Last I heard him was two years ago at Chelsea venue the Pheasantry in singer Tessa Souter’s band with her husband Billy Drummond and Conor Chaplin.
The standards selected for this upcoming release include jazz choices Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘The Nearness of You’, Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight’ Johnny Green’s ‘Body and Soul’ and ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ by Rodgers and Hart plus pop and rock covers of Paul Simon’s ‘Old Friends’ and The Band’s ‘The Weight.’
A studio album this was recorded during three days of the early half of May in 2023. It’s pretty middle of the road fare and I don’t mean that as a criticism. These aren’t weasel words, it’s just what it is.
If you want the more pulsating side of Watson it isn’t here – go hear that on his album released more than a decade ago with Manu Katché Live in Concert.
But with the eye more on the sparrow and what’s to expect for me ‘The Nearness of You’ and ‘Body and Soul’ work best of all.
I suppose if you are a rock fan and then a jazz fan (with me it’s the other way round) you will go to the Paul Simon and The Band tracks first. They are quite manicured but then most solo piano albums in the jazz idiom covering anything respectfully are quite manicured. Again that isn’t a criticism just an observation.
As for his own originals Watson’s sentimental side is certainly expressed. You get an Abdullah Ibrahim quality to the lilting title track ‘Calling You Home’ which works very well. The fat clusters of notes that spread all over ‘Tetrad’ streaming ahead of release also coagulate into brightly voiced evocative splodges of sound and cadential passion. Stylistically Watson is like Acoustic Ladyland’s Tom Cawley a bit and also reminds me of the sound of Nick Ramm (known for his work with flautist Finn Peters).
I’m a Billy Jenkins fan more than a Katie Melua one – both artists with whom Watson has worked.
So just by these examples you can see how versatile Watson is whether accompanying a songstress, playing jazz on his own self squired releases or the blues.
The album I like that he is on most is Guy Barker 2002 Provocateur classic Soundtrack.
Watson’s jazz chops can be heard on an album like The Loop probably even more than on this new work.
I’d say on this new one at the risk of stating the obvious that Watson has assimilated a lot of his interests and past experiences musically into both his subtle writing and playing style. But that means he isn’t a ventriloquist or even more subtly going down the esque-is-more route not that there’s anything wrong with that. (That’s playing in the mould of someone else or doing a tribute to them.) So Calling You Home is an original conception even bearing in mind the familiarities of the framing. It’s highly decorous, very easy on the ear, classy and on the basis certainly a connoisseur choice of clout with the only caveat that if you’re looking for a little edge you’ll have been misdirected. No animals were hurt in the making of this recording. But equally there’s no need at all for Watson to kill his darlings given the concision and clarity of these carefully carved out renderings.
- Hear Watson back in Chelsea next month at the 606 on 8 July.
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Carla Bley classic Lawns streams drawn from upcoming Andy Sheppard trio release Salt Catchers
Salt Catchers is new next month from Andy Sheppard with Rita Marcotulli and Michel Benita that includes a freshly recorded take on Carla Bley’s ‘Lawns.’
Drummerless, the album features eight new Sheppard compositions plus the Bley piece.
Sheppard, 69, wrote prolifically during the pandemic, turning toward piano-based writing rather than the guitar led projects of his recent past. He sought a “chamber-like” character while keeping his own sound world intact, and settled on a drummerless trio to sharpen the focus on melody, harmony and space. He cites his years with Bley – who died in 2023 – and Steve Swallow as a direct inspiration for returning to a no drums setting: “I enjoyed the very special challenge of playing without the accompaniment of drums so much,” he says, adding that the new record is “in a certain way tied to those years full of fond memories with Carla and Steve.”
The title Salt Catchers comes from a visit to the Salinas (salt works) near Aveiro, Portugal, where photos of workers catching salt suggested both the physical difficulty of the job and the tricky nature of one of the tunes; the album also nods to the photographer Sebastião Salgado via the track ‘Salgado’ (“salty”). Sheppard notes the influence of his life near Lisbon and the Portuguese sense of saudade – a bittersweet longing – running through the music.
An English saxophonist based in Lisbon, Sheppard has built a distinctive ECM catalogue from quintet and quartet records to the Bley-Swallow trio. His early work with John Martyn and the UK singer-songwriter scene informs his love of “real songs” within a jazz frame, and he describes himself as “a romantic at heart.”
Rita Marcotulli, 67, is an Italian pianist Sheppard has known for years. Salt Catchers marks her first appearance on an ECM album. Michel Benita, 72, is a French bassist and long-time associate of Sheppard, singled out for his lyricism and his feel for the folkloristic and melodic aspects of Sheppard’s writing. Like Marcotulli, he brings deep empathy and a shared history to the trio.
The collaborative chemistry between Sheppard and Benita is documented across four distinct albums, primarily released through ECM Records. Their partnership took centre stage on the 2012 album Trio Libero, a stripped-back project alongside drummer Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet).
