Music / British jazz
Review: Loz Speyer’s FreeTrio/Greg Cordez Quartet, Fringe In The Round
The term ‘intimate venue’ can rarely be more appropriately applied than to the packed out back room at The Fringe for this opening gig of the monthly Fringe In The Round’s 2023 programme. Happily, however, the four musicians of Greg Cordez’ Quartet somehow found the space to play their opening set.
Steve Bamks (guitar), Jake McMurchie (sax), Greg Cordez (bass). (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
It’s been a while since bass player Greg has been seen performing his own music and he’d brought a few favourites from his last album, Magnolia, as well as four new pieces getting their debut airing. Opening with the slow-burning Front Crawl, guitarist Steve Banks built the theme with Jake McMurchie’s tenor sax, gradually stoked by Matt Brown’s increasingly emphatic drumming. It established Greg’s writing style: strongly lyrical melody lines, looping bass riffs and restrained dynamics – all ingredients that would run throughout the set. Figlock was especially impressive, the deep velvet bass guitar tone framing an increasingly emotive rising melody on sax while the drumming steadily boiled over.
Matt Brown (drums). (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
The new material reflected a more simplified approach – Greg explained he used to write ‘three page tunes’ but now was down to two pages – and inevitably there was something of a work-in-progress feel to them. The Great Unseen opened with almost indie-pop style before Jake unpicked the jaunty melody with hard-bop precision and Steve took it further down that road. Most successful was Pay Dirt, a neat guitar intro leading to a strong melodic theme and some nice sax/guitar counterpoint over house beat drums. The use of subtly minimal variations in a repetitive format gave the piece a nicely contemporary feel. They closed with This Joy I Know, which Greg described as a lullaby and indeed it was a laconic tune lazily played (in a good way) that proved to be a showcase for Matt Brown’s inventive drumming. Using a wide vocabulary of sparse sounds he built a really effective and impressive solo with the minimum of bombast.
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Loz Speyer (trumpet), Olly Blanchflower (bass). (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
Being just three of them FreeTrio had a little bit more room to set up but they soon filled the room with sound. Trumpeter Loz Speyer and bass player Olly Blanchflower had originally formed the trio with legendary improvising drummer Tony Marsh who sadly died a decade ago. Oddly, the gig at the Fringe saw the launch of that band’s debut CD, albeit with (the increasingly legendary) Mark Sanders on the drum stool. Their improvised set ran for some 45 minutes, starting with Loz’s assertive trumpet musing on a meandering theme that allowed Olly to find a place for the bass and Mark’s exploratory percussion to begin to sketch a groove of sorts.
Mark Sanders (drums). (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
From then on it was the kind of stream of collective consciousness that such encounters encourage, with occasional stand-out passages coalescing from the wayward flow of ideas. Perhaps it was my proximity, being sat within inches of the drum kit, but I was very aware of the percussionist and his dexterity at finding textures and sounds to match the atmospherics of the other players. During one three minute period I watched him deploy 6 different sticks as well as fists and fingertips to create a surprisingly delicate sonic tapestry, while at another time something approaching an Afro-Cuban rumba rhythm emerged. There was an interlude of bells when Loz put aside his horn for a while and the two exchanged tinny sounds and chimes.
Olly Blanchflower (bass), Mark Sanders (drums). (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
The pleasure, of course, was in following the conversation between the instruments as ideas were developed or abandoned and the assurance of these three players guaranteed the niceties of this. There was no grandstanding – contributions made allowed for interventions, spaces were created and there was always a sense of the whole sound being understood by all three of them. When they finally drew to a close there was a sense of enough having been said – for the time being, at least.
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