Where there’s pluck there’s brass
US guitarist Peter Bernstein is the big draw you might at first blush decide reaching for the modern mainstream lightly swinging Sketches. He crops up on ‘Grin’ and ‘Waltz for JT.’
But crouch closer, produce the monocle from your blazer, hush now.
Because beyond the headline name the originals of relative newcomer English jazz pianist David Ferris make sense on this brassy septet release.
And in some ways the more interesting tracks are not the obvious ones involving the star guest although of course you will in the fandom be more than tickled with these.
Tributes to John Taylor and Keith Jarrett
Featuring the same septet line-up as Alphabets but there is no vocalist this time around – Sketches was recorded in a London studio in March 2023.
Tracks include tributes to both John Taylor – the far better of the two – and to Keith Jarrett.
Hailing from Cornwall, Ferris is Birmingham trained
From Cornwall, which is also one of the inspirations alluded to geographically on the album, Ferris studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire, graduating in 2015.
It’s fitting that the issuing label Stoney Lane is Birmingham based.
Ferris has played in bands like Ben Lee’s Quintet and Three Step Manoeuvre.
Locally Ferris has put on gigs at the Spotted Dog in Digbeth and began his own septet in 2016.
An earlier septet album was Alphabets in 2018 which is frankly pretty invisible even though it picked up a few reviews on some of the anorak sites given it isn’t on any streaming services.
Nick Jurd is at the heart of the Carousel cover
The personnel there – the core septet remains – Ferris with trumpeter Hugh Pascall, trombonist Richard Foote, alto and bari saxist Chris Young, tenor and bari saxist Vittorio Mura, bassist Nick Jurd and drummer Euan Palmer tackled originals of the pianist’s factoring in settings of poems by Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden. The earlier album had vocals from singer Maria Vali.
”If I loved you
Words wouldn’t come in an easy way
Round in circles I’d go
Longin’ to tell you
But afraid and shy
I’d watch my golden chances pass me by”
Jurd – best known for his work with Birmingham icon Soweto Kinch on classics such as Boris Johnson satire White Juju – is particularly good Ferris drawing on Ellingtonia for inspiration for his take on the version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘If I Loved You’ from 1940s musical Carousel. Jurd is like the night watchman for the others, lamp lighter and guardian of the flame. It couldn’t be a greater contrast, and it’s a far more convoluted arrangement to boot, to when Ray Brown chose to play arco on his own Live From New York to Tokyo version.
As a solo pianist when Ferris does break through his sound is quite skeletal and brittle.
The album could do with a bit more intimacy perhaps.
But certainly there’s plenty as a listener to get your teeth stuck into and the release will do the profile of Ferris no harm at all.
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