Hansu-Tori

“An Improvised Escape”

In June 2012 I saw the young Birmingham based keyboard player and composer David Austin Grey leading his band Greyish Quartet as they supported Sons of Kemet at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath. It was an enjoyable set that exhibited a lot of promise, the material mainly being sourced from the group’s album “The Dark Red Room”, a semi conceptual affair inspired by the worlds of photography and cinema.

Grey’s latest creative outlet is Hansu Tori, a natural descendant of Greyish Quartet with trumpeter Sam Wooster, bassist Nick Jurd and drummer Jim Bashford all retained from the previous band.  “An Improvised Escape” also features the work of three guest saxophonists, Chris Young and Adam Jackson on altos plus Nick Rundle on tenor but these are all individual contributions, the three guests never actually get to play together. It would appear that Young has now joined the group full time and Hansu-Tori is also augmented by the voice of Eliza Shaddad, a young singer who also has a promising career as a solo artist.

Grey says of his group’s name;
“The Korean term ?Hansu’ means ?water?. “A drop of water gathering to make an ocean”. Specifically Hansu represents strength, flexibility, harmony and water as the source of life. ?Tori’ is the Japanese word for ?bird?. It can be thought to represent freedom and grace.”
Aside from his interest in music and photography Grey is a martial arts devotee and teaches at clubs in the Birmingham area. I assume that the band’s name has its roots in this.

Grey and his colleagues are all graduates of the Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire but this self released album has also achieved a degree of national attention including a favourable review by Selwyn Harris in the December 2014 edition of Jazzwise Magazine.

Hansu-Tori’s music is influenced by a variety of musical genres including jazz, rock, pop and soul and many of the pieces are also inspired by the cinema. Hence there is a strong pictorial and narrative sense about several of Grey’s compositions. The album’s sleeve notes offer further hints as to the inspirations behind the tunes beginning with “A Perfect Sea Of Green And Blue” which Grey describes as being about “on falling in and out of love, and falling under the spell of a girl with remarkably beautiful eyes”. The song features the pure, cool vocals of the versatile Shaddad in an arrangement that also includes Grey’s lyrical acoustic piano, and a fluent trumpet solo from Wooster. The piece makes effective use of contrasts in terms of style and dynamics, fey and ethereal   at the start then more strident and forceful as Wooster’s solo develops. Jurd and Bashford deal with the changes with considerable aplomb, both making flexible, well judged contributions.

“Aranami (Crashing Waves)” continues the marine imagery, plus the dynamic contrasts. This all instrumental depiction of the sea attempts to chart the various moods of the ocean - “imagine a boat often gently rocked but at times violently thrashed by the waves” explains Grey in his notes. The leader’s shimmering electric keyboards and the mournful sounds of Wooster’s trumpet illustrate the empty vastness of the ocean. Some of the violence comes via the alto sax of Adam Jackson, the Glasgow based musician who at one time studied in Birmingham alongside the other guys on the album. He links up well with Wooster’s trumpet, particularly on the composition’s stormier passages. Jackson was recently heard to particularly good effect on “Too Much Love”,  the latest album by bassist and composer Euan Burton.

“Resident Seagulls” is Grey’s ode to Birmingham’s noisy seagull population - you just know there is something going wrong with the planet’s ecosystems when somewhere as far from the sea as Brum is overrun with gulls, something that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. However I digress, the music itself features contemporary grooves, retro Rhodes sounds and another effective horn combination that pairs Wooster with Chris Young. Also the leader of his own groups the altoist is a featured soloist, his soaring sax given wings by Bashford’s explosive drumming. Jurd’s bass solo provides a more reflective coda.

More avian imagery with “Celestial Kestrel”, a tune based on the harmonies of Abdullah Ibrahim’s celebrated composition “Blues For A Hip King” . The piece is an aural illustration of “a beautiful and resplendent bird, soaring up to the heavens to sail amongst the stars”. There’s a vaguely township feel about the music on a piece that features the distinctive sound of Grey’s melodica alongside his richly textured and sometimes downright dirty sounding electric keyboards. Wooster again impresses with his assured trumpeting, brooding and celebratory by turns. Jackson’s enters powerfully in the tune’s latter stages as the music heads for the firmament, sparring aggressively with Wooster’s trumpet as Jurd and Bashford stoke the fires.     

“Resolution” was included in the Greyish Quartet set that I witnessed back in 2012. It’s not the John Coltrane tune but a Grey original inspired by the various definitions of the word. Performed by the core quartet it features an expansive and dramatic acoustic piano solo from Grey superbly supported by the ever responsive team of Jurd and Bashford. Wooster’s trumpet is similarly prominent and there’s also a solo from Jurd and something of a drum feature on a piece that once more offers the dynamic contrasts and breadth of colour we are now becoming accustomed to expect from Grey’s writing.

