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Tuxedomoon - Purcell Room, Monday 19 Nov - London Jazz Festival

Although it ironically stood out as their leitmotif, time wasn’t on Tuxedomoon’s side last Monday night. The small Purcell Room struggled hard to accommodate 30 years of prolific, artistic collaborations, celebrated in the album Vapour Trails (11/2007). Seconds after the five ubiquitous, polyglot, multi-instrumentalist, San Francisco legends walked onstage, Peter Principle’s silent amp aborted the wild cheer of the eclectic audience.

45 minutes later, the band opened on the heavy, wired, uncanny calm of a Buddhist-tinged mantra over road-movie-themed slides, captured by Blaine L. Reininger (vocalist, violinist, guitarist). The second piece then liberated Tuxedomoon’s unequalled mastery at creating and orchestrating the unexpected. Steve Brown (clarinettist, saxophonist, vocalist) struck hypnotic, tribal rhythms at the piano and ranted: “no one writes these things down because there’s no time”; Reininger veered to organic, “hendrixtic”, whining effusions, symbiotically contrasting with trumpeter Luc van Lieshout’s delicately smothered, razor-sharp, refined Cool jazz motifs.

Likewise, the setting reflected their success at defying conventions and reordering chaos. The cluttered stage featured a grand piano, while winds and strings surrounded a table, covered with video artist Tommy Tadlock’s psychedelic toys and audiovisual paraphernalia, opposite a giant white screen in the background. After the hip-hop groove and Miles touch of ‘Still Small Voice’, Tadlock visually tackled the flight of time as he mimed a man running around, frantically looking at his watch with four masks on each side of his head. Simultaneously, behind Reininger’s violin’s Irish harmonies, Browne sang: “There’s no time to lose”.

The musical journey further flew across space and time from the edgy ‘Kubrick’ to a climactic closing brew of Persian-inspired vocal laments, Cool jazz motifs, and pulsating techno beats. Bringing chaos into harmony clearly defines Tuxedomoon’s signature. After Shakespeare, they may well be the Masters of discordia concors. The rest is just a matter of taste.

Aurore Mary

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Tuxedomoon - Purcell Room, Monday 19 Nov - London Jazz Festival

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Neil Cowley Trio – Cargo, London 2/4/08

Last night The Neil Cowley Trio launched their new album Loud…Louder…Stop! at trendy Shoreditch club Cargo, not usually the kind of venue you’d expect to find a piano trio playing. But then they aren’t your typical piano trio. As the audience files in there’s a building sense of excitement and by the time Cowley and Co. take to the stage the room is jammed full. “Aren’t you going to cheer us on?” Cowley quips wryly. This sets the tone for the evening to follow, music matching Cowley’s playful, fun and excitable personality.

Portico Quartet plus Basquiat Strings - Union Chapel, London Friday 22 February

Basquiat Strings take the starkness of modern classical music and wrap it around a subtly pervading jazz beat. But while they maintain the haunting quality of classical string music, they generate an atmosphere which is constantly disconcerting and pleasantly surprising.

Dave Liebman/Phil Robson Quartet, RNCM, 31 January 2008

With the raw expressionism of John Coltrane, the punchy ballistics of Michael Brecker, the harmonic invention of Wayne Shorter: saxophonist Dave Liebman tells the story of the modern jazz saxophone. Particularly memorable was his meditative rendition of Coltrane’s ‘India’. As engaging as any solo was his magnanimous stage presence; the hunched shoulders, the facial contortions and the limp. You could feel the blood and sweat of an artist truly committed to what he really believes is important.