Music / andy sheppard
Review: Andy Sheppard Quartet, St George’s
Of course he’s played there many times over the years but when Andy Sheppard told the St George’s audience that “It’s great to be back here in Bristol” there was a special piquancy to that well worn cliché. Naturally the hall was well packed to welcome back our former local superstar and, in turn, we would be rewarded with an early run through of his as-yet-unreleased new ECM album.
Seb Rochford (drums) and Eivind Aarset (guitar)
The quartet is the one that recorded Surrounded by Sea, Andy’s previous waxing, an impeccably compatible group of listening musicians that suits Andy’s compositional approach perfectly. The opening number (Andy ’s famously diffident stage manner meant we almost never learned the titles) was a case in point: a stately, wistful melody delivered on breathy tenor saxophone, underpinned by a soft-toned bass pulse while drummer Sebastian Rochford and guitar electronicist Eivind Aarset slowly wrapped it in delicate ambience. Their contribution was minimal but effective, as nicely judged as Michel Benita’s fluent bass, and the whole sound came together at once.
A highly effective contribution
The new music is a clear continuity from the previous album, if anything it was even more understated and restrained than that languid set. When there were solos each player delivered something elegant and stylish but completely free of bombast, often slipping back unobtrusively into the flow of the music like a film fade-out – and indeed there was something cinematic about the atmospheres being created and the development of the tunes. One number opened with a soulful and expressive bass intro that suddenly jump cut into a snappy, almost country and western song structure – it even had the notoriously abstract Aarset playing like a guitarist for most of it, sweeping major chords for Andy’s sax to dance over before suddenly opening out into a post-psychedelic onslaught of layered sustain, the Norwegian guitarist’s nimble fingers dancing around his table full of effects devices.
is needed now More than ever
Bebop blasting Andy Sheppard (sax) and Michel Benita (bass)
It’s clear this group has found its musical identity, hovering on the right side of the lounge door by virtue of very clever musicianship and a joyful sense of unity between the four players. It was only towards the end of the second set that the mask slightly slipped – intentionally – when the guitarist’s jagged and gymnastic electronic opening stirred Seb Rochford into a fractured non-groove of drumming to which the sax and bass responded with bursts of superfast Bebop cascades. The dissonant contrast of sounds served as a reminder of just what intense musical power lay behind the group’s understated performance and, symbolically, it was reined in by Andy’s swooping tenor sax introducing the melody of Looking For Ornette, the earworm track from Surrounded by Sea, making for a metaphorically lighter-waving finale.
There was an encore of course, with the distinctive four-note intro of the Beatles And I Love Her instantly recognisable, the tune respectfully elaborated into a gentle release. It was a fine demonstration of the art of closure, the music almost delivered in slow-motion, yet chock full of the kind of emotion that has always run through Andy’s work and which makes him the stand-out player he is widely acknowledged to be.
Andy Sheppard has made a downloadable app of a set of seven tunes based on birdsongs available for free for Apple IOS devices.
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