Music / deep whole trio
The Deep Whole Trio (Fringe @ Mall, Thur 27)
Earlier this autumn The Fringe Jazz session moved around the corner to capacious basement of The Mall pub. It was a good move – the popularity of their weekly jazz slot had outgrown the bijou little theatre behind The Fringe and too many people were being turned away that might have paid for a ticket. The new room is probably twice as big and permitted a leisurely spacing of the reverential crowd that had gathered to see Paul Dunmall (sax/pipes), Paul Rogers (bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) spend an evening making it up as they went along.
It was a discerning crowd that wasn’t about to be disappointed: this threesome are pretty much at the top of the improvised music world in Europe and beyond. Within seconds the music had gathered momentum, Rogers crouched around his exotic 8-stringed lute-shaped bass while Dunmall coaxed a fluid linear structure from his full-toned tenor sax and Sanders began to whip up a storm with the kit. After about twenty minutes it was sounding chaotic with no discernible beat or structure and then, miraculously, Dunmall found the melodic key to the disorder and it suddenly resolved into a plateau. At this point Rogers began an awesome bass solo, somehow combining the tight repetitions of Handel with a Hendrix-like blues inflection – perhaps a reference to the address in London shared by both composing geniuses – establishing a mechanical stability blown apart by saxophone plosives and scattershot drumming.
It was all beautifully timed and balanced, the amazing achievement of three such strong musical personalities being themselves without getting in each other’s way. New ideas flowed into the music constantly but no-one seemed flustered, and Dunmall’s sax often seemed to be effortlessly able to surf on the wave of roiling drums and jaywalking bass. Possibly the only jarring note(s) came from Dunmall’s use of customised bagpipes, a dissonant wailing interlude that didn’t seem to have a place in this otherwise integrated sound. His electronic bagpipe substitute was similarly off-kilter – an amusing novelty not contributing much to the music. But overall this was excellent music, rich in texture and melodic invention and a fitting statement of the health of improvised music today.
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