Gig choice next out on the road

GIG OF THE WEEK Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra Symphony Hall, Birmingham Tuesday 7 February On tour this week cast your minds back to the tough very brassy 'Blues' a track that introduced Tales From The Jacquard (Whirlwind, 2021), Julian Siegel's …

Published: 4 Feb 2023. Updated: 14 months.

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GIG OF THE WEEK

  • Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra Symphony Hall, Birmingham Tuesday 7 February

On tour this week cast your minds back to the tough very brassy 'Blues' a track that introduced Tales From The Jacquard (Whirlwind, 2021), Julian Siegel's hard blowing big band work formed around a ''Jacquard suite'' (a Jacquard machine involving punched cards is used in lace making machines) on which the tenor saxophonist was joined by his jazz orchestra. Recorded in 2017 in Nottingham, London based Julian's childhood hometown, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, the now 56-year-old player also featured on Doncastrian Mahavishnu Orchestra legend John McLaughlin's 2021 album Liberation Time. With tunes by Siegel tour personnel for the Jacquard tour in early-2023 is looking like Nick Smart, conducting, Mark Knopfler player Tom Walsh, Percy Pursglove, Henry Lowther, Claus Stötter in the trumpet section; Mike Chillingworth with Nathaniel Facey and John O'Gallagher on selected dates, Siegel himself, Stan Sulzmann, Tori Freestone and Gemma Moore in the sax section; Mark Nightingale, Trevor Mires, Harry Brown, Richard Henry (doubling tuba) in the trombone constellation; Mike Outram, guitar; Liam Noble selected dates, Ross Stanley selected dates, piano; Oli Hayhurst bass and the legendary Gene Calderazzo - brother of Branford Marsalis Quartet pianist Joey - on drums from the now disbanded four-piece Partisans that Siegel co-led with guitarist Phil Robson. After the Birmingham date the tour takes in Southampton, Sheffield, Derby and Soho.

US sax legend the Gonz here with an incredible band for Bristol that includes the ex-Jeff Beck UK jazz piano legend, Jason Rebello - and bassist's bassist: Mark Hodgson

Joining the new star in the making saxist Alex Clarke are pianist Rob Barron, legendary bassist Dave Green and godfather of British jazz Stan Tracey's son road warrior Clark Tracey

Luma last year revealed an original piano trio that does not take the usual overly dreamy orthodox route. A certain fire came instead from drummer Jamie Murray who brought a Mark Giuliana-like energy to the trio while leader pianist Emily Francis not to be outdone offers plenty of variety and pulsating ideas especially when switching to keyboards and manages to keep the trio sounding contemporary rather than a tribute to a lost age. Largely original tunes, the trio skirt round jazz-rock and electronica textures with bassist Trevor Boxall an alert presence at all times.

Tenor titan Paul Booth is the Giovannini band.

Emily Francis plays Aberdeen on Thursday, photo, top: via Spotify. Julian Siegel, photo above, press.

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Dave Liebman, Live at Smalls, Cellar Live ****

The middle is always the best part in any novel where all the detail and plot are played around with by the novelist and you get to know the characters. The phatic communion and niceties that have gone before by then are gone in the air. The …

Published: 3 Feb 2023. Updated: 14 months.

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The middle is always the best part in any novel where all the detail and plot are played around with by the novelist and you get to know the characters. The phatic communion and niceties that have gone before by then are gone in the air. The how-do-you-do's and thoughts on the dismal drizzle and dreary light of the day and the gloom of the remains of the night to come and the long goodbye of parting are irrelevant and so far absent. And so it proves picking up the story from last week's track of the week, which was the first track here - yes - fans of the literal - 'The Beginning'.

The twist is that each part of this beginning, middle, end is a very open peroration to the power of five. Dave Liebman has vital things to say on 'The Middle' which is even more of a conversation where pianist Leo Genovese asks questions the sax machine finds answers to. But there is a simultaneous to and fro so you can't be linear where trumpeter Peter Evans and drummer Tyshawn Sorey are concerned.

Solo lines interrupt each other, these finish one another's sentences, these take bits, give things away, ''talk'' over each other, then come up with spontaneous ideas that nobody is stupid enough to throw away but acknowledge validity to and more to the point place their own meaning within.

'The Middle' is a remarkable more than half hour improvisation and because it was captured live it lacks the falseness of a studio recreation of the same feeling which producers do much to encourage and finesse and which is always a different kind of artefact.

You can't really hear bassist John Hébert too much at some points on the album, the only irritation, the miking favours Genovese most among the rhythm section and even there the piano could be higher definition upping its level in the mix. But sonic quibbling is anally subjective tricoteuse. Guillotine that thought.

Maximalist 'The End' is also long form and personal but bathed in quietude more. Liebman has an incredible discography - surely this is one of his greatest recent achievements because the band seem so as one with him. And there is an escapism in the freedom they all know how to describe via the best modernistic methods without deliberately being obtusely avant-garde which a lot of hipsters never get when they go way out. And here in such a room, a shrine of shrines for lovers of jazz clubs in New York City, is an instrument in itself: No one can fake a lived-in sound which ends up giving back to the musicians something from the fabric of the place as if everyone is communing with everyone who ever played in Smalls. Cory Weeds' Canadian label Cellar Live excels itself once again as a world class curatorial proposition choosing to release this Spike Wilner produced affair. Dave Liebman, master at work. Photo: the public domain