FRIDAY AT BRECON JAZZ FESTIVAL, 12/08/2011.

Now in its third year of administration by Hay Festival the 2011 Brecon Jazz Festival hosted an adventurous programme featuring both British and international artists. Festival director Sarah Dennehy and programmer Elaine Madden introduced a strong European strand to the festival with musicians travelling from France, Luxembourg, Germany,Norway and Ireland to the three day event. Big name American visitors included jazz/hip hop crossover artist Robert Glasper, funk giant Maceo Parker and New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint with Femi Kuti providing a high profile African presence.

My work for this website has allowed me to cover many of the leading figures on a vibrant UK jazz scene and I therefore decided to concentrate on acts I hadn’t seen before, although some, like my two main choices tonight the Pascal Schumacher Quartet and The Stephane Kerecki trio, I had heard and enjoyed on record with album reviews for both groups appearing elsewhere on this site.

ROBERT MITCHELL 3IO

Arriving early I collected my press pass from press officer Hannah Lort-Phillips (many thanks once again, Hannah) and decided to catch a couple of numbers from pianist Robert Mitchell and his 3io before moving on to Pascal Schumacher. Mitchell’s group are set to release their new album “The Embrace” in September and I’ll be taking a look at that in due course. The trio will also be touring the UK (dates are already listed in our news pages) and I may try to catch them live again then.  Their d?but album “The Greater Good” (2009) was an excellent record, Mitchell’s best to date, and I saw the 3io of Mitchell, Tom Mason (double bass) and Richard Spaven (drums) perform a superb set at the 2009 Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

At Brecon Shaney Forbes of Empirical was deputising for Spaven but seemed to fit right in with the group aesthetic. I caught two numbers, the first Mason’s “A Desperate Man” featured his own solo bass opening complete with flamenco style strumming, Mitchell’s typically feverish piano soloing above Forbes’ insistent drum groove and finally a rumbling mallet led drum feature.

As Mitchell announced the next number the strains of the Matthew Herbert Big Band who were sound checking in the nearby Big Tent could be clearly heard. Indeed they could still be heard during the quieter passages of the 3io’s music. Unfortunately this leaching/bleeding of sound from other sources was a problem all weekend and is an issue that requires serious attention before next year’s festival. The Hay approach of centralising the festival in a kind of “tented village” on the Christ’s College site has both benefits and drawbacks and this form of sound pollution is definitely one of the latter. It’s strange but I don’t recall this being a problem in the last two years, however in 2009 and 2010 the Big Tent wasn’t there, the larger events took place either the Market Hall or Theatr Brycheiniog. The latter is no longer a festival venue, and I’ll come on to that later, but it’s vital that this issue is addressed. Piano trios, such as those of Mitchell and Yaron Herman were particularly badly effected and the problem applied to both the Roland Stage (Mitchell) and the smaller Christ College Stage (Herman). It’s not fair to either musicians or audiences and reflects badly on the festival overall.

Enough of the ranting-on with the music. The second Mitchell piece I heard was the title track from the new album which developed from a bass and drum opening to include features for the always inventive Mason and for Mitchell himself, a wonderfully creative soloist with a phenomenal, classically honed technique. He even engaged the crowd in a little audience participation, encouraging us to sing the F Sharp that occurred towards the end of his piano solo.

A glance through the door of the Christ College Stage revealed the young American quintet The Outlaw Collective (led by drummer Cameron Outlaw) going through their paces. The former Berklee students’ blend of hard bop and hip hop rhythms sounded promising but unfortunately it’s impossible to be in more than one place at a time, tough choices have to be made, it’s the bane of festival life. I could quite happily have been at half a dozen different events this evening. 

PASCAL SCHUMACHER QUARTET

Vibraphonist Pascal Schumacher is part of a small but surprisingly vibrant Luxembourg jazz scene. A trained classical percussionist he leads a tightly knit working quartet whose densely knit rhythmic compositions owe something to the style of minimalist composer Steve Reich. The quartet’s approach to rhythm is simultaneously intellectual and entertaining, their “math jazz” with its mind boggling interlocking rhythms is sometimes reminiscent of the work of the brilliant New York based ensemble Claudia Quintet led by drummer and composer John Hollenbeck. Schumacher is less self consciously eclectic than Hollenbeck but his group’s music still intrigues and fascinates and their Brecon performance was thoroughly absorbing and exhibited an enormous degree of technical skill.

The current edition of the quartet has been together since 2008 with Schumacher joined by Franz von Chossy (piano), Christophe Devisscher (double bass) and German drummer and percussionist Jens Duppe. All four members of the quartet write and have contributed material to the group’s recent albums “Here We Gong” and Bang My Can”, the title of the latter a homage to the New York based contemporary classical percussion ensemble Bang On A Can.

Most of the material played tonight was sourced from “Bang My Can”  with the group often seguing tunes together as in the opening sequence of “Inspector”, “Water Like Stone” and “Bang My Can” which ranged from the childishly simple with Schumacher picking out single note melody lines on glockenspiel, to the fiendishly complex. Along the way we heard the leader’s brilliant, ringing, four mallet vibes soloing, delicate filigree dialogues between vibes, piano and cymbals and Devisscher on both plucked and bowed bass. The quartet’s densely written compositions rarely stand still and their music is packed with dynamic contrasts and seems to be in a permanent state of flux.

