Jazz at Progress
Friday 10 October 2025
Chris Biscoe’s Profiles Quartet

Chris Biscoe, alto saxophone & alto clarinet; Alcyona Mick, piano; Larry Bartley, bass; Winston Clifford, drums.

A truly inspired performance by the latest edition of Chris Biscoe’s Profiles Quartet, on its first public outing, launched a new season of Jazz at Progress on Friday 10 October. With the leader’s creativity and freedom of expression and Larry Bartley’s majestic bass maintaining the continuity of earlier Profiles’ projects, newcomers Alcyona Mick and Winston Clifford, added a new and hugely exciting dimension to the mix. One might describe the band as ‘custom made’ to explore the wiles and whims, rage and defiance, love and friendship, plus all manner of idiosyncrasies, immortalised in the legion of jazz compositions dedicated to people and even a ‘toilet trained cat’.

Winston Clifford’s crisp drum roll opened the curtain on the very personal world inhabited by Thelonious Monk and his seemingly off-kilter portrait of his niece Jackie Smith. ‘Jackie-ing’, catches you unaware. How can so much be going on with what seems to be such a simple little tune? Logic tells you that nothing should fit together. But it does and before long Monk’s wry humour and the warmth of his swinging heartbeat, expressed so brilliantly by the four members of the band, has completely won you over.

In complete contrast to the cliff-hanging suspense of ‘Jackie-ing’, ‘Magic Meg’, from the pen of Biscoe’s good friend and associate Pete Hurt, swung like the clappers in a joyous romp reminiscent of Sonny Rollins’ ‘St Thomas’.

The alto clarinet is an instrument of graceful beauty with a sound to match. In the hands of Chris Biscoe it has an emotive force that brings tears to the eyes, perfectly fitting to Charles Mingus’ elegy to Lester Young, ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’.

Mandy Rice Davies, a characterful figure in the notorious Profumo Affair of 1963, coined a phrase which has since taken its way into regular usage as well as the Oxford Book of Quotations. When told in court that Lord Astor denied her claim that they had ‘slept together’, she replied, ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he!’ Taking inspiration from her defiance, Chris reshaped Monk’s classic ‘Well You Needn’t’ to ‘Well He Would’, with Alcyona Mick’s sharply defined keyboard figures aimed directly at the ‘Establishment’ of that, and any other day.

In ‘Blues for Terenzi’, Chris Biscoe summoned an extraordinary range of sounds on the alto clarinet to pay a deeply moving tribute to one of his ‘favourite musicians’, the late Danilol Terenzi and the tune’s composer Mike Westbrook. Winston Clifford’s delicate hand-drumming and Larry Bartley’s sublime bass underpinned the feeling of quiet contemplation.

The reflective qualities of ‘Blues for Terenzi’ segued seamlessly into ‘Dear John C’, to close the first set with Elvin Jones’ passionate tribute to his erstwhile leader and inspirational force, John Coltrane. Steve Foster’s fantastic images, to be found via https://www.jazzinreading.com/gallery/ capture the intensity of the moment far better than any words I can express.

The enduring legacy of Eric Dolphy lived on in the choice of the first three tunes in the second set*, each portraying a different facet of his complex musical personality. Dolphy, the composer and leader, was represented by ‘Miss Ann’, a free-flowing joyride featuring the compelling piano of Alcyone Mick and explosive percussion of Winston Clifford. ‘

Mendacity’, attributed to drummer/Civil Rights activist, Max Roach and recorded with a vocal on his ’Percussion Bitter Sweet’ album, explored very different, unsettling territory, which I can best liken to Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’. Chris Biscoe’s range of incredible tonal effects, the interplay between piano and bass, and the sensitive support of Winston Clifford, combined to produce a performance of stunning emotional power.

To round off the tribute to Eric Dolphy, the band faithfully replicated the dark, sardonic humour of Charles Mingus’ recording of ‘Fables of Faubus’ from 1960, in which Dolphy played a leading role. One could sense the power of Mingus’ voice as he vented his rage against the iniquities of American society represented by the notorious Orval Faubus, one-time Governor of Arkansas.

The blues/gospel tinged ‘Pussy Cat Dues’ left one in no doubt that Charles Mingus may rant and rage, but the real boss of his household was the ‘well trained’ cat which sat on a lavatory seat to have its picture taken for the cover of ‘The Charles Mingus CAT-alog To Toilet Train Your Cat’
https://www.charlesmingus.com/mingus/cat-training-program

At the conclusion of ‘Sweet Pea’, Chris Biscoe’s evocation of Billy Strayhorn, I noted one word, ‘Superb’.

A full-spirited ‘Monk’s Dream’ brought the concert full circle with a return to Thelonious Monk for the seemingly final number of the evening. But no, with an enthusiastic audience clamouring for more and time in hand, Chris obliged with an encore. Not the usual fare of a rousing blues or familiar standard, but an extended and spellbinding presentation of Charles Mingus’ tribute to Charlie Parker, ’Reincarnation of a Lovebird’. What a privilege to be privy to such a magnificent and totally unexpected performance!

Our thanks to Stuart McCubbin and his team of volunteers who provide such welcoming hospitality at the Progress Theatre and to Rich Saunders and his assistant for the excellent quality of sound and
lighting.

And finally a footnote … At the beginning of the second set Chris Biscoe briefly left the stage to recover his glasses from the dressing room. A quick off the mark Winston Clifford filled the vacuum by holding three fingers in the air. ‘There are only three types of drummers,’ he announced. ‘Those that can count and those that can’t!’

TREVOR BANNISTER