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Review

The Sirkis / Bialas International Quartet

The Sirkis / Bialas International Quartet, Dempsey’s, Cardiff, 27/10/2015.

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Photography: Photograph of Asaf Sirkis by Martin Healey

by Ian Mann

October 29, 2015

/ LIVE

There was a real sense of adventure about the way they stretched out on this material, a quality that applied to singer Bialas' performance too.

The Sirkis / Bialas International Quartet, Dempsey’s, Cardiff, 27/102015.

The Israeli born, London based drummer, percussionist and composer Asaf Sirkis must be one of the hardest working musicians on the UK jazz scene. As well as leading his own projects he is also a prolific sideman who has worked with pianists John Law, Alex Hutton and Geoff Eales, guitarists Maciek Pysz, Eyal Maoz and Nicolas Meier plus saxophonist Tim Garland’s high profile Lighthouse Trio featuring pianist Gwilym Simcock.

I recently saw Sirkis give a brilliant performance at The Hive in Shrewsbury with a stellar quintet featuring Tassos Spiliotopoulos (guitar), John Turville (keyboards), Kevin Glasgow (electric bass) and guest soloist Gareth Lockrane on a variety of flutes. Sirkis has since visited China for a trio tour in the company of Spiliotopoulos and Glasgow but is now back in the UK for a series of performances with his latest project the Sirkis / Bialas International Quartet.

The ‘IQ’, as it has recently been dubbed, teams Sirkis with the Polish born vocalist and lyricist Sylwia Bialas who also lived and worked in Germany before moving to the UK. The quartet’s debut album, “Come To Me” was released earlier in 2015 and featured the co-leaders alongside Frank Harrison (piano, keyboards) and Patrick Bettison (electric bass, chromatic harmonica). For the current tour Bettison has been replaced by Glasgow with the latter playing his distinctive six string fretted electric bass.

“Come To Me” represented something of a departure for Sirkis with his first venture as a leader into the world of vocal/song based music. The seeds of the project were sown when Bialas guested on his most recent (and best) trio album “Shepherd’s Stories” (2013).

“Come To Me” features Bialas singing wordlessly and also writing music and Polish lyrics for some of the tunes (these are translated into English in the album booklet) as she plays a full part in the creative process. Bialas is a highly creative improviser who deploys her voice as an instrument in a tradition pioneered in the UK by the great Norma Winstone. For tonight’s performance all of the material was sourced from the “Come To Me” album but in the live environment the musicians took the opportunity to stretch out on the songs in an expansive manner with Bialas playing a full role in the improvisatory process. This resulted in some thrilling solos from both the instrumentalists and the singer, some of Bialas’ wordless vocal improvisations would have been considered as ‘solos’ if played by any instrumentalist.

The performance commenced with the title track from the recent album with Harrison opening proceedings on acoustic piano and accompanying Bialas’ vocal prior to the addition of bass and drums. Surrounded by keyboards Harrison clearly relished the opportunity to make good use of Dempsey’s splendid Kawai piano as he delivered the first of many excellent solos but he had also brought along his Technics electric piano, a small synthesiser mounted on top of the Kawai, plus a lap top which was occasionally deployed to treat the sound of Bialas’ voice, as happened here. 

Bialas’ tune “Ismael” began with a brilliant solo drum introduction from Sirkis who deployed soft headed mallets to deliver a passage that was both highly musical and thoroughly absorbing. Bialas’ singing mixed Polish lyrics with wordless vocalising while Harrison’s expansive acoustic piano solo encouraged Sirkis to switch from mallets to sticks.

In recent years Sirkis has become fascinated with the rhythms of South India and at Shrewsbury he had given a demonstration of his growing mastery of the art of South Indian vocal percussion in a ‘set piece’ close to the end of the performance. Tonight he deployed the technique again to introduce the Bialas tune “Vortex”, essentially an instrumental piece which featured the composer’s soaring vocals above Glasgow’s propulsive bass riff in a performance that more than any other illustrated the art of “voice as instrument”. Needless to say with a band of this quality there were some terrific instrumental moments too including a sparkling piano solo from the consistently excellent Harrison and a closing drum feature as Sirkis roamed around his imposing kit underpinned by Glasgow’s still ongoing bass vamp.

