Live reviews

Mathias Eick Quartet, Ronnie Scott’s, Soho ****

marlbank1 April 20253 Mins read

A blue Monday two-set masterclass from the Norwegian master Mathias Eick playing hope filled music out of darkness borne of the long, cruel night with his Norwegian-Estonian quartet. Rites and rituals long honed in his compositional compass proved pitch perfect. Ice cool, no April’s fool

Introduced to the stage by Paul Pace who told the audience that this was the third time that Eick had played Ronnie’s and referred to the “delicate music” we were about to hear.

The club is undergoing a refurbishment upstairs after its spruce-up in this the main room last year.

It was full and sold out for this early evening double set on what proved a sunny, mercifully dry, springtime in Soho one nighter.

The Ronnie’s Frith Street exterior in Soho – the club’s upstairs is being extensively refurbished and work on the new space progresses. Since we last visited in January a new kind of surrogate trompe l’oeil classic banner image of Ronnie plus amusing quip in the emblazoned text in the red of the graphics from the renowned wit and whom the club is named after now shrouds the scaffolding.

The band took to the stage around 6.30pm, early by Ronnie’s standards.

Looking around there were a few faces in the room sat at the bar including fine writer Joe Zawinul biographer Brian Glasser – who pens the regular long running Turning Point column in Jazzwise – and avant pianist the Braxtonian Alexander Hawkins who was playing organ with the Eick bassist Ole Morte Vågan in Geneva a few days ago in the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra along with Django Bates who was on piano.

A hymn like sense of wonder complete with Nordic eeriness and into the mystic contemplation are part of the spell

Playing music largely from Lullaby which was released on Valentine’s Day, Eick told the audience later, the trumpeter wore a small cap and positioned himself beside a small keyboard and microphone, his trumpet easily within reach close by. He also vocalised ethereally during the evening when you got a primeval ghostly, almost wolf howl whistle, sense to the style.

Estonian pianist Kristjan Randalu proved a delicate rhapsodic foil while double bassist Ole Morte Vågan (“a Viking,” quipped Eick) provided spurts of energy on these slightly dour but transformatively life affirming tunes, the evening consisting of two sets opening with ‘September.’

Drummer Hans Hulbækmo also wearing a cap chatted to me later after the gig about Jon Christensen, the great Belonging drummer who died a few years ago and is an influence on him.

You get a colouristic sense as Hulbækmo decorates the melody and opens up new territory. His soft brush work is very pleasurable and provided textural syncopated resource as if he was playing the melody not on a harmony instrument but beating out its every inner vibration shadow dancing.

Less introspective than some of his records there’s a lot of hope in this music and love too – Eick spoke of proposing to his girlfriend which is dedicated to her on one piece. It’s called ‘My Love’. And later from the album Ravensburg issued in 2018 he paid another family tribute, the rather beautiful ‘For My Grandmothers.’

I’m a long time admirer of Eick and heard him in Bergen in 2010 writing about his group’s performance briefly in Jazzwise. That time it was a two-drummer quintet which produced a moving, anthem-like swell of sound illuminated very impressively by electric bassist Audun Erlien.

Skala came out a bit after and I had hoped they’d play ‘Oslo’ from that album. No, not to be: this was mainly Lullaby music.

Nevertheless I liked the bass lines on ‘Partisan’ a good deal and the audience listened fairly respectfully and closely looking at some of their rapt faces – it’s thoughtful music and you get a lot out of being able to think as you listen.

Eick, 45, hails from Furnes, Hedmark.

His debut The Door, was released on ECM Records in 2008 and he’s still on the prestigious label.

His sound is very unmistakable – soft and characterful, a different kind of timbre entirely to the other big names of Norwegian jazz trumpet Nils Petter Molvær and Arve Henriksen. They all play what is true to them. That’s what matters.

MORE READING