Tag: jazz

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not one but two Amy Kohn gigs in London

One of the best things about Edinburgh is meeting up with other performers. Sometimes it’s a fleeting yet encouraging chat outside a venue (I met Alan Carr outside the Assembly Rooms where he was performing, and had a lovely chat and swapped encouragement for the fest) and other times it’s people who become top chums and you stay in touch with.

Amy Kohn is a friend of JazzShark‘s, who was playing up at Edinburgh, and who stepped into the role of Echoplex footpedal on Fringe Sunday and jammed along on accordian, on Amo Amatis Amare. She was down in London this weekend playing a couple of gigs so we went along. First up she was at The 12 Bar – an acoustic venue in central London, playing at an accordion night (oh yes, it’s not just bassists who get together for a geek-out once in a while!). Obviously for this gig she was just playing accordion and singing, but was fab. She writes very quirky songs, with lots of really odd harmony in them, and it takes a while to get drawn into Amy-world, but when you catch up with her, it’s beguiling stuff.

Monday’s gig was at Ray’s Jazz in Foyles – just a half hour in-store. But they had a piano, so I went along to see what Amy was like with piano instead of accordion. Damn, she’s a fantastic piano player! Scary stuff indeed. The Accordion is a great live tool, in that it gives her freedom to move around, it’s pretty original for a left-field singer/songwriter and is just makes a nice change, but Amy’s piano playing is on a whole other level. There are nods towards Tori and Kate Bush, but that’s just a tiny part of what Amy does. She’s as much Charles Ives as she is Tori Amos, and her background in musical theatre definitely creeps in there too… I picked up copies of both her albums, and have listened to the brand new so-new-it’s-only-an-advance-copy one, which is marvellous. Really really original and lovely. Top stuff.

Today’s been a day of two halves – the first half was spent shopping in Enfield with my auntie Babs. Well, she’s actually my third cousin Babs, but has always been auntie Babs… (maternal grandmother’s cousin). Anyway, I think I’ve probably blogged about Babs before – she’s 80 (I think), but looks about 20 years younger, has a more active social life than most people half her age, a great sense of humour, and is much fun to go out for lunch with. Today she needed the batteries in her smoke alarms changing, so that was a fine excuse for us to go out for lunch before heroic me shimmying up a ladder to swap said batteries over.

And now I’m listening to and playing through the songs for Duncan’s greenbelt gig. Lucky me – what a charmed life. 🙂

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One fab night out in London

With Jeff Kaiser still in town, tonight was the last chance to head out for a curry. When Jeff first came to a gig of mine in Ventura (a clinic at Instrumental Music), we went for curry afterwards, so it was time to return the favour.

I made a couple of phone calls this afternoon to find an indian restaurant in town that would cater for vegans, and one of the places I called was the Malabar Junction on Great Russell Street – just chosen at random.

So after we met up in Ray’s Jazz Store, we headed over there to check it out. Good guess, Stevie! It’s got to be one of the nicest indian restaurants I’ve ever been in – gorgeous interior, massively helpful staff, and fantastic food. What’s not to love?

Along for the evening also was trumpeter Ian Smith – one of the founders of the London Improvisors Orchestra – a very nice bloke indeed. Evenings spent talking bollocks with musicians have to rank on my favourite nights out. From curry house to Bar Italia and home again. All in all, a fine way to spend an evening.

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Gig last night…

Despite being exhausted, the promise of a chance to play a set with Orphy and a couple of friends from the States last night at the Red Rose was too tempting, so I headed off out again.

I took a much scaled down rig with me, as I knew I was only going to be playing for about 10 minutes, and really couldn’t be arsed to take the whole lot out again after setting it up and packing it down 12 days in a row at Edinburgh!

the Americans in question are Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask playing trumpet (jeff), sax and clarinet (andrew) through lots of delicious electronic processing (Andrew works for Cycling 74, so has written some glorious loop algorythms for Max/MSP).

They did about 25 minutes, and then Orphy and I joined them for a 10 minute improv thingie, which sounded lovely from where I was sat.

The rest of the evening was fun too – a solo trombone set from Alan Tomlinson was a mindblowing mixture of virtuosic free improv and clowning. Very funny indeed.

Then Evan Parker and John Coxon did a lovely guitar/sax duet, which ran the gamut from outnoisemadness to a bluesy mellow jazz bit in the middle and back to freakoutland. Very fine stuff.

And finally a quintet of Tony Bevan (bass sax), Mark Saunders (drums), John Edwards (bass), Ashley Wales (electronics) and Orphy (percussion etc.) finished off the night with more craziness.

