Winner of the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Media, 2019

Review

Nigel Price Quartet

Nigel Price Quartet, Livestream from Brecon Jazz Club, The Muse Arts Centre, Brecon, 08/12/2020.


by Ian Mann

December 09, 2020

/ LIVE

A top quality livestream. The playing from all four musicians was superb throughout, and the soloing, even in the absence of an audience, sometimes quite inspired.

Nigel Price Quartet, Livestream from Brecon Jazz Club, The Muse Arts Centre, Brecon, 08/12/2020.

Nigel Price – guitar, Vasilis Xenopoulos – tenor sax, Ross Stanley – Hammond organ, Joel Barford – drums


What a long, strange year 2020 has been. The last Brecon Jazz Club event to take place at regular HQ The Muse was back in March, when Bristol based vocalist Victoria Klewin performed an enjoyable standards based set in the company of a Cardiff based trio led by pianist Jim Barber.
Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/victoria-klewin-with-the-jim-barber-trio-brecon-jazz-club-the-muse-arts-centre-brecon-10-03-2020

This remains the last live music event that I actually went to. Little did the audience know at the time that The Muse, and so many music venues across the UK, and indeed the world, would fall silent as a result of the still ongoing Covid – 19 pandemic.

Live jazz in Brecon may have been put on hold but promoters Lynne Gornall and Roger Cannon have continued to work as hard as ever and in August presented a hugely successful ‘Virtual’ Brecon Jazz Festival. This wholly online event was a truly international affair with musicians taking part from all over the UK as well as from the USA, France, Iran, Poland, Italy, Argentina, Spain and Uruguay. The 2020 ‘Virtual’ Brecon Jazz Festival has been covered comprehensively in a series of features on the Jazzmann.

There have been a number of ‘false dawns’ with regards to bringing live jazz back to The Muse in the form of Brecon Jazz Club’s monthly club events. It was originally hoped that tonight’s event would represent some kind of ‘re-opening’, albeit with a socially distanced audience, but a tightening of the Covid restrictions in Wales ensured that this was not to be.

Instead guitarist Nigel Price and his Quartet travelled to the venue to perform in front of the cameras for an international ‘virtual’ audience. The events saw Brecon Jazz Club again teaming up with Ratio Studios, from nearby Merthyr Tydfil, who filmed and recorded the performance. Ratio were also a key part of the success of the August Festival, with a number of locally based musicians having been filmed and recorded at Ratio’s HQ.

Also central to the Festival’s success were Vialma,  a French hosting and streaming company with a specialist interest in jazz, who were also involved in tonight’s presentation.

The word ‘indefatigable’ has often been applied to Lynne and Roger, but it just as easily relates to the tireless Nigel Price. Tonight’s show at The Muse had originally been intended to be the penultimate gig of a twenty nine date tour that Price had organised as soon as lockdown restrictions were eased over the summer. I would imagine a number of the October dates got played, but that the November ones were totally wiped out unless they went online. Many of them have been re-scheduled for the New Year, but Price and the quartet did manage to play a real live gig at Chapel Arts in Bath on Sunday, December 6th.

The project that Price has been attempting to tour is “Wes Re-imagined”, a collection of new Price arrangements of Wes Montgomery tunes that will be documented on an album release for Ubuntu Records in February 2021.

Former soldier Price was a relatively late comer to the ranks of professional jazz musicians but has wasted little time since. He was once a member of Hammond guru James Taylor’s long running JTQ before running his own organ based groups. Price also spent a lengthy tenure with the acid jazz outfit The Filthy Six. He has recorded with Van Morrison and with jazz vocalist Georgia Mancio and is a regular member of the Ronnie Scott’s house band.  His guitar influences include Montgomery, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Pat Martino and John McLaughlin. To date he has recorded eight albums as a leader as well as appearing as a sideman on more than fifty others.

Price is a candidate for the title of “the hardest working man in jazz”. His famously lengthy tours routinely cover every corner of the UK, indeed the current tour was originally intended to have comprised of sixty dates. Along the way he also single handedly rescued Swanage Jazz Festival and helped to revive the fortunes of Shepperton Jazz Club. Price is the subject of a fascinating interview in the current edition (December 2020 /  January 2021) of Jazzwise magazine, which gives a greater insight into his life and career.

Although I haven’t been to The Muse since March it felt good to see the inside of the venue again, even if only ‘virtually’. Nevertheless I missed meeting up with friends and the unique atmosphere of a real live gig - and it was very odd to be at The Muse with a cup of tea in my hand instead of a pint of local beer or cider!

As is traditional at Brecon Jazz Club events the performance was introduced by Lynne Gornall, who was careful thank all those who had assisted with the event, including BJC volunteer Sharon, Ruth at The Muse and, of course, Emily and Gavin from Ratio, who were filming and recording the event. She also acknowledged the financial support provided by Brecon Town Council plus the Welsh Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund.

