Jazz breaking news: Julian Joseph Big Band Cuts Quite A Dash At Ronnie Scott’s
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Julian Joseph All-Star Big Band has just completed a three-night run at Ronnie Scott’s and the short residency on Frith Street was significant for a number of reasons.
Chiefly, it was great to see a resurgent Steve Williamson within the high powered saxophone section and a returning David Jean-Baptiste from Germany in the equally accomplished reeds. It augurs well for Williamson's London Jazz Festival appearance next month on the same bill as A Waltz For Grace producer and mentor, the M-BASE innovator Steve Coleman.
The residency was also a chance to hear at first hand in optimum conditions Julian Joseph’s burgeoning repertoire for big band including new material ‘Mountain of Hope’ and most impressively, ‘The Fire Horse’, modernist in nature yet somehow of the now. Joseph in recent years has been concentrating on writing for opera with librettist Mike Phillips in their collaborations Bridgetower and Shadowball. Cleveland Watkiss, the lead male vocalist of both operas, joined the big band singing strong and evocatively from Bridgetower.
The big band itself, anchored around the longstanding Julian Joseph trio featuring the composer leading from the piano with bassist Mark Hodgson and drummer Mark Mondesir playing from original material that relies on no overall sectional dominance, its distinguishing and winning attribute. The big band operates as a single entity rather than say the horns, reeds, and rhythm section competing for attention with the horns gaining the bragging rights as is so often the case. Joseph has a signature style both in terms of his composing, the nearest point of comparison perhaps is the early-1990s iteration of the McCoy Tyner Big Band, and arranging (more Oliver Nelson than Maria Schneider; less Gunther Schuller than Quincy Jones). As a pianist he improvised best against trombone, and knew in writing for the orchestra how to place the dock leaf of Steve Williamson’s tenor saxophone as a remedy to the stinging nettle alto saxes of Nathaniel Facey and Peter King, the latter wittily dry within the section, while leaving the clarinets non-soloing space yet clearly there while the flute of Steve Rubie was given an early effective showing within the ensemble sections.
As usual at Ronnie’s Saturday night at the club features two houses, turned around a little after 10pm, and the ideal opening set to the first house was provided by the trio of artistic director pianist James Pearson, bassist Tim Thornton, and drummer Mark Fletcher (formerly with poet Don Paterson’s much missed band Lammas), with singer Polly Gibbons joining. Gibbons when she was a complete unknown was nominated for a BBC jazz award and has grown artistically since this early recognition. Gibbons has a very unmannered soulful voice, and excelled on the late Phoebe Snow’s ‘Something Real’. Fragile at times, but with great emotional control, and a voice slightly reminiscent of Betty Carter’s, she has the wonderful ability to get inside any particular song she chooses, no small feat. Pearson and Thornton have a good thing going, channelling the softs and louds with Pearson’s recalibrated Oscar Peterson-isms and touches of his own invention superb as ever. Worth getting there early for, on an auspicious evening.
– Stephen Graham