Romarna Campbell Trio, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 26/03/2026

Romarna Campbell – drums, compositions, Mutale Chashi – six string electric bass, Andy Bunting – keyboard

MSH’s latest event saw the long awaited performance of the Romarna Campbell Trio. The drummer / composer was first due to visit in February 2025 as part of MSH’s hugely successful Upbeat! series featuring drummer led bands. Unable to perform herself due to scheduling clashes Campbell sent along her young protegee Miranda Radford, whose quintet gave an excellent performance, which is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/miranda-radford-quartet-music-spoken-here-the-marrs-bar-worcester-27-02-2025

Born in Birmingham Campbell now divides here time between London and Berlin but still describes herself as a “Proud Brummie”. She began playing the drums at the age of eight and a year later joined The Notebenders, the Birmingham based youth band run by the late, great saxophonist Andy Hamilton (1918 – 2012). Campbell began performing in public at an early age and remained with The Notebenders for a number of years before going on to study on the Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire.

It’s tempting to think of The Notebenders as the Birmingham equivalent to London’s Tomorrow’s Warriors and it was at a memorial event for Hamilton in Birmingham that Campbell first met Gary Crosby,  joint head of the Tomorrow’s Warriors organisation, who invited Campbell to join the TW scheme. Campbell became a part of the all female Tomorrow’s Warriors Frontline and is still involved with the organisation as a mentor to the current crop of young musicians. The young octet Ankora, who recently delivered such an impressive performance at MSH first came together under the tutelage of Campbell in her capacity as a Tomorrow’s Warriors Music Leader. My review of the Ankora performance, which featured Miranda Radford at the drums, can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/ankora-music-spoken-here-the-marrs-bar-worcester-12-02-2026

In 2017 Campbell launched a successful GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to allow her to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The Jazzmann is pleased to have assisted in a very small capacity by helping to publicise the campaign.

At Berklee Campbell’s drum tutors included Terri Lyne Carrington, Ralph Peterson, Billy Kilson, Jack DeJohnette, Omar Hakim and Neal Smith while other mentors included trumpeter Terence Blanchard.

It was the late, great Ralph Peterson (1962 – 2021) who encouraged Campbell as a composer and arranger and she clearly still has a lot of respect and affection for him. Campbell celebrated her twenty fifth birthday during the pandemic, by which time she had returned to the UK. Nevertheless it was Peterson’s influence that inspired her to write “25 Songs For My 25th Birthday”. The fruits of these labours, all twenty five of them, are available in digital form via Campbell’s Bandcamp page;
https://romarnacampbell.bandcamp.com/

During the lockdown period she was also commissioned by Birmingham Conservatoire to write a piece commemorating the life of George Floyd, the man murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. The music, which was released as a single under the title “Inherently Political” was recorded remotely by a band including Campbell’s former TW Frontline colleague saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi.

More recently Campbell has been commissioned by Birmingham Opera to write her first “mini opera”. She has also written the jazz big band suite “Bloom”, which was premiered by the Tomorrow’s Warriors Big Band” in 2025.

Campbell has also composed for theatre productions, including the National Youth Theatre’s ‘The Ancestors’, the 2023 Bush Theatre production ‘Sleepova’, and “Black Power Desk”, a 2025 production by Brixton House.

In addition to leading her own projects the in demand Campbell is currently working with multi-reeds player and composer Courtney Pine, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Clementine and with the Swedish art pop musician Fever Ray. She has also toured with the Nu Civilisation Orchestra.

Tonight was the first time that I had seen Campbell perform for a number of years. During her student days at Birmingham she was rather ‘taken under the wing’ of Brecon Jazz Club and I recall enjoying seeing her perform at Festival and Club dates in Brecon in bands led by pianists Geoff Eales (2016) and Philip Clouts (2017). Both of these shows are reviewed elsewhere on this site as is a 2017 EFG London Jazz Festival by Campbell’s own group Blan(C)anvas at the Iklectik venue in Waterloo, this forming part of a wider Jazz NewBlood showcase. It was good to catch up with Romarna again after all this time and to pass on the regards of Lynne Gornall and Roger Cannon of Brecon Jazz Club.

Tonight’s performance featured a suite of new music written by Campbell for her trio featuring bassist Mutale Chashi and keyboard player Andy Bunting, a stalwart of the Birmingham jazz scene and one of her tutors during her Notebenders days. Bunting was ‘depping’ for Campbell’s regular keyboard player Luke Bacchus, who in turn succeeded Cenk Essen. The trio of Campbell, Chashi and Bacchus actually recorded this music in November 2025 and the project is now at the mixing stage with Campbell hoping to release the finished album later in 2026. Amazingly tonight was Bunting’s first gig with the band and Campbell admitted that she wasn’t quite sure exactly what he would bring to the music. Bunting certainly fully ‘bought in’ to the project, playing with total commitment and really attacking the keyboard as he delivered some feverishly inventive solos.

