Brecon Jazz Festival 2015

Martin Taylor Solo, The Guildhall, 09/08/2015.

The second event at the Guildhall celebrating ‘The Jazz Guitar’ was this solo performance by Martin Taylor, one of the most acclaimed jazz guitarists that Britain has ever produced. The self taught Taylor is a remarkably versatile musician who is able to play in styles ranging from gypsy jazz to bebop and beyond and who has developed a remarkable ‘fingerstyle’ of playing that facilitates the simultaneous playing of a variety of melody lines and rhythms. The most commonly asked question at a Martin Taylor solo guitar performance must be “how on earth does he do that?!”.

This afternoon performance was by co-ordinated by Brecon Jazz Club in conjunction with North Wales Jazz whose Trefor Owen, himself a respected jazz guitarist, made an introduction in Welsh to complement Lynne Gornall’s welcome in English. Indeed Trefor’s introductory ‘words in Welsh’ were a feature of all three ‘Jazz Guitar’ performances.

I first became of Martin Taylor’s playing in the late 1970s/early 1980s when I saw him perform in Malvern with the late, great Stephane Grappelli. A then very young Taylor (he was born in 1956) was part of a Hot Club style quartet that also included a second guitarist, Taylor’s one time mentor the late Ike Isaacs. Taylor was strictly speaking the junior member of that particular guitar partnership but I was so impressed with his playing that I soon acquired a couple of his early LPs, “Taylor Made”, a trio set with bassist Peter Ind and drummer John Richardson and “Triple Libra”,  a delightfully intimate duo recording made with Ind.

Taylor went on to record a string of fine albums for the Scottish based Linn label including his first solo guitar album “Artistry” in 1992 and the wonderful “Spirit of Django”, one of the most successful re-imaginings of Reinhardt’s music that I’ve heard, with a group featuring saxophonist Dave O’ Higgins, bassist Alec Dankworth and the veteran accordionist Jack Emblow, yes, he of “Sing Something Simple” fame. I saw this group give a brilliant performance at an early Cheltenham Jazz Festival with Emblow almost stealing the show with some of the best accordion playing I’ve ever seen in a jazz context. Taylor has continued to work sporadically with the Spirit of Django group as well as recording prolifically with other musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. He is one of the few British jazz musicians to have acquired an international reputation and his talents have been recognised by honorary doctorates from the University of the West of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama plus an MBE for his services to jazz music in the 2002 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Besides his playing skills Taylor is also an acclaimed educator and currently conducts the Martin Taylor Guitar Academy, an acclaimed on line learning programme.

Taylor’s connections with Brecon go back a long way, he first played at Brecon Jazz Club in 1988 and is now an honorary life member of the Club. He has also been a regular Festival visitor, I personally recall appearances in 1990 and 2007 but there may well have been others.

In some respects today’s performance felt like something of a homecoming as Taylor took to the stage to perform his opening number “I’m Old Fashioned”. In the main today’s repertoire was drawn from the ‘Great American Songbook’ rather than the gypsy jazz canon but in a show that saw Taylor supplementing his playing with a good deal of between tunes chat, much of it autobiographical, we were treated to something of a career retrospective with the music touching many bases.

Playing a solid bodied electric jazz guitar Taylor adopted a warm tone that was sometimes reminiscent to that of Pat Metheny. “I Won’t Last A Day Without You” also featured interlocking bass and melody lines as Taylor demonstrated his effortless virtuosity. There was nothing flashy about it, nothing that screamed “look at me!”, like everything he does it sounded totally unforced and completely natural. The rapt crowd silence ensured that every note and chord could be heard with the utmost clarity. Time seemed to stand still as Taylor drew the audience deep within his personal soundworld.

A version of “Just Once” by Quincy Jones, a song that was a hit for the composer together with vocalist James Ingram, concluded the opening sequence of tunes. At first I thought Taylor was going to play straight through without speaking but now he began to put his educational expertise to good use with the first of several entertaining and informative anecdotes. This first one related to him being entirely self taught and recounted how he had learned his trade as an entertainer aboard the QE2 as part of the Harry Bence band as he made his first trip to New York. It was when the Bence band supported Count Basie in the Big Apple that Taylor got to know Basie’s guitarist, the great Freddie Green. Taylor then proceeded to play Cole Porter’s “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” in the style of Freddie Greene, a performance that brought a smile to the faces of many of the jazz aficionados packing out the Guildhall.

Following a rendition of “Someday My Prince Will Come” Taylor paused again to speak of the influence on him of both Django Reinhardt and Eddie Lang, guitarists who had featured in his father’s record collection. However he also revealed that he had been influenced even more strongly by pianists such as Bill Evans and Art Tatum, particularly the way in which the latter combined left and right hand patterns to create some of the most technically advanced piano playing of his time. Taylor described his playing of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” as “stride piano on guitar” as he illustrated Tatum’s influence upon him in a stunning technical tour de force.

Taylor told us that he had supported the great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel in 1975, another musician who was to have a profound influence on his playing. He was also mentored by Ike Isaacs (1919-96) and acknowledged his debt to this now largely forgotten musician. It was Isaacs who introduced Taylor to Grappelli in 1979 with Taylor remaining with the French violinist for a whole eleven years. By way of tribute to Grappelli’s memory Taylor played a traditional French song, the title of which eluded me.

Taylor was keen to emphasise that his extraordinary playing was purely the product of eight fingers and two thumbs and that no loops or pedals were involved. Indeed Taylor’s only concessions to technology, other than almost minimal amplification, was straight from the “Valerie Singleton school”, a capot plus a piece of cardboard wedged underneath the strings on the infectious “Down At Cocomo’s”, a tune that added Caribbean and African elements to Taylor’s sound.

The mood changed with “One Day”, one of Taylor’s most personal compositions, a piece written following the death of his son Stewart, aged just twenty one in 2005. It subsequently became a song when Taylor collaborated with the folk guitarist and songwriter Martin Simpson who added lyrics to it and recorded it for his own album “True Stories” released in 2009. Taylor himself has revisited the piece many times and his latest interpretation forms the title track of his latest solo recording, an EP featuring seven pieces recorded over the course of a single day. Today’s performance was genuinely moving with the folk like melody combining with Taylor’s warm tone (hints of Metheny again) and subtle use of space to create something haunting, beautiful and memorable.

This masterclass in the art of solo guitar ended on a celebratory note with Taylor’s remarkable rendition of “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”, a song most closely associated with Nina Simone. The inevitable and well deserved encore saw him fastening his capot again and returning to the West African polyrhythms he’d hinted at previously while also injecting a little humour with a quote from the theme of the TV series “Bonanza”.

If I’m honest I wasn’t sure whether a solo guitar recital would hold my attention for over hour but this performance was utterly spellbinding. However this show was about more than mere technical excellence, it was also about warmth and humanity as Taylor informed, educated and entertained his audience and sometimes moved them emotionally too. The playing was both brilliant and immaculate but the spoken episodes were also well judged with Taylor striking just the right balance between the serious and the humorous and imparting just the right amount of information.

There was very little one could fault here in any respect. A genuine Festival highlight.   

 

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