Liz Exell Quartet, “Tributaries: Monk and Beyond”, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 27/04/2025.

Liz Exell – drums, Joe Northwood – tenor sax, Elliot Warburton – piano, Sabina Turvey – electric bass

Liz Exell is perhaps best known as the original drummer with Nerija, the groundbreaking all female ensemble that nurtured such jazz talents as saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Cassie Kinoshi, trombonist Rosie Turton and trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey.

She also led the Old Hat Jazz Band, a young London based ensemble playing original compositions in the style of the jazz of the 1920s and 1930s. Their 2016 album “The Sparrow” is reviewed here.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/old-hat-jazz-band-the-sparrow

Exell later re-located from London to South Wales, taking up a teaching post at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) in Cardiff. She has since become a vital presence on the Welsh jazz scene and is effectively the ‘house drummer’ at Brecon Jazz Club and Festival. I have enjoyed seeing Exell perform in Brecon on numerous occasions with leading local and national musicians, among them vocalist Dionne Bennett, trumpeter Bryan Corbett, saxophonists Emma Rawicz, Glen Manby, Greg Sterland and Dick Hamer, pianists Rachel Starritt and Geoff Eales, bassists Paula Gardiner, Ursula Harrison, Gary Brunton, Matheus Prado and Gary Crosby, vocalist / percussionist Tammy Payne and tap dancer Annette Walker.

She is also the regular drummer for pianist and composer Huw Warren’s Choro Choro Choro project.

To all of these varied engagements, which have encompassed a broad range of jazz styles,  Exell’s playing has been consistently intelligent, supportive, responsive and empathic, as well as exhibiting a high level of technical ability. These are qualities that have made her the perfect accompanist, a much in demand player whose skills have resulted in her becoming ‘the hardest working drummer in Brecon’. She has acquired something of a cult following among Brecon jazz audiences and London’s loss has very much been Wales’ gain.

Exell was also part of the Women in Jazz in Wales project that performed a show at the Borough Theatre in Abergavenny in February 2023. Review here;

The ‘Women in Jazz in Wales’ project was supported by Black Mountain Jazz, among other organisations, and it was this show that provided the inspiration for the BMJ organisers to invite Exell to the Club to perform with her own band. It may have taken a couple of years to come to fruition, but as they say, “better late than never”.

The quartet that Exell brought to Abergavenny featured two of Exell’s former students, Sabina Turvey on electric bass and Elliott Warburton at the piano. The line up was completed by RWCMD tutor Joe Northwood on tenor sax, replacing the advertised Coren Sithers.

Turvey, who also performs as a pianist and keyboard player, has worked regularly with Exell and is also part of the Cardiff based Latin ensemble Fiesta Resistance, variously playing bass and keyboards. She also co-leads, from the piano, a quartet with saxophonist Greg Sterland.

Northwood leads his own projects, including the funk sextet Bunker, the organ trio Nurdle and the saxophone trio Tuk Tuk.  The Tuk Tuk trio has also worked regularly with invited guest musicians, among them trumpeter Nick Malcolm and alto saxophonist Geoff Simkins. Northwood is also a prolific sideman, organiser and general ‘mover and shaker’ on the Cardiff jazz scene.

Dorset born Warburton was a new name to me, a recent RWCMD graduate who has remained in Cardiff but hopes to make a move to London in the near future with a view to furthering his musical career. He certainly impressed tonight in the ‘Thelonious Monk’ role and was also featured as a composer. He’s definitely going to be a young musician to watch out for in the future.

Tonight’s programme was billed as “Tributaries; Monk & Beyond”, and as this title suggests the performance was centred around the music of the great pianist and composer Thelonious Monk,  and specifically Monk’s classic 1967 album “Straight, No Chaser”, which was performed in its entirety alongside a Warburton original and another Monk composition “Bemsha Swing”. Exell explained that the inspiration behind the “Tributaries” title was the idea of Monk’s influence trickling down to contemporary jazz musicians, much as Monk had absorbed the influences of even earlier jazz masters in his turn. There was also the additional idea of Wales being a land of rivers and valleys, all feeding into one another in much the same way.

