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Review

Laura Jurd

Landing Ground

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by Ian Mann

January 07, 2013

/ ALBUM

Combining elements of both jazz and contemporary classical music the album represents a stunningly mature debut statement that is certain to make Jurd one of the names to watch out for in 2013.

Laura Jurd

“Landing Ground”

(Chaos Collective CC001)

Twenty one year old trumpeter and composer Laura Jurd has attracted a compelling amount of critical praise for her remarkable début recording “Landing Ground”. Combining elements of both jazz and contemporary classical music the album represents a stunningly mature statement that is certain to make Jurd one of the names to watch out for in 2013. Her “rising star” status was confirmed by her appearance on a recent Radio 4 documentary, the provocatively titled “Is Jazz Dead?”, which proved to be an intelligent and perceptive examination of the contemporary British jazz scene by radio journalist Paul Morley. The programme also featured an illuminating interview with drummer and composer Seb Rochford.

I first became aware of Laura Jurd’s playing at the 2011 London Jazz Festival when she appeared as a key soloist with both the Mike Roberts Big Band and the Trinity Laban Jazz Ensemble. She was good, but nothing I heard there prepared me for the magnificence of this new album. Indeed Jurd was still a student at Trinity when this album was recorded, something I still find quite astonishing.
Jurd’s tutors, among them Mark Lockheart, Chris Batchelor, Issie Barrett and Errollyn Wallen have obviously taught her well and Lockheart (who directed the Trinity Big Band at that 2011 LJF performance) provides a glowing endorsement of her talents on the album cover.

A frequent award winner Jurd won the Dankworth Jazz Composition Award in 2011 and was named “Worshipful Company of Musicians Young Jazz Musician of the Year” for 2012. As well as being a fine musician and composer she is also something of a mover and shaker and is a co-founder of the Chaos Collective, a new, fresh collection of young musicians who are following the self determining trails blazed by F-ire and Loop. “Landing Ground” represents the first release on the fledgling Chaos Collective record label. 

The album personnel includes a core jazz quartet featuring Jurd’s young Collective colleagues Elliott Galvin (piano), Conor Chaplin (double bass) and Corrie Dick (drums). Galvin leads his own group (of which Jurd is a member), Chaplin is contemporaneously a member of the band WorldService Project where he specialises on electric bass, and Dick co-ordinates the jazz programme at Oliver’s Jazz Bar in Greenwich. Jurd is a versatile composer who writes across a range of styles and the album also features a distinctive contribution from the Ligeti Quartet comprising of violinists Mandhira de Saram and Patrick Dawkins with Richard Jones on viola and Ben Davis on cello. Davis, the leader of the Mercury nominated Basquiat Strings also appears as a featured soloist.

The music on “Landing Ground” was conceived as a single entity and deals with the themes of departure and return. The programme features six through composed pieces and three improvised duets with Jurd citing the music of “Kind of Blue” era Miles Davis as a key influence alongside that of classical composers Oliver Messiaen, Alban Berg and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The album begins with the ambitious “Flight Music” which Jurd describes as “busy, jaunty and positive,”. With Dick featuring on cajon there’s a strong Spanish flavour to the piece which also suggests Miles’ “Sketches Of Spain” as an influence. What’s most impressive though is the way Jurd blends the sounds of the jazz and classical players seamlessly together. This is an astonishingly mature piece of writing and arranging, everything sounds perfectly matched and balanced and the overall ensemble sound is consistently excellent. Combining the sounds of jazz and classical instruments is a skill that composers many years her senior have found difficult to master but Jurd makes it sound perfectly natural and organic. Jurd has a foot in both camps so perhaps the process comes easily to her but another factor must surely be the increased receptiveness and willingness to improvise displayed by the current generation of classical string players. The overall sound is key but a stand-out moment comes with Jurd’s breathy trumpet solo, she has spoken of her admiration for boundary pushing trumpeters such as Norway’s Arve Henriksen and the USA’s Peter Evans and something of their influence can be heard here. Galvin assumes prominence towards the end of the piece when the music slows down temporarily in a collective pause for breath. This is a magnificent start to the album, music with scope and breadth, vision and ambition. Jurd describes the piece as being about “visualising, eagerly awaiting the moment of departure-but there’s still time for the shortest of daydreams”, the latter presumably represented by Galvin’s piano interlude.