This foundational trio expanded into a quartet by inviting Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset into the fold, resulting in the atmospheric textures of 2015’s Surrounded by Sea and its 2018 follow-up, Romaria.
First released on Bley’s 1987 ECM album Sextet, ‘Lawns’ is a slow, romantic ballad built on a highly syncopated, lyrical melody and a flowing chord progression that balances simplicity with subtle harmonic colour. The theme is typically presented as a 16-bar phrase repeated at the octave to form a 32-bar structure, using four-bar phrases that give the tune its gently unfolding, song-like quality. Harmonically, it leans on expressive devices such as the minor iv resolving to I and richly voiced dominant chords, while inviting improvisers to explore altered and whole-tone colours over its changes.
Though an instrumental in origin, the piece later acquired lyrics by Kurt Elling as ‘Endless Lawns,’ further extending its reach.
Over the years ‘Lawns’ has been taken up by a wide range of players, from John Scofield and Kazumi Watanabe to Noël Akchoté, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Fabrizio Bosso and several European trios and duos. Vocal versions of the Elling-lyric adaptation have appeared on records by Kurt Elling himself (with Marquis Hill), Georgia Cécile and others, while solo-piano and small-group instrumental covers continue to surface in clubs and on streaming platforms.
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Punkt. Vrt. Plastik, Kompress, Intakt ****
A secular hymnal to modernity: rapid fire clusters and dartingly uneasy modernisms wrap the core approach in uncomplacent rhythm
“When the hope of the world stood withered.”
Personally I find the name of this trio off putting. I looked up what it is supposed to mean and certainly finding this out satisfies me a bit but not that much.
Apparently the notion is that the PVP word salad derives its name from combining one distinct word from each member’s native language to reflect their individual origins alongside their collective musical philosophy.
The first element, “Punkt”, is the Swedish word for “point” [the bassist is Swedish] or “dot”. This is paired with the Slovenian word “Vrt”, meaning “garden” [the pianist is Slovenian], which apparently symbolises a fertile creative space where raw musical ideas can be planted and cultivated. Finally, the German word “Plastik” [the drummer is German – he would be, wouldn’t he] connotes the concept of plasticity, denoting the flexibility and physical shaping of sound structures.
Phew. Don’t say we don’t spoil you with slightly abstruse exporations on a Saturday evening as a warm womb of post Lughnasadh darkness envelops the boreens down here in the marlbank neck of the woods where the land is really a lough. The scene and this nevertheless not that overly gloomy release chimes with what Beckett wrote memorably in his novel Malone Dies, part of the great miserabilist’s 1950s trilogy: “The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.”
Lost in translation any of this? Boo. I am being unnecessarily facetious. But it’s not a malign tendency. And the great thing about music – as indeed also, see above, clouds – is things very rarely are lost in translation. So, I wouldn’t have a clue if all this was spoken word in Slovenian, Swedish and German but do get it when the language is avant jazz.
The intrepid three don’t need words so bypass that difficulty entirely. But they do tough love however veiled the impersonation given the tenderness that’s something of an iron fist [the punkish maelstrom of the drum line] in a velvet glove [the magical realism of the piano lines]. Controversially they actually do at least in part resort to melody in a feat of no small harmonic and rhythmical prestidigitation kept artfully under wraps. Because there are – listen hard – melodic stretches on ‘MariaTorget 87’ credited to Eldh and apart from the outlier that is the old Swedish hymn my favourite track.
Eldh was “discovered” by Django Bates and belonged Gollum like “his precious” to the Beckenham genius – exiled to the land of the Toblerone these past years – in Django’s wonderful Bird loving trio, Belovèd.
I read somewhere unreliable but which paradoxically seemed credible that the title refers to the atmosphere of Stockholm’s Maria Square [English for “Torget”] back in the 80s. Let’s hope it’s not fiction. Reader it is a place in any case. Eldh seems fairly roused by thoughts of whatever it is that inspires him. The piece regardless allows one’s imagination to run away with itself beyond his nibs’ own.
PVP’s heyday was before Lockdown
Looky, looky: above they play Berlin in 2017 three blessed years before anyone even began to think about wet markets in Wuhan – let alone look up the place on Google Maps
No strangers to the very serious Swiss hardcore avant and free improv loving jazz gnomes of Zurich, Intakt – earlier albums of this imaginative trio’s where their story began – are Punkt.Vrt.Plastik (2018) and Somit (2021), as well as their live recording Zurich Concert (2022) – one the take the zug to, clearly. No leaves on the track there. Or worse, going all Nobbsian for a minute as thoughts turn inevitably back in Blighty “twenty-two minutes late, badger ate a junction box at New Malden.”
Quite. But pianist Kaja Draksler is quite brilliant at doing disquiet setting the piano lines up pervasively on Kompress – a German word meaning compressed or closely packed. Think Kris Davis or Alexander Hawkins as kindred spirits. This is better than AH’s nevertheless decent one for the cellar, No Nation But Imagination, methinks. While on drums Christian Lillinger reminds one of the admirably wonky style of cult avantist Jim Black.
