented Nelson with a rolled-up scroll and praised the show’s championing of the jazz scene. Nelson announced that he will be starting a new Saturday night show on Jazz FM and also mentioned that the new Jazz Now show replacing Jazz on 3 on Mondays to be presented by Soweto Kinch will begin by featuring Malija.

Earlier Empirical had opened the sold-out show fresh from their Old Street residency, going station to station here with tunes again from new Cuneiform album Connection, the stage announcements spread democratically across all four members Tom Farmer, Shaney Forbes, Nathaniel Facey and Lewis Wright. Wright’s vibes buzzed in enthusiasm, the Musser set placed by the marimba that Orphy Robinson would later use in the second half.

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After the break Django Bates, described by Nelson as “a treasure” sang in a light alto a whimsical new song that he had written for the occasion about one man and his piano, during his set played the kalimba, the piano of course, peck horn, and even whistled. It was tremendous to witness, such is the nature of the enhanced intimacy of listening to music in the round, Bates so close up and palpably enjoying himself in the moment, the true artist that he is, finding new inspiration and a middle section for ‘Is There Anyone Up There?’ in the process taking a well aimed swipe at gentrification (the absurdity of it all, the way change stultifies, progress as decay), his hands all over the Yamaha, a marabi-type vamp lighting up the room towards the solo set’s conclusion as he plucked a groove from the air so instinctively and convincingly.

The easy highlight of the whole evening was the one-off free improviser quartet summit, Evan Parker’s saxophone timbre and tone adding the gravitas that “new kid on the block” Laura Jurd, as Jez Nelson described the trumpeter in his introduction, very ably responded to, her little whinnies and feints wrapped in abstract tonalities. Mulatu Astatké pianist Alexander Hawkins was alert and responsive as he gradually thickened the clusters patiently assembled so that they made a carpet of sound that he and Robinson laid down underneath the horns. SG