Michael Arbenz meets Andy Sheppard: From Bach to Ellington

Gruff and stately it’s great to hear Andy Sheppard on a record again. It’s been a while. And like a lot of UK jazz musicians who were stars in the 1980s and 1990s Sheppard’s profile has dipped.

This Ellington and Bach inspired themed album was recorded in Switzerland, in a small jazz club the Bird’s Eye in Basel last August and it finds Sheppard with Vein piano motivator Michael Arbenz.

Very strongly framed, the material is meaningful, sonics bright and clear – the rootedness of the improvisations consistent and serious. Arbenz has Ellington form: He delivered a solo album of great sensitivity a few years ago called Reflections of D. Here ‘African Flower,’ once again ‘Reflections in D,’ ‘Warm Valley’ and ‘Melancholia’ are the Ellington choices.

A treatment of Ellington’s ‘Melancholia’ sets the mood. But it’s not a depressing listen at all. The feeling is more that it seems a honest statement by two masters of self examination. Via very cleanly captured recording sound, listeners far away can easily imagine they are there in the room.

‘Psalm’ is inspired by Cantata BWV 146, and ‘Where It Springs Into Being,’ which is my favourite of these beautiful tracks, by ‘Prelude in C’ from The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Bach has been hugely influential on jazz musicians at least since the heyday of Jacques Loussier while Ellington’s music is, along with Monk’s, the most significant corpus of jazz composition in jazz history. Sheppard’s fellow Englishman Stan Tracey was massively inspired by Ellington; and only last year Ian Shaw and Tony Kofi immersed themselves rewardingly in Ellingtonia on another successful live club recorded album.

All in all it’s a subdued album full of yearning, tenderness and love.