Highly acclaimed American pianist Ethan Iverson was appearing in this particularly bespoke assembled trio with iconic Scottish double bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer Londoner Dave Ingamells whose bebop loving style and terrier-like brushwork is reminiscent a tad of Clark Tracey’s approach.
Iverson’s dazzling solo take on father of the Charleston James P. Johnson’s piano pieces ‘Snowy Morning Blues’ and ‘Keep Off the Grass’ from the 1920s opened the second set of the evening and instantly established the bar vertiginously high.
The set also included Edgar Sampson’s ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ from the 1930s and ‘What is This Thing Called Love?’ “introduced in a surprising fashion by Calum” that Iverson – who this year appeared on the Billy Hart Quartet’s superb Just – explained purringly yes just so to the standing room only audience.
There was time to nip to the bar for a beer even during this without missing a beat. It was as if, when you heard the sturdiness of the approach the appealing effect instilled, to borrow from a classic Paul Simon song “If you’ll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal” given the formidable support and above all motion that big Cal later when accompanying again gave Ethan.
Even the bouncer at the door was shruggingly nonchalant as latecomer punters swung by and ushered the hitherto ticketless in with a laconic drawl. He’d seen it all before.
But the Ethan had well and truly landed in good company all in one fell swoop as ever so polite audience members milled around deliriously in the interval and the pianist himself mingled, as if to complete the essential Brechtian parts of an about to be daubed delightfully decadent anachronistic tableau.
Wee ray of sunshine
Other set strong suits included ‘Good Morning Heartache’ full of atmospheric strummed like janglings from Gourlay and evoking beatific thoughts of Jazz at Massey Hall, Denzil Best’s ‘Wee,’ the latter of which Iverson interpreted on his landmark 2019 ECM release featuring Tom Harrell, Common Practice: Live at the Village Vanguard.
Iverson is a natural and a marvel, born to play – no plan B.
To witness such skill in the congenial atmosphere of a top jazz club in front of a listening audience is a privilege and inordinate pleasure.
The set proved a performance full of flair, swinging derring do and even a little subversive mischief when Iverson chose a deliberately “wrong” note to finish a tune. Hardly a wrong un at all. Obvs. More deliciously right on all this and more lapped up by the gathered throng whose beaming faces illuminated the murky end of year uncertainties, the trad jazz wrapped in bebop clobber warding off a certain inevitable gloom that can surround this post-feasting time of year. All we needed on this third day of Christmas were three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. There’s always next year.
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