And what’s more there was a huge crowd in – by far the biggest I’ve ever seen at the Red Rose, which was great especially for Jeff and Andrew, coming all this way. It was lovely to catch up with Jeff – he came to one of my gigs a couple of years ago in Ventura County, California, and loved it and we’ve been in touch ever since, so it was great to finally get to see him play live.

The London Improv scene is fascinating – it’s got a pretty unique sound to it, and a fairly broad spread of contributors. There are elements to it that come across as over-zealous in their rejection of all things tonal, and other players who seem to embrace just about anything and everything. It’s not a scene I could inhabit all year round – I’d start to feel guilty about playing so much inside music, and that’s insane – but it’s one that I feel enriched and inspired by whenever I get a chance to see those guys play. The time and energy and focus that players like John Edwards and Tony Bevan have put into exploring the outer reaches of what’s possible with their instruments is awe inspiring.

And now I’m exhausted. Today I’m going to have to tidy up the mess from Edinburgh – my office looks like the stock room at a badly organised high-end bass shop, so I need to whip it into shape before teaching tonight.

Soundtrack – Avishai Cohen, ‘Lyla’ (a pressie to educate me from JazzShark – and a fabulous album it is too!)

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The weekend starts here

The Fringe has an interesting curve to it, in that midweek gigs tend on the whole to be smaller, especially for late night gigs, and shows tend to build an audience as the run goes on thanks to flyering, word of mouth and press (still no press that I know of for my show.)

So yesterday being Friday, I had fairly high hopes of a good turn out, and Guy Pratt was going to be on the show, so that was something else to tell people – members of Pink Floyd guesting on shows in tiny venues is generally a pretty cool coup, I guess.

Didn’t get into town til almost three, so concentrated on getting lots of flyering done til meeting TSP for munchies in Hendersons – Edinburgh’s coolest fair trade veggie restaurant.

After flyering the queue for Antonio Forcione’s show (I’m getting quite good at the queue-flyering business – just camp it up, smile a lot, and people seem happy to take a flyer and ask about the show – it’s a captive audience!), I met up with Julie McKee, Andy Williamson and some other friends for a mint tea back at Henderson’s, then headed back to The Carlton to meet an old college pal, Brian, who had come into Edinburgh to see the show. Brian was a fantastic bassist back when we were at college, a proper jazz-monster, and a thoroughly nice bloke, so it was great to catch up. The friendship/social side of the Edinburgh Fringe is so much fun, though not that dissimilar to how I live my life anyway, just more concentrated.

About two hours before the show, I rang Guy, who said he was ill and might not make it, but would if I had a bass he could borrow. No problem, says I.

Get to the show starting, still no sign of Guy. I eventually phone him from the stage in the middle of the gig, and he’s on his way. Cool audience in tonight, and my biggest yet by quite some margin (50), a few brought in by the promise of some two-bass-action, so it was a relief when Guy turned up.

Sadly, the duet section of the gig wasn’t great. Instead of playing one of my tunes, as I’d planned and suggested, Guy kicked into a funky riff thing in A, which went on and on, moved into E, and became pretty much what I’ve tried to avoid for most of my solo career – two bassists playing over one chord funk for what seems like ages. It’s a real shame, as I had hoped that we’d have played something more musical together – Guy’s a fantastic player, and has played on a few of my all-time favourite tracks, but tonight, it really didn’t work. Eventually it wound down, and he put the bass down and left (?).

It went on so long that I had to drop two of my tunes (the two with the funniest stories), and the show as a whole felt like something was missing, though CD sales were the best of the run so far, and the audience reaction was still very positive. It also meant that I couldn’t involve the Rvd G in the show, which I’d planned to do on the MMFSOG story – will just have to get him to come back in full ecclesiastical garb on another night (I wonder if a vicar could be struck off for dressing as a bishop and swearing onstage? I guess we’ll find out… OK, maybe not dressed as a bishop, that’s just wishful thinking…)

I’m not too bothered by the way it went – we tried it, it didn’t work, no problem. And in someways, it just solidified my own feelings of rightness about the solo stuff. It was really odd to be playing the kind of bass-duel stuff that I hear all the time at bassfest gigs and am always trying to steer clear of – I dispensed with the notion of ‘bass music’ a long time ago, in favour of just seeing my basses as instruments with no set function and with a total disregard for the tradition of the instrument, in order to come up with a way of getting the music inside my head out without it being trapped in some kind of expectation about what bass is. After tonight, it’s clear how hard that is to do with other players. I’m spoilt by how a lot of the duet situations I’ve been in have worked so easily, particularly the duets with Michael Manring, where the two bassist format works so ridiculously well that it feels like it should be fine with anyone.

Ah well. Fortunately the rest of my guests are just contributing their bit to songs I’m already doing – tonight is Julie McKee, a FANTASTIC jazz singer with her own beautifully original show here at the Fringe. She’s going to come and sing People Get Ready with me, and I’m very much looking forward to that.