A first set comprised entirely of Monk compositions from the “Straight, No Chaser” album began with “Locomotive”, introduced by Warburton at the piano and featuring his thoughtful soloing alongside further solos from Northwood on tenor and Turvey on electric bass, with leader Exell anchoring things unobtrusively from the drum kit.

“I Didn’t Know About You” was performed as a trio item with Northwood sitting out. This was another good showcase for Warburton’s pianistic abilities as he shared the solos with Turvey at the bass. Warburton’s solo was supported by electric bass and brushed drums and such was the young pianist’s absorption in the music that the occasional Keith Jarrett style vocal mannerism could be detected. Turvey’s bass solo evolved into a gentle dialogue with the leader’s drums.

“Straight, No Chaser” itself was introduced by Warburton, with Northwood eventually joining to double up on the familiar melodic motif. This was a more robust item that featured Northwood’s fluent but muscular tenor sax soloing, followed by Warburton at the piano and finally Exell at the drum kit, rounding off a rousing rendition of this much loved Monk classic.

“Japanese Folk Song” was a more lyrical offering, again introduced by Warburton at the piano but with Northwood stating the main melodic theme. Warburton took the first solo, followed by a smouldering, slow burning tenor sax solo from Northwood, underpinned by languid electric bass from Turvey, the third featured soloist,  and brushed drums.

The first set concluded with a solo piano rendition by Warburton of “Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea”, a tune actually written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. This was a particularly impressive performance from Warburton that again served notice of his technical facility.

Set two commenced with the unison tenor sax and piano theme statement of the Monk tune “We See”,  which subsequently included solos from Warburton, Northwood and Turvey, plus a series of exchanges between Exell at the kit and her young protege Warburton at the piano.

The second solo piano performance of the evening was “This Is My Story, This Is My Song”, a more intimate performance that verged upon the hymnal, a reflection of the tune’s origins.

Northwood’s sax took the lead on “Green Chimneys”, a typically quirky Monk composition featuring staccato phrasing and a tenor sax solo fuelled by Turvey’s propulsive bass lines and Exell’s crisp drumming. Warburton was then featured at the piano and Exell at the kit prior to Northwood’s closing theme statement.

Having exhausted their “Straight, No Chaser” repertoire the quartet turned to Warburton for the next piece. The young pianist is a prolific composer and has already recorded three digital releases which are available via Bandcamp. The albums “Arcadia” (2024) and “the Constance, and the Ever” (2025) are live solo piano recordings. The EP “heδron” is a scored work for two pianos, composed by Warburton and played by himself and fellow pianist Evan Francis Williams.
https://elliotwarburton.bandcamp.com/

Warburton had written a new composition specifically for this project. Exell invited him to announce it himself and we learned that given the Monk theme he had wanted to write something “suitably monastic”. An appropriately monastic source of inspiration turned out to be the figure of St. Anthony, with Warburton describing his tune “Blue Anthony” as an “exploded blues”. The piece was an impressively mature piece of writing, a slow burning tune that gradually gathered intensity as it developed from Northwood’s opening theme statement via solos from the composer on piano, Northwood on tenor sax and Turvey on melodic electric bass. Exell provided succinct and sympathetic drum commentary throughout and her cymbal work was particularly impressive. Meanwhile the quality of the writing was another reason to keep an eye out for the talented Elliot Warburton.

The quartet rounded the evening off with a return to the Monk repertoire for a lively romp through the quintessentially ‘Monkish “Bemsha Swing”, with expansive solos from both Northwood and Warburton plus further features for Turvey and leader Exell, the latter engaging in a series of exchanges with both Northwood and Warburton.

Overall this was a very enjoyable evening of jazz that was warmly welcomed by an audience numbering just over fifty. It was interesting to see Exell leading a group for the first time and she seemed to be enjoying this unfamiliar role, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her talk so much on stage!

The standard of the playing was excellent throughout, although I did have one or two reservations about the performance as a whole. The decision to focus almost entirely on Monk did give something of an air of “jazz as repertory” to the event and in these circumstances I would also have preferred to have heard an acoustic double bass rather than the electric version.

These misgivings aside the pluses vastly outweighed the negatives and the gifted Warburton proved to be an exciting new discovery.

 

blog comments powered by Disqus