Gig Review - Jazz Fest
Sunday 20th September 2009 @ Colston Hall, Bristol
Featuring Performances From: Get The Blessing, James Morton’s Porkchop, Abdullah Ibrahim Trio
Red. When I think of jazz, blood, love and hate hazes my whole vision. Smoky and slow, it’s all the strongest feelings and temptations smoothed out, silencing the cries with every delicate touch of the symbol and twang of the double bass. Jazz creates a world where everything is slightly more purposeful thought out and stylised; much like the new Colston Hall venue!
Get The Blessing are a group that embrace jazz for all its worth, but also funks it up a bit and adds a fantastical element, that had me spinning about in a beaded fishtail dress on location far away from Briz. This jazz is modern. Men in painfully sharp suits that they haven’t paid a dime for jump silently about on secret, intelligent missions, breaking only (whether it be day or night) just occasionally for a whisky in their bare bricked, windowless jazz bar. Like the music to a great heist, it gives to a wholly British feeling.
Paradoxically, a later tune by the band featured an emerald sparkling dressed woman, melodically flowing out sporadically high and low notes, rising like Mother Nature high above the worshipping jazz sounds of man. Humbling and yet super smooth – a dinner party in Eden.
Local sax boy James Morton with his band, James Morton’s Porkchop, was full of freshly grated zest of jazz. With his own penned songs, including Shit Happens, Just Deal With It, James is quite the animated performer with a true heart within the music and no fear in turning his Mike Skinner-like persona to within the sounds of jazz. With guest Pee Wee Ellis and marvellous solos, the band got the audience unified in individual movement.
The highest notch of jazz came in the form of main guys Abdullah Ibrahim Trio. Playing every note with the purest precision, tighter than you can possibly imagine and incense with every inhalation, it was easy to drift off to an exceptionally relaxed sphere of twinkling nothingness. An extremely personal space for both musician and listener – that’s jazz!
Helen Martin
Copyright © 2008
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I wish I could agree with you Helen. I went to the gig hoping and expecting to be enthralled by Abdullah Ibrahim, but left after an hour, having heard nothing even vaguely memorable. I wasn’t alone…There was a steady procession of people leaving the gig from the outset…
I’ve been listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s albums for years and I know he is capable of producing the most beautiful interpretations of melodies with wickedly precise timing. I saw none of that on Sunday. I saw a man who looked physically uncomfortable, who kept moving his head from side to side, and dropping his hands to his sides as if he was in pain from neck and shoulder. A man who made no attempt to connect with his audience, and frankly, looked as if he just wanted the whole thing to be over.
Full marks to Andy Sheppard and Get the Blessing though…Both absolutely fabulous. The energy generated could probably have run the National Grid….