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Monday night

Another fine gig – I thought the crowd was going to be a bit smaller given that it was a Monday, but once again we were over 35 (36, to be precise). The audience-vocal-percussion-loop track went very odd thanks to the jazzshark starting the loop with a couple of (albeit very accurate) dog barks. The sounds that followed were equally strange, and the whole thing went very odd. But it worked, and went down v. well. I’m getting into a bit of a stride with the show, which feels good (though apparently last night I slipped back into an old habit of twiddling on the bass with the sound off while I was talking – a bit distracting for the audience, and one that I thought I’d got out of… must try harder).

Flyering is becoming more fun, as more people stop to say they’ve had the show recommended to them by friends. Weird flyering moment of the day was when the owner of The Pleasance (huge venue complex on the fringe) came out to ask me not to flyer outside his venue. I was about to get all defensive and tell him it was a public street and I could do what I like, when he said I’m happy for you to go inside and flyer in the bar if you like’! What a nice man. The spirit of the festival, indeed.

Still haven’t got to see any shows. Tonight will be an interesting one in terms of how hard we have to keep working, given that the last two nights have had a ‘two for one’ ticket promotion running, and now we’re back to normal, so we’ll see if the numbers stay up, or if we drop back again.

Met a lovely lady in the Fringe Press office who will hopefully help point press peoples my way. I’ve not had any reviews so far at all, which is odd given how well the show is going. Must work harder to make that happen (if you’re a press peoples reading this, PLEASE COME TO THE SHOW!)

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Ooh, this was a nice find!

Just been doing a vanity search to see what sites have got my Edinburgh gigs listed, and found this from the Guardian, as one of ‘July’s best jazz, world and alternative music gigs’ –

“THEO TRAVIS featuring ORPHY ROBINSON
Sax man Travis, who effortlessly straddles prog rock, ambient and genuine jazz, has built up a regular creative partnership with bassist and live loopmeister Steve Lawson. Tonight they are joined by the multi-instrumentalist Orphy Robinson, known for his work with Cleveland Watkiss, Jazz Jamaica and Steve Beresford. JLW
The New Vortex, Gillett Street, London N16 8JN”

that’s nice, isn’t it?

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Mercury Music prize…

This year’s nominees –

· Antony and the Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
· Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
· Coldplay – X&Y
· The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
· Hard-Fi – Stars of CCTV
· KT Tunstall – Eye to the Telescope
· Kaiser Chiefs – Employment
· The Magic Numbers – The Magic Numbers
· Maximo Park – A Certain Trigger
· M.I.A. – Arular
· Polar Bear – Held on the Tips of Fingers
· Seth Lakeman – Kitty Jay

according to The Guardian, the Kaiser Chiefs are the bookie’s favourite, but it’d be fantastic to see either Polar Bear or Seth Lakeman win. Seth’s album is fantastic – I bought it when he played at The Bedford about a year ago – a lovely acoustic folk record, in the same tradition as Eliza Carthy, Cara Dillon etc. Polar Bear are one of the crazy jazz outfits featuring drummer extraordinaire, Seb Rochford, an amazing drummer that I did a gig in Brighton with once – he’s the only drummer I’ve ever met who could follow my glitchy everso-slightly-out-of-time loopage without any kind of sync or click – a great player, with fantastic hair, and a couple of marvellous bands (the other being Acoustic Ladyland).

I have to confess to having no idea who most of the bands are on the list – I’ve never heard Maximo Park or The Go Team or MIA or Hard Fi, or Bloc Party, or Anthony and ‘The Johnsons’ (that’s really the band name??) – I’ve got the KT Tunstall album, which is cool, and I like what I’ve heard of The Magic Numbers, though was totally underwhelmed by what I heard of The Kaiser Chiefs. So I think Seth would get my vote, if I were on the panel (though, if I was on the panel, I think I’d probably have heard all the other albums by now too…)

Soundtrack – Janis Joplin, ‘I Got Dem Ole Kosmic Blues Again, Mama’ (you, you can keep Joss Stone, I’ll stick with Janis.)

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And after the gigs, The reviews!

This was quick – the joy of the internet – here’s a lovely review of the Vortex gig from Tuesday night with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson. Very nicely written.

And if you can read Italian, there’s a lovely review of Grace And Gratitude, in the ‘No Warning’ E-zine. Luigi Ametta who writes it has been very supportive of all the music of mine that he’s heard, and this looks to be another lovely review (though so far I’ve only read the Google translation, which is pretty garbled…)

If you’ve been to one of the recent gigs, please post a review in the forum, and if you’ve bought one of the CDs, you can post those reviews in the online shop.

Thanks!

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The Solo Summit

So last night was The Solo Summit a mini festival-within-a-festival as part of Hackney’s Spice Festival.