Surprises? Yes. Fellow muppets, there are some. Just who would have predicted that a hymn or what sounds very much like one would pop up – let’s go hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy for a minute to try to say out loud ‘När världens hopp förtvinat stod.’
Oh to be a polyglot. But instead puzzled I looked it up and found that it translates to English as: “When the hope of the world stood withered.” A hymn it turns out indeed – the language archaic Swedish. There is no lyric obvs as this is an instrumentals only album but it reverts to a traditional Swedish Christian hymn written by Samuel Johan Hedborn in 1813. I found an orchestrated version of it online shared at the top of this review.
Needless to say the only thing in common with that version by Swedes the Östergötlands Sinfonietta is the melody which then PVP drive a horse and cart through in not at all destructive fashion. Reader if you listen to both versions back to back you will realise instantly and relatively simply how futuristic Punkt Vrt. Plastik are without being at all performative.
Innovation is the name of the game and it’s a game these intuitive Europeans know experly well.
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Kurt Elling and Yellowjackets are in their element
The twist is this isn’t just re-telling it’s finding a context that’s true but not replication and one that finds proper space for vocals that does justice to the instrumentalism.
A slice of live Slovak action that’s twice as nice as it sees a coming together of one of the most credible jazz rock fusion bands since Weather Report in tandem with one of the most applauded male jazz singers since Mark Murphy in Kurt Elling – to reiterate a claim often made in these pages: he is up there with Gregory Porter and Ian Shaw all masters at work and a triumvirate who have fully flowered since the Velvet Fog departed this vale of tears as if he passed on the baton to them.
Kurt Elling and the Yellowjackets have joined forces for a bold, live reimagining of some of Weather Report’s most enduring compositions, captured on Play Weather Report Alive in Europe + Bonus Studio Recordings, out today via Elling and Bryan Farina’s label Big Shoulders Records, his home after a lengthy stint at English indie Edition illuminated most of all by his superb collaboration with Panamanian master Danilo Pérez – Secrets Are the Best Stories and there is a link to that in the glassy stillness and shared communion found on ‘The Fanfold Hawk’ and ‘A Certain Continuum’ lashed together to become a tapestry of dream weaving.
This latest album, recorded during the 50th anniversary of the Bratislava Jazz Days, finds Elling bringing his distinctive vocal approach and original lyrics to a repertoire defined by Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius, while the Yellowjackets supply their signature blend of acoustic fluency and electric groove.
Shorter’s compositional voice is represented most tellingly within ‘Pallas’ Palace (Palladium)’, which is just brilliant the soaring, harmonically rich piece from Heavy Weather (1977) providing scaffolding. That was Weather Report’s best‑selling album and a landmark of jazz‑fusion that also featured ‘Birdland’ and ‘Teen Town’. ‘Palladium’ has an admirably raucous opening in this arrangement. I prefer the live version to the studio one – Elling’s vocalese here is breath taking and deserves a hatful of awards for just that portion of the number.
The audience start to go a bit potty for ‘Palladium’. After all – you want atmosphere on a live album and you get it here.
Shorter’s influence is further felt in the group’s interplay and improvisatory approach throughout the set. Joe Zawinul’s presence is marked by ‘Current Affairs’, taken from the final Weather Report studio album, Weather Report (1982), a track that blends Zawinul’s synth‑led textures with Shorter’s saxophone lyricism.
For years I thought the natural successors to Weather Report, however different their sound, were Snarky Puppy. But this live recording where Yellowjackets place their tanks on the lawn with hefty authority and conviction debunks such armchair general thinking.
Nestled among these Weather Report classics is ‘Intrigue’, a Bob Mintzer original that first appeared on the Yellowjackets’ 2022 album Parallel Motion – a sleek, jazz‑funk number that sits comfortably alongside the fusion heritage of the main repertoire.
Elling is Zelig like in being in all the right places at all the right times whether it’s in a crowd of rhythm or rattling around in a lonelier avenue of gaping space that only he knows how to fill
The collection is completed by three bonus studio recordings that offer a more intimate, refined counterpoint to the live energy. They are certainly cleaner and less febrile, the yin to the yang of the equally terrific Slovak ones. Featuring Elling with pianist Joey Calderazzo, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dane Alderson and drummer Marcus Finnie, these tracks are ‘The Elegant Ride’, ‘Pallas’ Palace’ and in-one’s-cups ditty ‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’. The studio ‘Elegant Ride’ is better than the live one, mainly because of the use of sticks on glistening cymbals at the outset rather than the thump of toms on the live opening and the slightly more exacting feel.
‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’ is another Shorter composition supplemented by Elling’s Waitsian lyrics and isn’t on the live tracks, its moody harmonic landscape providing a fitting close to the album’s dual live and studio narratives. Rating: ****
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