Price’s premise for the “Wes Re-imagined” project is a simple one.
“I’ve basically taken a bunch of his tunes and wondered ‘what if Wes had thought about them in a different way’ “, he told Peter Vacher of Jazzwise.

The forthcoming album will feature the core trio of Stanley and Barford with Xenopoulos featuring on tenor on some tunes and Tony Kofi on alto on others.
One track will feature a string arrangement written by Callum Au.

Tonight’s performance kicked off with the Montgomery tune “Lila”, originally written to embrace a relaxed but swinging ‘West Coast’ vibe. “We’ve poured a bit of pepper on this one”, explained Price as he and his band invested the piece with an element of hard driving swing. Barford introduced the piece at the drums, with subsequent solos coming from Price on guitar, Xenopoulos on tenor and Stanley at the twin manual Hammond organ. Barford was recommended to Price by Stanley and the young drummer impressed with a series of vigorously brushed breaks. Price has compared Barford’s playing with that of the great American drummer Bill Stewart, who has worked with Pat Metheny and John Scofield among others.

Next Price and his colleagues re-invented the title track of Montgomery’s 1962 album “Far Wes” (also the source of “Lila”) as a jazz waltz.  Montgomery recorded the album in the company of his brothers, Buddy (piano) and Monk (bass), plus a number of other musicians, including tenor saxophonist Harold Land.
Price introduced the piece with a passage of typically elegant solo guitar before handing over to Xenopoulos, who delivered a surprisingly powerful tenor solo. Price then took up the reins again for a fluent solo incorporating slippery, single note bebop inspired melody lines combined with sophisticated chording. Finally we heard from Stanley, arguably the UK’s most in demand jazz organist.

Price dedicated Montgomery’s “Movin’ Along” to the memory of Liz MacLean, a great friend of Brecon Jazz.  Ushered in by Stanley’s virtuoso Hammond intro the piece was given a funk feel and featured fiery solos from Price, Xenopoulos and Stanley as the energy levels continued to build.

“Jingles” was re-imagined as a samba and was introduced by Barford at the drums. “Joel is going to show you what a samba sounds like”, Price had declared as he announced the tune. The quartet were in full stride by now, despite the absence of a live audience, with dazzling solos coming from Stanley, Xenopoulos and Price, plus a series of ebullient drum breaks from the consistently impressive Barford.

One of Montgomery’s most famous tunes, “So Do It”, originally recorded as an optimistic, up-tempo swinger was re-imagined as “a sultry bolero”. Here Barford demonstrated his subtlety with the brushes as he offered sympathetic support to soloists Price, Xenopoulos and Stanley.

Finally we heard another famous Montgomery composition, “Road Song”. Price also thanked all those who had helped to stage tonight’s event, and dedicated the piece to the band’s route home – the M4! Montgomery originally recorded the tune with organist Jimmy Smith and drummer Grady Tate as a kind of funky bossa, with Price and his colleagues re-imagining it here as “a swinging shuffle”. This was a gloriously high energy, swinging way to end the evening with Xenopoulos’ earthy tenor solo signalling the way, followed by fiery but fluent excursions from both Price and Stanley.

Roger Cannon delivered the final ‘thank yous’ and Price and his colleagues almost looked ready to deliver an encore. The crew had applauded enthusiastically throughout, and the presence of a live paying audience would definitely have prompted another number.

Nevertheless I had thoroughly enjoyed everything I had heard and seen. Price’s re-imaginings of Montgomery’s tunes had been colourful and vibrant and consistently interesting. The playing from all four musicians was superb throughout, and the soloing, even in the absence of an audience, sometimes quite inspired.  I was previously familiar with the playing of Price, Stanley and Xenopoulos, but Barford represented an exciting new discovery. The release of the “Wes Re-imagined” album will be very keenly anticipated.

On the technical side the sound quality was excellent throughout and Ratio and Vialma deserve praise for their production. In the main the visuals were some of the best that I have seen in this year of livestream performances. One of the benefits of watching music from home is the way that the cameras can zoom in to capture the kind of details that can’t always be fully appreciated at a gig. Aspiring guitarists would have loved watching Price’s hands up close, the lithe picking, the agile chording. Similarly Stanley’s dancing fingers on the twin manuals of the Hammond, plus his manipulation of the bars, an aspect of organ playing that audiences rarely get to see close up. Arguably more could have been made of his footwork on the instrument’s pedals, but I loved details such as the close up of the rotating vane within the Leslie speaker cabinet.

With their filming Emily and Gavin displayed a real feel for the music. My only quibble would be the occasional overlaying of images, an unnecessarily distracting and self consciously ‘arty’ indulgence that the music, and the otherwise exceptional coverage, didn’t really need. This minor cavil aside this was a top quality livestream featuring some terrific playing.

Let’s hope that we can all get back to ‘normal’ live gig going in 2021, but in the event of things remaining difficult for a while, as I fear they will, similar online events of this nature from Brecon Jazz Club would surely be appreciated by their loyal audience.

blog comments powered by Disqus