Music / Jazz
Review: Bill Laurance, The Lantern
So Bill Laurance may be keyboard player for Texas-born and New York bred jazz sensation Snarky Puppy but it turns out he’s a Londoner who cut his musical teeth in Leeds: who knew? Probably most of the crowd actually, and they also knew that the Bill Laurance Trio’s ebullient (and gurning) bass player Michael League was actually the all-American main man behind said big band while drummer Robert ’Sput’ Searight is also a key member.
For this European tour they’re augmented by a string trio and French horn player, allowing them to recreate the cinematic funk soundscapes of Flint and Swift, Laurance’s two solo project CDs. From the outset it’s clear that this is going to be easy music, with no sharp dynamics, harmonic surprises or fancy key signatures. Ringed by electronic keyboards while seated at a grand piano, Laurance’s reference point are clearly rooted as much in dance music as in jazz, and while echoes of Esbjörn Svensson or Neil Cowley might come through so did hints of Jan Hammer or Bruce Hornsby. An early number even featured Vocoder choruses straight off an Ibiza dance anthem.
But there was much more to his music than that would suggest, and December in New York had an almost classical insistence, the rippling arpeggios (including superb precision bass from League) an homage to Philip Glass, and The Good Things out-plussed the Bad Plus for its exploration of internal rhythm (and, again, a searing blast of heavily sustained bass). The bubbling Red Sand recalled Terry Riley’s Rainbow in Curved Air, with Laurance deploying the fluid possibilities of the Roli Seaboard (“I think it’s the future!”) to maximum effect alongside Kate Christie’s eloquent French horn, a distinctive voice not often heard in jazz.
The enthusiastic audience was caught from the earliest opportunity, and while they remained fairly static despite Sput Searight’s hard-hitting breakbeat drums they whooped each solo and roared at the end. But for all their vocal energy the careful restraint of the composition never really sparked a fire, the sense being more like watching a riveting recording studio session than a live performance. Top quality musical entertainment, naturally, and a thoroughly decent chap, but for me (and I’ll admit a very small minority) a tad disengaged.
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