“Duet 1” is a freely improvised dialogue between Jurd and Davis, the latter the UK’s leading improvising cellist. It would seem that the pair had rarely played together before and Jurd describes the piece as being “about discovering, being surprised”. Davis uses both bowing and pizzicato techniques and the music is sometimes spiky with the duo producing some unusual timbres and effects. However Jurd acknowledges that Davis has a “strong melodic voice” and that sense of innate tunefulness is never far away. This may be free improv but it’s a good deal more accessible than some.

“The Lady Of Bruntal” is named after the Czech singer and violinist Iva Bittova. Jurd describes her subject as “having a wonderful musical imagination” and being full of “grace and poise”. Again the ensemble sound generated by the jazz/classical octet is superb, the rich sound full of cinematic and Eastern European references. Davis again plays a prominent role but the violinists are also given their head, interacting well with Dick’s delightfully detailed drums and percussion. Chaplin’s steady bass pulse underpins the fluttering of Jurd’s trumpet on another superbly realised group performance.

“Happy Sad Song” is Jurd’s attempt to express both emotions in the course of the same tune, a fairly standard indie rock trope though this of course sounds completely different. Strings and trumpet meditate above Galvin’s delicately rippling piano arpeggios and Dick’s suitably nuanced percussion. The piece is crowned by Jurd’s gracefully eloquent trumpet solo.

“Duet 11” is a brief (less then one minute) improvised dialogue between Jurd and pianist Galvin. The pair squeeze a lot into fifty three seconds with Galvin using dampened strings to punctuate Jurd’s flaring bursts of trumpet.

The title track “portrays the pleasure of a return home” and combines lush strings with vibrant rhythms and Jurd’s brightly toned trumpet to conjure up mental images of a boat cutting through the water on its return voyage. All the virtues we have by now come to associate with Jurd’s writing and arranging are present here, skilful, tightly knit arrangements and sure footed variations of mood and pace.

Jurd describes “Tales from the Old Country” as being “about reminiscence” and has an unapologetic air of nostalgia and wistfulness about it. The folk tinged theme is one of the most lyrical on the album and it is well served by Galvin’s limpid piano and a double bass solo of great sensitivity by Conor Chaplin which is light years away from the funk grooves he lays down with WSP, he’s clearly a highly versatile young musician. There’s a melancholy, Milesian ring to Jurd’s trumpet which is perfectly suited to the reflective mood of the piece.

“Duet 111” is another short improvised snippet that teams Jurd with percussionist Corrie Dick. Dick’s sympathetic, subtly nuanced work throughout the album amply qualifies him for the title of “percussionist” rather than mere drummer. A key member of the Chaos Collective he’s superb throughout and totally attuned to Jurd’s vision. This playful forty five second dialogue is full of charm and whimsy. 

“The Cross-Atlantic Antics of Madame Souza” draws its inspiration from a character in the film “Belleville Rendez Vous”. It’s jerky and humorous with plucked strings and exotic percussion, almost veering into the territory of circus music. Nonetheless there’s also a strong jazz undercurrent which is expressed in Jurd’s bravura trumpeting. Embracing dissonance and with an air of wilful eccentricity the piece reflects Jurd’s love of the music of Django Bates, yet another connection alongside Lockheart and Batchelor, to the Loose Tubes generation.

Jurd’s music is similar to that of saxophonist Trish Clowes in its willingness to combine jazz and classical influences. I recently gave a recommendation to Clowes’ latest album “and in the night time she is there” but “Landing Ground” is even better. Jurd’s greater commitment to improvisation gives her music more of a cutting edge. Also there’s the feeling that on Clowes’ record that however skilfully realised the music is still for jazz quartet plus string quartet. On “Landing Ground” Jurd’s line up sounds like a fully integrated octet with the jazz and classical players fully equal partners. There’s a level of interaction between the players that is rare in this type of “crossover”. To paraphrase Mark Lockheart “coming from a 21 year old musician it’s quite miraculous”. I don’t think I’ve heard jazz and classical music melded together as successfully as here.

Laura Jurd has caused quite a stir with this album. Her group are due to headline at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London later in the year (May19th) and it’s also to be hoped that festival organisers will sit up and take notice (she’s already due to play at Southport on February 1st) . Following a début as assured as this it’s also fascinating to speculate on what the future might hold for the hugely talented Laura Jurd.

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