Dom Franks’ StrayHorn

“Duality Pt: 02”

(Self Released)

Dom Franks – tenor & soprano saxophones, Aidan Pope – electric & acoustic guitar, Jules Jackson – five string electric bass, Fender Rhodes, percussion, Andrew Brotherton – drums

with Alex Steele -  Fender Rhodes (tracks 1,3.7)
The Carducci String Quartet (Matthew Denton- Violin,  Michelle Fleming -  Violin,  Eoin Schmidt-Martin -  Viola, Emma Denton -  Cello) – Strings (tracks 2,5,6,7)
Luiz Morais – string arrangements (2,5,6,7)

Cheltenham based saxophonist and composer Dom Franks is both a local hero and a musician with a national reputation. I first became aware of his playing back in 2015 when I reviewed the 2014 release “One Drop Love Chant”, the second album from Franks’ Strayhorn Quartet, a follow up to their 2011 debut “In Native Tongues”.

At this time the group featured keyboard player Alex Steele, bassist Will Harris and drummer Matt Jones, all musicians based in the English West Country.  Rather then interpreting the music of the late, great Billy Strayhorn as the band name might suggest “One Drop Love Chant” found the quartet concentrating to good effect on the original compositions of Franks and Steele. Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/strayhorn-quartet-one-drop-love-chant

“Living With Spooks” (2017), the title a nod to the presence in Cheltenham of GCHQ, introduced a new version of the band with Steele sharing keyboard duties with John Law, the latter a well known composer and band-leader in his own right and a regular presence on the Jazzmann web pages. The rhythm team featured bassist James Agg and drummer Billy Weir, both products of the acclaimed Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire. At the time of the recording Agg and Weir were concurrently members of Law’s own quartet.  The core quartet is augmented on three tracks by guitarist Lee Jones. “Living With Spooks” is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/dom-franks-strayhorn-quartet-living-with-spooks

More recently I enjoyed seeing Franks perform as a guest soloist with pianist Eddie Gripper and his trio at a Fringe event associated with the 2025 Cheltenham Jazz Festival. He has also worked in this capacity with guitarist Will Barnes.

Franks’ latest project is “Duality”, a two album series featuring what the saxophonist’s Bandcamp page describes as “featuring two different, but distinct bands, showcasing two facets of lyrical, harmonically adventurous composer & saxophonist Dom Franks’s eclectic musical tastes. In ‘Duality Pt.1’ Franks pays tribute to the smoking trio of Hammond master Larry Goldings, as well as David Sanborn’s collaborations with organist Joey DeFrancesco, with a new set of compositions inspired by these models.”

“Duality Pt: 1” features a quartet with Franks on tenor and soprano joined by guitarist Matt Hopkins and drummer Andy Tween, with Hammond duties divided between Anders Olinder and John Paul Gard.  This is a line up that has gigged widely and which has accrued a considerable following in Franks’ West Country heartland.

The newly released “Duality Pt: 2” is a more ambitious project that combines Franks’ interests in both jazz and classical music, as his album liner notes explain;
“Duality Pt. 2 is the realisation of a long standing ambition to combine my regular quartet with strings. I grew up playing in orchestras and singing classically long before my current role as an improvising saxophonist and composer. I’ve always been fascinated by the common ground between jazz and classical music – Lennie Tristano’s Third Stream, Stan Getz’s ‘Focus’, Vince Mendoza’s pioneering orchestrations, Pat Metheny’s collaborations with Milton Nascimento etc.”

He continues;
“In 2024 I was fortunate enough to meet the incredible Brazilian guitarist / arranger Luiz Morais, originally from Fortaleza, now based in London. Together we collaborated on arrangements combining jazz quintet with string octet. The final piece of the puzzle was the strings – I am honoured that the Carducci String Quartet agreed to work together on this album.”

The core group that Franks has put together for this album features guitarist Aidan Pope, bassist Jules Jackson, who occasionally doubles on keyboards and percussion, and drummer Andrew Brotherton. Old friend Alex Steele adds the sound of Fender Rhodes to three of the tracks.

On four pieces the quartet / quintet is joined by the internationally acclaimed classical ensemble The Carducci String Quartet, featuring violinists Michelle Fleming and Matthew Denton, violist Eoin Schmidt-Martin and cellist Emma Denton. The string arrangements are by Luis Morais, as you’ve already read.

