Andy Davies, Nigel Price, Mirko Scarcia, Saleem Rahman - Ronnie's hard bop jam ***1/2

''I was unwise with eyes unable to see:'' (Lorenz Hart). The Andy Davies rendition of Rodgers and Hart classic 1930s song 'Falling in Love With Love' a song pride of Swansea Andy often plays - confirmed Dorhamite Davies is probably deferential in …

Published: 10 Apr 2023. Updated: 11 months.

''I was unwise with eyes unable to see:'' (Lorenz Hart). The Andy Davies rendition of Rodgers and Hart classic 1930s song 'Falling in Love With Love' a song pride of Swansea Andy often plays - confirmed Dorhamite Davies is probably deferential in his head in the direction of the 1957 Kenny Dorham Jazz Contrasts version given his own low toned dexterity. But these days Davies has made the song his own in the context of the ever burgeoning London jazz club domain where he plays a lot across the Soho clubs including over at the Boulevard. Chatting to Andy stood in the middle of Frith Street speaking to marlbank and a polite member of the street choir, the local panhandling community, as our Vanorak thoughts turned to 'Blue Money' before the gig, the Welshman reminisced, his eyes lighting up without being at all performative, about playing with the great JD Allen there over at the Walker's Court spot recently. Here co-leading with Nigel Price where there's a Wes there's always a way in his noodlingly somersaulting digits but for once outclassed harmonically over on the other side of the dimly lit stand by the bass playing Cinderella who certainly went to the ball because Italian boffin of the beat Mirko Scarcia all scorchio tastefully ascended into the Oscar Pettiford altitude. When Saleem Rahman eventually arrived - had he got stuck in a tunnel somewhere? - everything felt right and Andy when he switched to flugel hit sweet spot after soft centre locating the tonal bull's eye time after time.

  • continues on Wednesday, Davies co-leading with Liam Stevens. Tickets

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Track of the week: Ballad of the Man Who Laughed, Sunnyside ****

Drawn from The Parsonage: True Tales of Love and Anarchy at 64 East 7th Street this terrific Renee Rosnes song verging on the Weill-Brecht universe - the pianist here is Dan Tepfer - is from an album studded with compositions by a range of …

Published: 10 Apr 2023. Updated: 11 months.

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Drawn from The Parsonage: True Tales of Love and Anarchy at 64 East 7th Street this terrific Renee Rosnes song verging on the Weill-Brecht universe - the pianist here is Dan Tepfer - is from an album studded with compositions by a range of luminaries who also include Theo Bleckmann, Regina Carter and Darcy James Argue. Singers on our track of the week which is a revolutionist tinged Wall Street satire are Theo Bleckmann and Alicia Olatuja - the lyrics by the great, revisionist, groundbreaking, Billy Strayhorn biographer David Hajdu. There's a fabulously longing cello line from Erik Friedlander.

A concept album that revolves around a building in the East Village of Manhattan, at 64 East 7th Street, that Hajdu explains was home to New York's first macrobiotic restaurant and where remarkably Yoko Ono once waitressed and threw happenings, pieces centre on 8 key events in the building's life.

''I thought that the story of this building would make a great subject for a song cycle, with the music for each song written by a different composer. I wrote a libretto for eight songs, and brought it to eight contemporary composers I admired, and the project started coming together,'' Hajdu tells Columbia News, a journal of New York city's Columbia University, where he teaches journalism.

David Hajdu, top left, Theo Bleckmann, Alicia Olatuja, Dan Tepfer. Photo: Christopher Drukker/Columbia