Bialas’ song “The One” was a tender ballad with the singer’s Polish lyric complemented by Harrison’s lyrical piano and Glasgow’s melodic, liquid, high register bass.

The first set concluded with “Mandragora”, another Bialas tune without words with a strong narrative arc that featured flowing acoustic piano from Harrison and an exceptional solo from Glasgow whose evocative playing once again demonstrated that the electric bass can be an instrument of exquisite beauty. The recorded version features Bettison on harmonica so tonight’s performance was necessarily a little different with Bialas’ wordless vocals also fulfilling a key melodic role. 

Set two placed a greater emphasis on the writing of Sirkis and began with his tune “Dreams Dreams” which featured Bialas’ emotive Polish lyrics and lyrical solos from Harrison on piano and Glasgow at the bass.

Bialas’ “Magnolia” featured her dramatic soaring vocals above a backdrop of interlocking rhythmic patterns generated by piano, bass and drums with Glasgow and Sirkis also enjoying extended solo features.

Sirkis’ tune “A Hymn” was notable for a brilliantly constructed solo from Harrison at the Kawai, arguably his best of the night, that evoked a similarly dramatic response from Bialas in her role of “vocalist as instrumentalist”.

The ballad “Orbs” was another tune from the pen of Sirkis, one that the composer described as being about “the spaces between the notes”. The playing was correspondingly economic and restrained with Bialas’ Polish lyrics complemented by Harrison’s languid acoustic piano solo and Glasgow’s gently liquid bass as Sirkis deployed brushes almost throughout. 

The evening concluded with “Orgon”, another Sirkis composition and one which he dedicated to the Austrian scientist and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897 – 1957). The tune also closes the album and tonight it featured Harrison playing electric piano for the first time and also doubling on synthesiser. The music itself had an appropriately futuristic/sci-fi feel with solos from Glasgow on electric bass and Harrison on keyboards, these fuelled by some powerful and dramatic drumming from the co-leader. Bialas introduced a hint of extended vocal techniques to her wordless singing and there was also some electronic manipulation of her voice. Sirkis was brought up on 70s prog rock and fusion and there was more than a hint of this here.

The quartet had played all the material on the “Come To Me” album and there was to be no encore. It has to be said that the crowd numbers this evening were a little disappointing with no students from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama present. Admittedly it was school half term week but I wouldn’t have thought that would have applied to the RWCMD. I’ve read that the attendance for the quartet’s gig at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton the previous week was disappointing too.

Given that Sirkis’ quintet gig in Shrewsbury was a virtual sell out I was surprised as the drummer is a musician who has acquired something of a following in the UK over the years. It may be that the presence of Bialas has polarised opinion, there’s a section of the jazz audience that is not well disposed towards singers no matter how technically accomplished or adventurous they may be. One suspected that this may have been the case with some of the stay aways here. Also this same quartet visited Dempsey’s at around the same time last year, no doubt playing much of the same material.

I’ll be honest, I enjoyed the quintet gig in Shrewsbury rather more than this and in general I prefer to hear Sirkis’ playing in a wholly instrumental context. That’s not to dismiss Bialas’ contribution, many of these tunes were hers and hers alone and they contained much fine music and many fgood ideas. She’s not an identikit standards singer and many of her ‘solos’ were enthralling and engrossing but the sound of wordless vocals, scat if you will, can become a little wearing over time. Technically she’s an excellent vocalist although I wouldn’t rate her as highly as Norma Winstone or Emily Saunders as a vocal improviser.

Nevertheless there was still a great deal to enjoy about this evening’s music making. Sirkis is a supremely accomplished drummer and percussionist who just seems to exude rhythm and the contributions of Harrison and Glasgow were excellent throughout. There was a real sense of adventure about the way they stretched out on this material, a quality that applied to Bialas’ performance too.

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