Music / acid jazz
Review: Tongue Fu/The Big Swing, Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival
You pays your money, you takes your choice … Friday night at the BIJBF shrewdly pitches a three-way decision between jazz poetry, 80s acid jazz and swing dance – hopefully tapping into three different demographics, no doubt. I managed two out of three, which meant giving Carleen Anderson and Incognito’s O2 Academy set a miss (I heard good things later) and heading for the Folk House and Tongue Fu which reliably produced a fine cabaret evening of slam poetry and improvised music. The shtick is simple: poets give the three-piece band a conceptual idea of the music they want (“Think air, turning into snow … and then thawing”) and within seconds the unrehearsed performance begins.
Chris Redmond and Amy Leon engage in some amiable Tongue Fu
Compere Chris Redmond’s paean to smooth jazz star Kenny G was a guaranteed crowd pleaser – “John Coltrane knew nothing … I want my jazz Starbucked” – with a soundtrack that went from classy piano trio to increasingly banal clichés. It was when Amy Leon added wordless vocals for a longer Ginsbergesque ranting poem that something special happened, a human touch added to fluent electrojazz that set the words to rights. A similar moment of perfection happened in Rebecca Tantony’s Classroom of Survivors (“Think inspirational girls”) when Arthur Lea’s gospel-haunted piano built into a Glass like repetition as she intoned the names of the refugee pupils in her poetry workshop. Riaan Vosloo’s bass and Pat Davey on drums caught the mood and carefully enhanced it and a spine-tingling tension was established.
Elvis McGonagle – subtle he isn’t
No question of subtlety from Elvis McGonagall, of course, brash as his tartan jacket from the outset with Brexit means Breckshit (“Make it patriotic and traitorous at the same time”). There was righteous anger in the music for Ghost Towers In The Sky, initially an eerie electronic abstraction with Riaan and Arthur both on synths and Pat following the words’ intensity to let a beat slowly establish itself. It coalesced as well as any careful composition and the poet’s pleasure was clear to see.
is needed now More than ever
But despite all that good stuff it was headliner Amy Leon that stole the show, not least because her own wordflow had itself a jazz-like quality of surprise and invention, as though she was making up language as well as verse. And she sings, her rich voice capable of raw growl and floating purity in the space of a bar. Throughout her riveting set she and the band were as one, a perfected flow of verbal and musical imagery that melted away like jazz itself. You had to be there and a rapt audience was very glad it was.
Jonny Bruce does Harry James to perfection
Meanwhile, over at the Colston Hall things were getting pretty sweaty with a dance floor of people who’d raided their grandparents wardrobe to conjure up the swing era. The look matched the Bruce/Ilett Big Band’s authentic take on classic Harry James and other great bands of the 40s, with Jonny Bruce evocatively catching the late Mr James trumpet style on Melancholy Rhapsody over the brass section’s collective swooning. The bandstand was a veritable who’s who of the Bristol jazz scene and it’s always impressive to see how fiery players like Nick Malcolm and Ben Waghorn smooth themselves down for these occasions.
Katya Gorrie swings like Anita O’Day
No shortage of crooning vocalists, of course, with Denny Ilett’s reliable Sinatra impression giving I’ve Got You Under My Skin the treatment and Katya Gorrie reviving the Anita O’Day classic Let Me Off Uptown with Jonny standing in for Roy Eldridge and drummer Julie Saury doing a fair impression of Gene Krupa. It all went down well with the dancers, of course, though they did seem to have a bit more room to express themselves than in previous years. Maybe the swing dance thing has levelled out now?
Afterwards it was great to see many of the big band members turn up and play at the jam session over the road in Bambalan. Along with the free programme in the Colston Hall Foyer this is one of the festival’s success stories – a well-organised chance for a nice mix of professionals and amateur musicians to play around with standards to an appreciative audience. They’ll be there again tomorrow – and so will I.
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