Music / Jazz
Bristol’s week in jazz, October 15-21 2018
So – heads up to the Canteen this week for a hat trick of spangly jazz temptations and a super shout out to The Fleece for snagging a world-class saxophone legend to their stage.
And jazz-minded grooves will be rocking The Thekla too…
The Fleece doesn’t often do jazz, but when they do it’s usually something special. Recent visitors have included Mammal Hands and Too Many Zooz and back in the day Courtney Pine often included it in his touring schedule.
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However, this week’s visit from the mighty David Murray is something special: a founder member of the great World Saxophone Quartet in the 70s, Murray’s subsequent discography is a long scroll downscreen with names like Pharaoh Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and James Blood Ulmer flickering by.
An early pioneer of circular breathing, his technical fluency is astonishing and his influences eclectic. This tour features slam poet Saul Williams with whom Murray recorded this year’s Blues for Memo album.
The Canteen, by contrast, regularly features jazz in its programmes, including top names from UK and beyond.
This week’s trio of gigs is a particularly fine one however, including Swiss post-rockers ( The Great Harry Hillman Tuesday 16), Bristolian electro-experimentalism ( The Defective Comet Wednesday 17) and fiery contemporary UK jazz rock (Strobes Thursday 18).
Named after an obscure athlete The Great Harry Hillman make music that is both definitively quirky and clever, deftly wrapped in straight-faced surrealism. Formed as a spin-off of the Gas Giants, The Defective Comet duo of Ross Stanley and Tony Orrell make improvised electro-acoustic soundscapes and grooving dance music with confidence and skill.
And the Strobes… well, they’re an electric onslaught of synths, guitar and drums whose musical ideas almost come at you faster than you can process.
So – who’s making waves at The Thekla then? That’ll be Invisible Orchestra (Friday 19), a brash 16-strong big band with a reputation for blasting through funk, jazz, Afrobeat and Balkan numbers with great arrangements and slick solo playing.
Similarly grooving music will feature on shore at The Forge on the same night when nine-piece jazz funk band Wasabi get the party started there, while Hammond-driven jazz rockers Groovelator will be at No. 1 Harbourside the following night (Saturday 20).
Earlier this year local bass player Greg Cordez launched a new US-recorded album Last Things Last – a fine collection of melodic post-rock anthems, which his UK Greg Cordez Quintet have definitely made their own.
They will be this week’s guests at the Bristol Fringe (Wednesday 17), and then quintet members Greg, Jake McMurchie and Matt Brown will reappear the following night at Future Inn (Thursday 18) in Sefrial, saxophonist Sophie Stockham’s five-piece contemporary jazz outfit (completed by guitarist Joe Wilkins) whose original rock influenced music has a measured spaciness.
This summer successful film and TV music composer Dave Jones (Bebop Club, Friday 19) took himself and his keyboards out of the studio for a series of successful jazz gigs that now sees him arrive in Bristol.
The pianist brings his regular bass player (the excellent Ashley-John Long) for a quartet session with Ben Waghorn’s sax and Andy Hague on drums.
And finally… a miscellany of interesting possibilities to sprinkle over the week’s jazz cupcake starting with looping electronic experimentalist Ava (Crofter’s Rights, Wednesday 17), Icelandic Theremin virtuoso Hekla (The Cube, Tuesday 16) and US jazz drummer Steve Lyman guesting with Waldo’s Gift (Gallimaufry, Wednesday 17).
Steve was a long-time sideman to singer Jose James and is noted for his understanding of complex rhythms – he’s even written a book called A New Approach to Odd Times.
Aforementioned drummer Matt Brown is no stranger to esoteric rhythms, either, but the fully improvised music of Modulus III generally builds around massive electro-prog grooves that reliably pack out Leftfield (Saturday 20).
And it’s good to see Exchange main-man and all round Bristol musical legend Paul Horlick aka Fat Paul finally getting top billing at this week’s Improv’s Greatest Hit night (Old England, Thursday 18) for a set of unpredictable electronic spontaneity.
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