Given that this was a drum led ensemble it wasn’t surprising to find that the trio was a highly rhythmic unit, the music often groove based but never getting stuck in a rut, with Campbell’s intelligent and sophisticated writing providing many rhythmic and harmonic twists and turns.

This was no conventional ‘piano trio’ with Bunting at his Nord Stage keyboard deploying a variety of keyboard sounds – electric piano, synthesiser and organ - but never switching to the acoustic piano setting. This, combined with the sound of Chashi’s electric bass, helped to create a sound more rooted in fusion, funk, soul and hip hop than in orthodox bebop or straight-ahead jazz.

Opener “Upon Reflection” developed out of Bunting’s simple pedal point keyboard motif with Campbell’s drums and cymbal and Chashi’s six string electric bass coalescing around it, the interlocking rhythms imparting the music with a hypnotic quality. Gradually the music began to evolve further, gathering momentum as it did so with Bunting really attacking the keyboard and utilising a range of sounds, predominately electric piano, during the course of a feverish solo fuelled by Chashi’s fluid bass lines and Campbell’s increasingly dynamic drumming, a good balance between power and precision. The leader then enjoyed her own feature, underscored by the sounds of organ and electric bass.

“Berlin”, presumably named for one of Campbell’s current ‘home cities’ featured interactive grooves with Campbell’s own playing suggesting something of a hip hop influence. Bunting’s solo featured a dirty ‘Rhodes’ sound, but elsewhere his synth textures suggested an implied nod to Berlin era David Bowie. We also enjoyed a bass feature from Chashi, a musician who has also worked with singer Jorja Smith and with the band Kokoroko.

After the two energetic, groove heavy openers Campbell cooled things down a little by taking up the brushes for the first time at the start of a heavily disguised and highly imaginative fusion style transformation of the jazz standard “Skylark”, written by Hoagy Carmichael. It took me quite a while to recognise it, I can tell you. Gradually the momentum of the piece began to build, with Campbell switching to sticks. Bunting’s keyboard solo was similarly slow burning, quiet at first, but slowly growing in terms of intensity. Chashi’s liquidly melodic bass solo featured some impressive note bending techniques, at one point shadowed by Bunting’s keys only as Campbell temporarily sat back, eventually taking up the brushes again as Chashi continued to demonstrate an admirable dexterity. A second electric piano excursion from Bunting then saw Campbell switching to sticks once more. An intelligent and thoroughly spellbinding adaptation.

An excellent first set concluded with “Breathe Part One”, which was ushered in by an extended, but totally compelling,  passage of unaccompanied bass from Chashi that augmented his virtuoso playing with echo effects and live looping techniques, with Chashi also manipulating his sound via a floor mounted effects unit. Sometimes strumming the bass with his thumb he often deployed a guitar like sound, slightly reminiscent of the great Steve Swallow, but also highly contemporary. Eventually he began to establish a groove that saw the addition of Campbell’s mallets on cymbals and toms and Bunting’s electric piano. Once again the momentum of the music began to build, with Campbell graduating to sticks as the music began to take on something of an anthemic quality. Eventually the piece concluded in the same way as it began in a blizzard of electronic bass effects.

The second set began as a continuation of the first with “Breathe Part Two”, this time presaged with a lengthy passage of unaccompanied keyboards. Throughout the evening it was noticeable that Campbell’s drum features were neatly structured into the compositions, representing part of the fabric of the music rather than coming across as clearly signposted ‘drum solos’. This was very much the case here as the leader subtly succeeded Bunting.

The jaunty “Crashing Out” featured some of the trio’s most exuberant playing of the evening, a rhythmically vibrant piece fuelled by Chashi’s springy bass lines and the leader’s crisp drumming, with Bunting and Campbell again impressing as soloists.

Again occupying the ‘number three slot’ this set’s quieter number “Lego Flowers and Peace” lowered the temperature, with Chashi delivering another liquidly lyrical electric bass solo prior to features for both Bunting and Campbell as the momentum gradually began to grow.

The performance concluded with “In Hindsight”, introduced by the composer / leader at the drums, following on neatly from the bass / keyboard solo intros and thus emphasising the semi-conceptual nature of the project, something perhaps also reflected in the tune title. Eventually the piece began to develop an anthemic song like structure, punctuated by funk like episodes.  This combination acted as the vehicle for Bunting’s fiery keyboard soloing and the powerful interaction between all the members of the trio, culminating in Campbell’s virtuoso drum feature.

The long wait to see the Campbell trio had been well worth it with the Worcester audience giving the musicians a highly enthusiastic reception. Campbell’s compositions had been consistently intriguing, touching on many musical bases, and the standard of the playing was excellent throughout, with the skills of the two core players augmented by a superb contribution from the experienced Bunting.

My thanks again to Romarna for speaking with me after the show and for clarifying the set list. Another excellent MSH night at The Marr’s Bar and on the evidence of tonight’s performance the eventual release of the album will be very keenly anticipated.

 

 

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