Von Chossy’s lengthy “Metamorphosis” is perhaps the most complex track on “Bang My Can” and certainly gave the quartet plenty to get their teeth into with both Schmacher and the composer making outstanding individual contributions. However the quartet is about more than mere individual brilliance, it’s the way the four individuals mesh together that really impresses.

Schumacher’s near ballad “Seven Fountains” was particularly lovely, played with elegance and restraint with a warmly resonant pizzicato bass solo from Devisscher followed by an anthemic vibes solo from Schumacher and finally a remarkable drum feature from Jens Duppe. This was perhaps the quietest drum solo I’ve ever seen with Duppe exercising a feather light touch on his drums and and harnessing the spaces and silences between the sounds. It was amazingly atmospheric and totally engrossing and acted as a segue into “Three Little Jelly Beans”, a pleasing example of Duppe’s more humorous writing style, a sense of fun is never far away in the quartet’s music. The drummer has played with German trumpeter Mathias Schriefl, a musician with an irreverent approach to music making and who has collaborated with the UK’s own Django Bates.

Perhaps most impressive of all was a new Devisscher tune “Official”, dedicated to his father, an atmospheric slow march that opened with a combination of double bass, piano innards and cymbal scrapes and which later saw Schumacher borrow the bassist’s bow to produce an other worldly whine cum shimmer from his vibes. This combination of atmosphere, beauty, control and discipline made this piece a favourite with the crowd, the relative simplicity having a real emotional effect after the dazzling complexities we had witnessed earlier.

The quartet capitalised on this goodwill with their final number, a radical re-invention of fey Scottish indie rockers Travis’ hit “Sing” which appears on the “Here We Gong” album. The piece built from Schumacher’s ethereal solo vibes opening through solos for vibes and piano to an arco bass coda as dry ice seeped onto the stage, a nice humorous/ironic touch. 

Having enjoyed the quartet’s work on record it was hugely enjoyable to see this complex yet readily accessible music performed in the flesh. The PSQ is a regular working unit and this showed in the tightness of their playing, they needed to be on top of their game with this densely constructed material. The group were well received by the Brecon crowd and this performance will have helped to expand their growing British following. Schumacher returns to the UK in November for a duo performance at the London Jazz festival with Belgian pianist Jef Neve, a former member of the quartet.

STEPHANE KERECKI TRIO

French bassist Stephane Kerecki and his quartet appeared in the more refined environment of Brecon Cathedral. Kerecki first came to my attention with the release of the 2009 album “Houria” (reviewed elsewhere on this site) , a record that featured Kerecki’s core trio of saxophonist Matthieu Donarier and drummer Thomas Grimmonprez together with guest American saxophonist Tony Malaby.

The acoustic of Brecon Cathedral was particularly well suited to the quiet strengths of the trio’s music and it appeared to me that the group very much tailored their performance to match the setting . Kerecki anchors the trio from the bass, a harmonically adventurous player who enjoys a good deal of freedom in the openness of the trio context. Thomas Grimmonprez is a marvellous drummer, playing here very quietly but demonstrating a remarkable eye for colour and detail. His effortlessly fluid rhythms, accents and pulses sometimes reminded me of the great Jon Christensen, which is praise indeed. To be honest I was less impressed with saxophonist Matthieu Donarier who alternated between tenor and soprano but seemed a little diffident with a rather thin tone on both instruments. Perhaps I was missing the presence of the more forceful Malaby who makes a substantial contribution to the “Houria” album.

Nevertheless there was much to enjoy about this set with some brilliantly fluent bass playing from Kerecki, both with and without the bow, and Grimmonprez was a joy to watch throughout. And don’t get me wrong Donarier had his moments, sometimes sounding remarkably Garbarek like, especially on tenor.

The language barrier made noting titles difficult but I did recognise the North African flavoured “Houria” itself with Donarier sometimes deploying slap tongue effects and soloing effectively on tenor alongside Kerecki himself. Also from the album “Satellise” featured a n absorbing solo drum passage from Grimmonprez and some stunning unison lines from the trio as a whole.  A ballad item featuring Donarier’s tenor above the rich purr of Kerecki’s bass was particularly effective.

Elsewhere Kerecki’s bass pulse and Grimmonprez’s subtle drum grooves provided a platform for Donarier’s more impassioned soprano soloing. Folk melodies surfaced regularly amid the trio’s playing and both North African and Indian influences found their way into Donarier’s playing, particularly on soprano.

Overall this was an enjoyable if low key set, ideal for the surroundings perhaps but I did find myself missing Malaby’s influence. A look at Kerecki’s website reveals that the trio plus Malaby will be touring the “Houria” album in France and Germany during September and October. It’s a shame that he couldn’t make it here.

Time and logistical constraints meant that I couldn’t stay on to hear Norwegian quartet The Core. This was a shame as their updating of the sound of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane sounded highly promising. If you’re reading this and got to see them let us know what you thought.

   

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