The idea was to have lots of performers on different instruments and across myriad styles all playing solo. As it was, it was that and a whole lot more – the solo performances spawned some really interesting collaborations as the mini-sets overlapped.

Due to the current mess of bomb-scares and transport disasters in England, a few of the performers were either late or didn’t appear at all, so the set was being re-jigged all evening, and as a result even more time was freed up for new combinations of players. The initial three long sets became four slightly shorter sets, and each set seemed to take on a character of its own.

The first set began with Tunde Jegede on Kora, who was then joined by Cleveland Watkiss, who was using my loop set-up to great effect, layering vocals on top of Tunde’s gorgeous Kora.

The rest of the set was three of Orphy’s students, Renel, Yao and Michael, two spoken word artists and guitar/bazouki, respectively, who played some marvellous music. My set dove-tailed into the end of Michael’s, as I took a short solo over the end of his last piece. I then played Grace And Gratitude, and went into The Kindness Of Strangers, which Orphy joined me on, with my loop gradually fading after I’d left the stage and Orphy took over for his solo spot. End of set 1.

Set 2 was very different – mainly guys from the London Improvisors Orchestra, it started with harpist Rhodri Davis (playing music a fair bit removed from his work with Charlotte Church!), Bass Saxist, Tony Bevan, flugal horn from Claude Deppa and electronic bleeps ‘n’ squawks loveliness from Steve Beresford. An interesting set with moments of magic, a very long way from the opening set! This stuff is really a stretch for the audience – they seemed to stay with it though, which was great.

Set 3 was back to many of the performers from set 1, with the addition of Pat Thomas on piano (an insanely gifted musician) and Steve Williamson on Sax. I played another duet with Cleveland, and a trio with Cleveland and Tunde on a track that they’d be playing as a duo, which worked beautifully. I had it set up that I was able to loop Cleveland in the usual way, so that gave us a lot of scope to loop ‘n’ layer and have some fun, and it came out superbly well.

By Set 4, we were about an hour ahead of schedule (whoever heard of a gig running ahead of time???), but my ears were getting a little fatigued after such a long time of intense listening. I listened to BJ’s set from just outside the main auditorium, where the processed ambient pedal steel wafted beautifully around. The set grew with the addition of more and more musicians, til most of the LIO guys were back on stage making a glorious racket. Cleveland then joined them, and once I’d turned up his mic, was able to add a vocal percussion loop to it, and start to inject a key centre into the melee. I joined in on bass, and the whole thing gradually mutated from free soundscape to twisted funk/swing groove thang, providing a space for the rappers/spoken word guys to rejoin the party. As the musicians peeled off one by one, the loop faded, and it ended with just bass, acoustic guitar and the two voices. One heck of a journey from the free to the funky. I look forward to hearing the recording of that one too!

All in, a fine evening’s music. A smallish crowd (hey, that’s brit-jazz for you), but an enthusiastic one with a fair amount of stamina!

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Last Night's gig.

So last night was the gig with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson at The new Vortex in Dalston.

The old Vortex, in Stoke Newington was a vital element in London’s Jazz-life. Along with the 606 and The Bull’s Head, it was one of the few places where you could regularly get to see the best of London’s jazzers playing in a small club for not much money.

So when it close about 18 months ago, it was a bit of a loss. There was talk for a while of it opening up in Hackney’s ill-fated Ocean venue, but then that went belly-up, and it looked like the Vortex was no more.

So it’s great to have it back, just off the A10 in Dalston. Very easy to get to, nice room, all back how it should be.

The fun thing about this gig was that it was the first time that Orphy and Theo had met, let alone played together. I’ve played with both before, obviously, so I was the link.

I set up with a mic on Orphy’s vibes so I could loop him, though had to be judicious so as not to loop Theo too (Theo’s loop-ideas are so incredibly well formed, that bits of his flute and sax cropping up in my loops is not really desireable).

Anyway, the gig went superbly well – we played a bunch of tunes from Open Spaces, and a load of improvs, with Orphy playing vibes and piano (I’m still not sure how well piano works with the thickness of sound that Theo and I get – I remember spoiling a duo gig with Jez at Greenbelt one year by putting far to many layers down and not really finding that gorgeous sparseness that is there on Conversations)

The audience was tiny, as per lots of midweek gigs at the Vortex, but David, the owner, loved it and wants us back for a weekend gig.

The only downer was that I was feeling steadily iller and iller as the evening went on (and not in the Beastie Boys send of the word ‘ill’ either)… I’m still not sure if I’ve beaten this cold or the worst is yet to come. We’ll see.

Anyway, it’s great to see The Vortex back happening again – check out the programme here.

Soundtrack – Tim Berne live at the QEH

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