In addition to Western classical music and American jazz Franks is also a huge fan of Brazilian music, so this collaboration with Morais is something of a ‘dream come true’ for him. He’s described the new album as “a love letter to 70s Brazilian MPB, jazz and funk, with a nod to the contemporary string arrangements of Vince Mendoza”.

The album gets under way with the sound of the core group in quintet mode on “Unity Road”, a title that I surmise is a tip of the hat to Metheny. It’s a buoyant, uplifting opener featuring bright and colourful textures and vibrant rhythms, with Jackson doubling on percussion, all suggestive of that Brazilian influence. Meanwhile Steele’s Fender Rhodes adds a welcome touch of funkiness. It’s also a highly melodic piece with Franks’ tenor sax leading the way, followed by the impressive Pope on coolly elegant guitar. Franks and Steele enjoy a series of breezy sax / keys exchanges, these followed by an electric bass and drum dialogue between Jackson and Brotherton, before Franks’ tenor takes over once more.

Steele sits out on “Duality (Twin Poles)”, but is replaced by the musicians of The Carducci String Quartet. Naturally the sound is lusher and smoother, but not cloyingly so. Franks is featured on soprano sax and his playing exudes a warmth that is perhaps not always associated with this instrument. Pope adds another concise, but telling, guitar solo while drummer Brotherton plays with great sensitivity throughout.

“The Outliers” features the same quintet line up as the opener and sees the leader reverting to tenor sax on a fast moving number that combines elements of swing and funk. Franks solo with both power and fluency and there’s another articulate guitar solo from Pope, a tasteful and imaginative player who transcends the obvious Metheny influences to bring something truly individual to the proceedings. Brotherton again features strongly, a talented musician who does most of his work on the session and theatre scenes and who deserves to be heard in a jazz context more frequently.

The band is pared down to a quartet for the ballad “Lullaby for Yerevan”, named for the capital of Armenia. Introduced by a delightful dialogue between acoustic guitar and electric bass it later finds Pope doubling up on electric guitar. Franks is featured on yearning soprano sax while Brotherton adds deft and sensitive brushwork.

The final three tracks all feature the Carduccis. “Full Time Mover” is a fast moving item that combines funkiness with the sound of lushly soaring strings, a little like a 70s movie soundtrack. It’s a combination that works very well with several commentators expressing the opinion that this piece represents the most successful synthesis between Franks’ two musical worlds. The strings are fully integrated into the music while Jackson and Brotherton combine to give the piece a bubbling groove. The versatile Jackson doubles on Fender Rhodes and percussion in addition to providing an agile and funky electric bass solo. Franks adds an incisive tenor sax solo and Pope weighs in with a Benson-esque guitar solo towards the close.

Franks has a great admiration for songwriters, particularly Brazilian ones such as Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. But he’s no less fond of the American Jimmy Webb (“Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”” etc.). Previously released as a single “Simple Song (For Jimmy Webb)” pays homage with the Carduccis’ lush strings allied to the warm sound of Franks’ tenor and the delicate brushwork of Brotherton. It’s a beautiful ballad that exhibits both song-like and cinematic qualities.

It’s been suggested that the title of the closing “The Rule of the Blade” represents a tip of the hat to the great American drummer, composer and bandleader Brian Blade. Be that as it may the piece sees the return of Steele alongside the Carduccis. It’s another successful synthesis of jazz and string sounds with the leader stating the earworm of a theme on tenor and taking the first solo, followed by Pope on guitar, with a lengthy and fluent six string excursion, before Franks returns to play us out.

It’s a very different sound to “Duality:  Pt 01” and Franks is to be applauded for his breadth of vision and his sense of ambition, in addition to the quality of his writing and playing. Everybody in the core group plays well and Pope, Jackson and Brotherton all represent exciting new discoveries for me.

Morais does a sterling job with the string arrangements, which remain just the right sign of cloying, and the of course the playing of The Carducci String Quartet is also excellent. Franks has said of them;
“They can just do anything you put in front of them. They’re the perfect string quartet who are really open-minded and can turn their skills to anything, and they have big open ears.”

There may be some listeners who prefer the more straight ahead ‘meat and potatoes’ sound of the first part of this two album project but there’s no doubting that this second instalment is the more ambitious of the two and is a very personal recording for the affable Franks. On the whole it succeeds brilliantly and the album has received a very favourable response from the UK jazz media, offering further evidence that Dom Franks is far more than just a good ‘regional’ jazz talent. It will be interesting to see what this enterprising musician turns his hand to next.

Dom Franks’ recordings are available via his Bandcamp page here;
https://domfranksstrayhorn.bandcamp.com/

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