Review: Cheltenham Jazz Festival, various venues

God it was hot. One of the joys of Cheltenham Jazz Festival is that it is like a real festival i.e. mostly in a field with stalls and marquees. Factor (50?) in blistering sunlight, however, and it all gets a bit torrid: this is an English Mayday holiday – so who knew? Full marks to the Jazz Arena for air conditioning and the Town Hall stonework for keeping out the heat. Needless to say that, inside those ‘various venues’, there was oodles of cool as well as some sizzling moments, with possibly the most classically ‘jazz’ set coming from the impeccable Christian McBride and his eponymous Big Band. This 17-strong bunch of New Yorkers managed to capture both the richness of classic swing-era arrangements (as in the Melissa Walker-fronted Taste of Honey with its back-to-Basie punch) and the slam dunk funk of George Duke’s Black Messiah (pt II). The latter drew some fine McCoy Tyner-style chords from pianist Xavier Davis while drummer Quincy Phillips’ grin lit the room. Mr McBride, meanwhile, never broke sweat while pushing the whole thing through on bass. That man has real cool.

ENEMY’s James Maddren, Kit Downes and Petter Eldh (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

Away from the main site the Parabola Theatre generally houses the more experimental and forward looking music to the point of almost being a festival-within-a-festival. Friday night’s programme, opened by remarkable Swiss vocalist Lucia Cadotsch’s Speak Low trio, was a case in point. The band ignored the usual deference of musicians to singer, defiantly ploughing their own respective furrows as she delivered classics like Billie Holiday’s Don’t Explain or the Kurt Weill number that gave the band its name. Undistracted, she swayed and moved to some internal soundtrack while saxophonist Otis Sandsjö and bass player Petter Eldh expanded the music around her, with Otis impressively circular breathing throughout to deliver his stream of consciousness. Eldh returned immediately with Kit Downes’ ENEMY trio for some typically pyrotechnic stuff, drummer James Maddren’s rattling snapping percussion and Kit’s ever-evolving piano especially spectacular on the intense architecture of Faster Than Light. That double bill was then ‘recomposed’ electronically by Iain Chambers and Dan Nicholls, artfully bringing together the separate elements of the two bands into a rhythmic framework that genuinely found something fresh as a result.

Elliot Galvin, Conor Chapman, Corrie Dick and Laura Jurd – Dinosaur. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

Something about the bright optimism of trumpeter Laura Jurd (whose band Dinosaur, followed that remix) has brought a sunny energy into the jazz world and new album Wonder Trail is another shot in the arm. Songs like Set Free and And Still We Wonder took Laura’s Miles-inspired trumpet lines into a 60s Canterbury Sound (albeit with drum’n’bass undertones), while Old Times Sake let the pouncing Elliot Galvin subvert 80s synth-pop keyboard games. It was playful music skilfully rendered by a group of four such distinct personalities they almost seem destined for a Monkees-Style TV sit-com.

Kadri Voorand – quite a find. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

Even more playful, the remarkable Estonian Kadri Voorand’s combination of vocal exuberance, deft electronics and heightened sense of the theatrical was another revelation. So self-willed was the flow of numbers like Armupurjus and You Took A Girl, Got A Woman it was impressive that her trio of musicians – eyes glued to her throughout – were able to so tightly play their parts around her tumultuous scat and harmonised outbursts. She was quite a find, and her set was followed by the Roller Trio – or maybe I should say ‘a Roller Trio’ as the arrival of guitarist Chris Sharkey in place of Luke Wynter marked their return after a few years hiatus with a new, more electronic sound but the same raw energy that nearly won them the Mercury Prize back in 2012. The crashing cycles of new track Third Person typified this, Sharkey’s bass and samples colouring and driving a Krautrock groove against acoustic cymbals and a soprano sax motif.

Jim Black – on fine form. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

Musically, drummer Jim Black’s quartet Malamute had much to offer and the man himself was on fine form combining kit drumming with massaging the extraordinary touch sensitive Roli Seabord sound machine. What let things down was the incongruity of Óskar Gudjónsson’s understated saxophone, a diffident element so at odds with the brashness of everything else it was hard to understand his involvement with the project. By direct comparison saxophonist Donny McCaslin led his similarly constructed quartet very much from the front, unleashing a compelling rock-referencing sound that at times suggested the Velvet Undergound doing EDM with drummer Zach Danziger tirelessly smashing out superfast Drum & Bass through an electronic barrage. Great stuff.

Kamasi Washington – powerfully old-fashioned. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

And the big hitters? Well for a rammed Big Top tent it was Kamasi Washington – announced on stage as the ‘greatest jazz musician in the world’ – but while there was undeniably something about the power of his performance the music is very old-fashioned and undemanding. At its best the man himself delivered a couple of good solos, notably on Truth and the climactic The Rhythm Changes with its sleazy groove and Patrice Quinn’s combination of fiercely defiant vocals and expressive contemporary dance, and there’s lots of skill in the band but the unrelenting nature of it allows for little in the way of subtlety.

The ambient Andy Sheppard. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

For subtlety personified I looked to two Town Hall acts that promised much. With Romaria a new ECM release the Andy Sheppard Quartet extended the ambience of previous recordings, and, performed live, elegant ballads like All Becomes Again became a showcase for Andy’s distinctive saxophone ‘voice’ in the context of gently shaped drums and tasteful electronic textures. There was a new rockiness, however, in They Came From The North, possible a nod towards guitarist Eivind Aarset‘s distant past in Norwegian metal bands, and it gave Seb Rochford the chance for a rare flurry of ‘big’ drumming in the jazz-rock style before things subsided into the ambience again.

Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan. (Pic. Tim Dickeson)

Andy’s set was only upstaged for subtlety – an interesting paradox – by the great Bill Frisell in his duo with bass player Thomas Morgan. The pair came on stage, picked up their instruments and began to play an almost unbroken and unannounced sequence of standards and popular tunes. For over an hour the two players played with the music, weaving between them melodic hints, harmonic variations and rhythmic games, dancing on a musical tightrope with seamless coordination, apparently oblivious to the packed audience beneath them. Their mutual understanding was only exceeded by their grasp of the music and ability to explore it in real time, making it a masterclass in the essence of jazz that was a real privilege to witness and yet another memorable Cheltenham Jazz Festival moment..