Grey’s love of cinema informs the title of “Police Story (Interlude)”, the title inspired by a 1985 Jackie Chan film. It appears to be an edit of a longer piece and features Wooster’s flaring trumpet and Rundle’s answering tenor above a tumultuous backdrop of Rhodes, bass and drums. Lasting barely more than a minute it is literally an “interlude” and forms the gateway into “South Western” a piece inspired by the music of Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela and dedicated to Grey’s sometime collaborator Soweto Kinch. Funk and township rhythms merge on an exuberant piece that features Grey on Rhodes. Wooster is again in terrific form with a blistering trumpet solo and he’s followed by Grey’s keyboards. Young is also involved and the contributions of Jurd and the dynamic Bashford are again superb.

“A Kindness Of Ravens” opens with a spoken word vocal, essentially a narration, shared by Grey and Shaddad. Grey’s text delights in the wonders of the natural world and the gloriously descriptive collective nouns for gatherings of avians. With its cautionary environmental message and reflections on the nature of humanity it’s a kind of secular prayer. The following instrumental passage mirrors the beauty of the words with lyrical trumpet and acoustic piano balanced by a darker underlying edge that finds expression in Wooster’s dramatic solo. 

“An Orderly And Beautiful Escape”, effectively the title track, takes its title from a quote by Bruce Lee - “forms are vain repetitions which offer an orderly and beautiful escape from self-knowledge with an alive opponent”. The piece evolves slowly and includes an incisive and impressive alto solo from Young followed by the composer on acoustic piano. The strong narrative arc and rich dynamic contrasts again combine to good effect. All of Grey’s pieces have strong sense of form and structure, this is intelligent music that the composer has thought about deeply, however the excellence of the performances ensures that it sounds fresh and spontaneous.

“Tsunetomo’s Blues”, subtitled “Finding Freedom” obtains its title from a quote by Yamamoto Tsunetomo-Hagakure - “human life is truly a short affair, it is better to live doing the things that you like”. The music is an updating of the bebop tradition, arguably the most obviously “jazz” track on the record. Wooster and Young are in sparkling form on a piece that tips its hat in the direction of classic hard bop. Jurd delivers some muscular bass lines and Grey’s Rhodes adds a more contemporary touch.

“Life Goes To Plan Infrequently” is a ballad based around the harmonies of one of Grey’s favourite jazz standards, “I Fall in Love Too Easily” - interestingly the lyrics of “A Perfect Sea Of Green And Blue”  also reference this song. Grey’s solo acoustic piano leads into a true ballad performance with Bashford deploying brushes. Wooster’s trumpet whispers seductively and there’s a warm, melodic and deeply resonant solo from Jurd on double bass.

The album closes with the song “The Town Beyond The Lights”, Shaddad giving sensual voice to Grey’s vivid lyrical images of “an indescribably beautiful coastal town, a warm summer’s night and a perfectly intense moment”. Voice and instruments combine evocatively with Rundle’s powerful and expressive tenor sax the featured solo instrument. Elsewhere contemporary drum grooves and keyboard sounds help to give the song a a genuine pop sensibility.

“An Improvised Escape” represents an impressive artistic statement from Grey and his colleagues.  Musically the album covers a lot of ground over the course of its seventy seven minutes, blending acoustic and electric sounds and words and music to good effect. The water and avian imagery, an extension of the band’s name, helps to give the album a semi conceptual feel, something also encouraged by Grey’s love of cinema. These pieces are sound stories with well defined narrative threads, a strong sense of the visual and plenty of textural colour and dynamic contrast. All the musicians and singers perform well and there are some excellent individual contributions but its Grey’s vision and the overall ensemble sound that impresses most. Jurd and Bashford are crucial to this process, I can’t stress strongly enough how impressed I was with their contributions throughout the recording.

It’s good to see some of the Jazz graduates from Birmingham Conservatoire, many of whom I first saw playing when they were still students, starting to make an impression on the national jazz scene. Besides the members of Hansu-Tori, many of whom also have their own projects, musicians such as saxophonist Lluis Mather, bassist Daniel Casimir, multi instrumentalist Dan Nicholls and drummers Ric Yarborough and Jonathan Silk are also starting to get noticed. The future of jazz in the UK continues to look bright with strong regional scenes all around the country continuing to develop and nurture talented young musicians.

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