Review: Greg Cordez Quintet, Hen & Chicken

For such an experienced performer it was perhaps surprising that bass player Greg Cordez was so evidently nervous at the start of this gig. It showed in his terse awkwardness when he introduced the first tunes, and it was an interesting measure of things that these interludes became relaxed to the point of garrulousness by the end of the evening. But Greg was launching his debut self-written album Paper Cranes to an audience stuffed with Bristol’s jazz fraternity, so maybe his early hesitancy was understandable.

It was unnecessary, however, since the combination of the album’s interestingly varied tunes with the extremely stylish players in his band led to a great evening of fascinating contemporary jazz in which Cordez was ever present as both composer and musician. This was impressive because his band is a genuinely ‘all star’ line-up and each gave of their best. Perhaps the most distinguished contributions came from Jim Blomfield on piano, who seemed to have an affinity with the music as with his own compositions. His magisterial neo-classical solo in 8 minutes 23 seconds was perfectly poised, the complexity of ideas balanced by wry humour at the expense of the piano’s dead top note, while Schrödinger vs Cat allowed his proggish post-rock alter ego full rein. 

Jake Mc Murchie’s tenor sax playing was equally personable, especially on those compositions that pitched horns against rhythm section. One nice moment came in Brown Bear, with the sax gradually emerging from the tune’s orderly opening to lead it astray, establishing a chaotic energy that was suddenly swept away by an ethereal bass and piano duet ending. But Jake’s lyrical voice throughout the ballad Camilla Rose reminded how eloquently velvet his playing can also be. That tune also featured Nick Malcolm’s trumpet typically introducing left-field harmonic ideas and unexpected textures. These were even more adventurous on Last Things Last, a country-gospel funeral march of a tune that elicited a starkly honest trumpet solo completely devoid of schmalz. It was transfixing in its emotional intensity and his payout to 1000 Paper Cranes that ultimately fell into fractured silence had a similar intensity.

Even by his standards drummer Mark Whitlam had an eclectic night, content to lay an Indie-pop beat behind Cherry vs Desmoines yet commandeering Schrodinger vs Cat into a throbbing Afrobeat eruption and tossing breakbeats into Up Quark. But key to all of this was their collective sense of appropriateness in what was almost always an uncluttered sound: even during collective bursts of five-way freedom, as on Todd Sickafoose’s Blood Orange (a rare cover version), the players managed to combine dynamic assertion with overall balance. This improvisatory intelligence is what unites them as a band and, combined with Greg’s supply of melodic and structural ideas, it is what gives the Greg Cordez Quintet and their Paper Cranes album real strength.