A time to savour all that rich jazz

Mar 31 2008 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

The Sage hosted the Gateshead International Jazz Festival at the weekend. Paul Loraine was there.

MY neck is sore. Too much jazz in a weekend will do that to you. Bopping along involuntarily is the sign of a good gig and there were plenty this weekend at The Gateshead International Jazz Festival.

It was very much youth against experience on night one.

In Hall One, band leader John Dankworth and his wife, singer Cleo Laine, entertained a sell-out crowd most tactfully described as mature. Admittedly I was barely in Hall One for half an hour but Dankworth doesn’t take long to cast a spell with his personality as much as with his playing.

Of the little I heard, the big band was predictably tight and the soloists – Dankworth included – each had their own distinctive vocabulary.

In the more intimate setting of Hall Two a similarly packed crowd were treated to a night with legendary jazz label Blue Note.

First up were the Dylan Howe Quintet boasting some top class British players. Drummer Howe led the group through a selection of tunes played by some of the many Blue Note greats.

Howe’s playing combined a wonderful feel for dynamics – when to retreat and play more sparsely – and impressive rhythmic invention.

Indeed, these qualities were shared with the other members of the rhythm section who both shone as soloists.

And then there was The Robert Glasper Trio – my personal highlight of the weekend.

Glasper, along with bassist Alan Hampton and drummer Chris Dave served up something truly special.

Chord changes that made you shiver, driving grooves, jaw-dropping virtuosity and the best selection of hats over the course of the festival.

First, I feel I should make mention of Dave, whose innovative methods (at times he used two sticks in one hand on the hi hat) and impeccable funk feel had me reaching for the neck brace.

His grooves were so arresting as to change the dynamic of the traditional piano trio.

There were all kinds of music feeding into the sound, with Dave passing through drum and bass, funk and hard bop. There was a playfulness to the performance – particularly from the ever-smiling Dave whereby Glasper would land on a riff or a sequence of chords and the trio would latch on to it.

Glasper’s compositions and feel for harmony were, as you find in good hip-hop, pleasing enough to the ear to bear repetition. A fusion of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage and Radiohead’s Everything in its right Place was a perfect example of everything that was right with this gig.

The interpretation, both in terms of how time signatures and harmonies shifted, was an intelligent one.

Glasper also has a liking for extended drifting chord progressions and the quality of his ear for harmony is perhaps the most striking thing about him.

Saturday night offered up something different again. Hall Two was the venue for the acclaimed Acoustic Ladyland supported by Fulborn Teversham, Fraud and DJ Dave Guy. Their music has been called many things – punk jazz, post jazz – but what can be said is whatever it is acts as a shot in the arm. And last night the festival came to an end with a band for the future, Empirical, supporting one of the biggest names in jazz to have graced The Sage, John Scofield.

Versions of House of the Rising Sun and Can’t Get No Satisfaction showed Scofield on top form.

As you’d expect from someone of his calibre, the arrangements were always tailored perfectly to his playing and perhaps the only disappointment was that he wasn’t playing to a packed house.

However, this was a weekend to savour and one infinitely richer than I have been able to sum up here.