The only original tune I knew before listening to Viewfinder new later this week from trumpeter Hugh Pascall is the bustling ‘Gravel Baron’ by reedist James Allsopp.
But I haven’t heard 42 year old English player Pascall live yet. He hails from the midlands and has written a bunch of originals for the blend of this work. Pascall also teaches at the Royal Academy of Music.
But mercifully I have heard among the quintet Allsopp who perhaps is best known for his work with the Golden Age of Steam.
Followers of the cerebral one, an Alexander Technique exponent to boot, will know that he is as much a listenable bass clarinettist as he is a saxist. And he’s without resorting to broad brushstrokes too casually as much a monster player on gloom tube as roaming in the gloaming even while confined to quotidian chorus quarters on sax. But does he fit in when the context on an earlier album was a more compact Borderlands one?
More on that later.
Of the others pianist Liam Dunachie I heard one October night in 2021 at the QT in Covent Garden. Dunachie was playing with the former artistic director of Ronnie Scott’s Leo (son of Benny) Green in the saxist’s own band The Leo Green Experience. Trigger alert they were playing jazzed up versions of fare like Take That’s ‘Let It Shine’. But it was a good night even so. And I stayed on when the house was turned around for second helpings.
I believe Dunachie is touring with Tony Blackburn in Leo’s band reprising the Sounds of the Sixties. Tony’s BBC Radio 2 show is a switch on reason to get up early on a Saturday morning. Old news. As for bassist Oli Hayhurst yep I’ve heard him too on other occasions. He’s in Ireland teaching at the Sligo Jazz Project summer school this week. Drummer Jay Davis was on my radar over at Servant’s Jazz Quarters in Dalston. That time it was in pianist Sarah Tandy’s band downstairs.
Definitely for anyone who likes James Copus, Martin Shaw maybe, Guy Barker perhaps too, or Mark Armstrong, Byron Wallen and Linley Hamilton. But he’s not as outrageously extrovert as the Knopfler-ite Tom Walsh can be, however, it’s worth being aware of.
Does the collection of players found on Viewfinder gel – and here’s where we loop back to the Allsopp teaser couched above. Yes. Would I go hear these jazzers live some time in some shebeen somewhere? Yes, sure why not preferably among people who care and if there were half decent sightlines, not too much jabber from the gathered geriatrics who might be relied on to happily show up as long as Tipping Point doesn’t clash and the gilet, chosen garment for the evening, has been extracted from the clutches of Buttons in time and isn’t covered in sick. Viewfinder is better than say switching on the radio and hearing someone warble on about boring old Coldplay yet again. Or even the far more interesting, admittedly, “Kisscamgate,” that has gripped the nation ushering in silly season.
So final word before I get my coat: all this is further proof of a vintage year for full bodied hard bop with strong albums like this and belters by Brandon Woody and Jeremy Pelt already tucked away and well looked after in the sonic cellar & remembered windmills of the mind to be relistened to over and over again in the years to come.
‘Redwood’ from the album is the Prosecco Brunch doyenne Ruth Fisher‘s track of the week on Jazz FM and the involving ‘West at 7’ is streaming on Bandcamp ahead of Friday’s full release. ***1/2
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