Initial impressions can deceive. Or at best be only partly borne out.
Firstly, these impressions for me were this is like pre-1940s and 50s jazz at heart. A land that time mostly forgot when bebop swept in.
Oh, People – secondly – sound American. There’s no way on a blind listening test you could guess these players are from Denmark.
Members include the Danish Radio Big Band trumpeter Jonas Due.
It’s really the horns that dominate.
But the Freddie Green-like guitar playing of Casper Christensen who also contributes some material figures early on. Due, give him his dues, contributes ‘Oh’.
Tunes are by members of the quintet
Part-Time Elegance is very much a group album, individual soloing makes sense because there is a coherent group sound to fan out from.
The band’s double bassist Lasse Mørck tune ‘Part-Time Elegance’ belongs more to a period in jazz history before bebop became the norm. That piece is easily the most antique of all the numbers – there’s plenty of choice in this very euphoniously put together blend – and they all are highly retro although there are (shock) hints of more modern sounds too.
Mørck’s slow ballad right at the end ‘Exactly Now’ where the sax player Andreas Toftemark is quite Lester Young-like and there is a fine solo by Due is the best track. But the bossa nova feel of ‘Beginnings’ also a track we returned to with pleasure pushes it close. Part-Time Elegance was recorded at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen over a couple of days in the middle of December in 2023.
Criticisms? It’s too old fashioned. It could also do with a tune or two not written by any of the band members just something to cling on to and that would connect what’s here to a wider context because otherwise that context is unstated. The drummer’s role isn’t up front enough. There isn’t enough heat or bluesiness.
But as a dreamy mood piece it works well and the instrumentalism and blend in the arranging are absolutely fine. There’s a lot of pride here. But if your jazz prejudice is to stay clear of period pieces – irrespective of the fact that the tunes are originals – then stay clear. Otherwise get over yourself and accept it for what it is, not what it isn’t.
Otherwise for pre-bebop fans you will be in your element. I went off afterwards to listen to some Lester Young and the Kansas City Sessions for instance and I guess you will have your own ”after-listen” choices too if this appeals which it – with some reservations – largely does.
Toftemark makes a decent fist of seconding that emotion whether serendipitously meant or just as conceivably not.
Style thankfully on Part-Time Elegance isn’t a meretricious factor delivered at the expense of substance.
- More from marlbank
Sultan Stevenson plays in Soho later this week
