Xhosa Cole’s latest album On A Modern Genius (Vol.1) released this month, is a fresh take on Thelonious Monk’s legacy.
You might think that finding an individual path into the heart of such bebop magic making is difficult.
Man, it’s got to be.
There are countless Monk themed albums out there. Just how does anyone come up with a new direction and make it stand out.
Ask Xhosa who happily has pulled off such a feat.
The former BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year winner brings a unique twist to Monk’s classics on his latest album.
How the saxophonist did this was to record tunes live, bring in a tap dancer as you do – Liberty Styles – and to use guitar in the blend instead of piano.
The use of vocals on the album’s Ellingtonian finale, ‘Come Sunday’, which showcases Cinematic Orchestra and The W singer Heidi Vogel’s impressive decisiveness and soaring range, adds yet another layer.
That’s not all.
Because even more recently live there’s a way in to the way out extended with his current FreeMonk band.
That features pianist Pat Thomas of [Ahmed] acclaim and for the Ronnie’s gig leading Trinity Laban educator Hans Koller on euphonium and Nu Troop era icon Byron Wallen on trumpet Cole takes things into an even freer realm.
Koller himself got Cole going on Monk with ‘Played Twice’ that the Brum ace interpreted on his K(no)w Them K(no)w Us work.
The Birmingham connection
Recorded live in his home town of Birmingham during a UK tour, the album blends traditional jazz with innovative elements.
And he takes that platform a step further by playing Monk even freer with a version of his band that’s been in action on the continent recently.
It’s only once in a blue moon that someone as special as Cole comes along.
But don’t just take my word for it.
Writing on his blog The Blue Moment in 2021 Richard Williams reviewing the Cole combination of the day at a gig at Marylebone’s Cockpit theatre circa the release of K(no)w Them K(no)w Us referred to the Birmingham man’s ”impressive technical command” but also his ”poise, maturity and warmth” when on that occasion Cole was playing, as on this new record, Thelonious Monk repertoire adding:
“The obvious comparison would be with Sonny Rollins’s classic 1957 Village Vanguard recording for Blue Note with Wilbur Ware and Pete LaRoca. Tenor, bass and drums can form an austere, unforgiving format, but Cole, Vadiveloo and Bashford made it seem welcoming, not least thanks to the care put into the arrangements.”
Source: The Blue Moment 26 October 2021
Biggest departure to date
By then Cole has already laid down a strong portfolio of work since first bursting on to the UK jazz scene by winning the high profile BBC Young Jazz Musician televised TV contest in 2018.
Following K(no)w Them K(no)w Us was his biggest departure to date an album that encompassed oral history, personal experience and conversations on his pan African diasporic deep dive Ibeji in 2022.
One of the Ibeji conversationalists was Mark Sanders and I ask Xhosa about Sanders in a catch-up phone call yesterday. He says he’s known the drummer for 7 or 8 years and admires his approach as a free improviser.
He also mentions that Sanders and Rachel Musson – a saxist Xhosa also admires – each won the Paul Hamlyn prize last year.
Unifying presence
We first heard Cole playing a Larry Young themed Unity programme of tunes at east London jazz club the Vortex just before Lockdown.
Cole also has a strong interest in freer directions. It’s interesting that he straddles both repertory material and is strong on the freer stuff too.
But looking ahead he is less keen to do more repertory work and relishes the process of change.
Referring not in a grim way at all but being real about the world we live in he thinks the liking jazz fans have for repertory projects is because the current world is so precarious and there’s a love of nostalgia almost as a way of escape.
His ”FreeMonk” project on the go next month hits Ronnie Scott’s. That band billed for Soho is with pianist Pat Thomas, Hans Koller on euphonium, trumpeter Byron Wallen, bassist Josh Vadivello already a veteran of Cole’s bands – who is on the new Stoney Lane release – and drummer Tim Giles once of the Hungry Ants.
During a half hour chat with me yesterday the conversation began on a Birmingham theme with talk of the influential Jamaican tenorist Andy Hamilton (1918-2012) long a Birmingham legend who Xhosa says ”was really passionate about supporting young people in diverse communities from inner city Birmingham.” While Cole, who grew up in Handsworth, never met him it was through Hamilton’s community school in Ladywood that Cole who was a dancer first of all (now doing some tap himself again) first played the saxophone. ”It’s a lineage I’m happy to be part of.”
A creative director of the B: Music summer school in his home city he has held various roles there as a young person mentor, tutor and now creative director of the summer school which is held in August.
Monk’s handwritten advice
Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.
Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!
Make the drummer sound good.
Discrimination is important.
You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
All reet!
Always know
It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.
Let’s lift the band stand!!
I want to avoid the hecklers.
Don’t play the piano part, I am playing that. Don’t listen to me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!
The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
Don’t play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.
What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.
A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
When you are swinging, swing some more!
(What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!
Always leave them wanting more.
Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.
Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!
You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn’t want to solo).
Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.
A genius is the one most like himself – Monk
Birmingham means a lot to the saxist. And it’s fitting that the new album was recorded in the 1000 Trades pub in the city – a bastion of the scene locally with gigs organised there weekly by local volunteers – and his music appears on a Birmingham label, Sam Slater’s Stoney Lane Records. Xhosa says Sam provides much appreciated extra ears.
A very articulate person who does not take himself too seriously and yet who takes his jazz very seriously Cole is also a very sharp dresser (maybe taking Monk’s advice above to heart) and thinking back to the Vortex show approaching 5 years ago he rocks a classic pin stripe suit just as much as Liam Gallagher rocks a parka.
Birmingham is strong for saxophone players in recent years with firstly altoist Soweto Kinch emerging in 2003 – Xhosa says he saw the saxist just recently – then tenorist (now mainly a flautist) Shabaka Hutchings making a splash. Xhosa was on Soweto’s The Black Peril (2019) album.
- The Ronnie Scott’s FreeMonk gig is on 5 Feb
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