Number Seventy News

A venue new to me in Leeds is Seven, up on the Harrogate Road in Chapel Allerton - quite a nice space, set out this time in a mixture of raked seats and cafe style tables at the front. The attraction was the Christian Wallumrod Ensemble in acoustic mode - him on piano , Nils Okland on Hardanger fiddle and viola d’amore, Arve Henrikson on Trumpet, and Per Oddvar Johansen on percussion. (The last, by the way, is a blond giant of a man - one can imagine him storming up the beach at Lindisfarne waving a broadsword, terrifying monks - apologies for stereotyping). A lot of what they do is quite delicate and was just right for a small venue. They make some lovely sounds - sometimes quite hypnotic, building up a piece slowly and carefully. I like the Norse expansiveness of it all. 3 long pieces in each set, and a short encore. A real delight.

The Wales Theatre Company did thisat the Lyceum in Sheffield.  The Wales bit means that some of the minor parts had Welsh accents - it wasn’t like Northern Broadsides where everybody has to talk Yorkshire.  This was Romeo and Juliet out of West Side Story, rather than the other way round.  The capulets were a leather gang, the Montagues not.  The fight scenes were good- more like dances - and Mercutio absolutely baffled Tybalt by barely taking the conflict seriously.  Juliet is always a difficult part - usually a bit screechy - and this was a little. Overall I enjoyed the edgy gang-culture feel - mummy Capulet was a convincing moll - and the lads had the aimlessness of youth. Friar Laurence more powerful than usual - a stronger figure. The ending was bizarre - the whole explanation bit after the deaths in the tomb was omitted - which doesn’t really apportion any responsibility. A very strange decision.

Maybe Empirical can rehabilitate the vibraphone in my affections, though interestingly, it’s not part of their usual line-up.  I didn’t catch the name of the vibraphone player but he was really good.  Otherwise the group consisted for this gig of alto sax, bass, and drums.  They were doing almost entirely Eric Dolphy material in advance of recording their next CD.  Of course, as a dabbler on the Nordic fringes of jazz, for the most part, I’d never heard of Dolphy, but apparently he used to play with Coltrane and Mingus.  I liked Empirical - they were quite engaging, had a sense of humour in their playing and were clearly enjoying themselves performing for us.   

An exhibition of personal WW1 memorabilia at the Imperial War Museum (surrounded by traffic just south of the river, beyond Waterloo).  Very well laid out and displayed and absolutely fascinating. Just the right mix of text and artefacts, photos etc.  And proper recognition of women and ethnic minorities who served, and of those who stayed at home.  Some very poignant and moving stuff - the last letters of men to their wives and children, written in case they should die; the telegrams which announced a death; the accounts of the mothers, sisters, sweethearts who received them. 1 in 10 of men between 18 (I think) and 45 from the UK were killed or seriously wounded ( I must check that, may have misremembered) but a huge number. No wonder Edinburgh in the years after WW2 was full of elderly spinsters and widows.

Also a gallery of Holocaust paintings - quite appalling.

Which actually, I didn’t on this trip to London, preferring to use my free bus pass and enjoy the superior views.  But the special poster exhibition at the London Transport Museum (extremely well refurbished since I was there last) was a nostalgic joy.  The history of the use of imaginative posters to encourage travel by train, tube and bus was laid out, with useful discussion on technique. Some less successful were included - they weren’t all crowd pullers but their range and variety was quite astonishing, even to someone like me who had been used to seeing them on subway walls. Most of the artists had got the message to keep it simple - not a lot of text, but a simple few word text.  Eternally grateful to Frank Pick who commissioned all the early works especially for LT

It’s something of a confession to say I’d never been to the Courtauld gallery before. As I climbed the winding staircase in Somerset House (there’s a a parallel one for serrvants) I glanced into a room and there were the originals of a number of French Impressionist paintings I had long been familiar with from reproductions.  A quick scamper through the galleries inclines me to go back at more leisure.

The Turner watercolours were rather good.  I love the detail, even in his most atmospheric.  Interesting how young he started and how determined to become rich and famous.  There’s a wonderful painting of people chasing a hare, the famous one of the wet dog baying on a deserted beach, and some from his tours on the Continent.  It’s worth going, and free on Monday mornings. 

There’s a pub called “The Spice of Life” on Cambridge Circus, in the basement bar of which there’s one of those small, formerly smoky venues, which is where you feel jazz always should happen, though 4.30 on a Sunday afternoon is perhaps a tad implausible.  The band was Drugstore Cowboy who are described as straightahead.  It was good, loud, forceful conventional stuff.  The trumpeter,Quentin Collins, could obviously play pure melodic notes if he wanted to, but was too inclined to go for screeching on the edge for my taste. But some good solos from Brandon Allen on the sax, and from the Hammond  organist and the drummer.

Time for a quick dash to Pret for a wrap (hoisin duck - v. good) before back to the basement for the Froy Aagre band.  Froy does her own numbers, very much in the Norwegian saxophone mould after Gabarek and Seim, but all delightfully tuneful and not overstrained. She had what can only be described as a modest demeanour.  For the second half Kenny Wheeler, who is famous and old, joined the band to play some of his numbers.  Good stuff, but more mainstream.  

And so to Monday night at the QEH, which is not an intimate venue. Iro Haarla is a Finnish harp and piano player whose CD “Northbound” I really like.  Unfortunately the music didn’t really come across in this concert.  The first number, which has Trygve Seim and Mathias Eick blaring together, was ill-chosen, I thought, and prejudiced a lot of the audience against what was to follow.  The numbers ended up all sounding pretty much the same, beautiful and atmospheric though they were.  Pity, I like Seim and Eick.

Iro Haarla was actually part of a double bill with the Manu Katche band, which was what most of the audience had come to hear.  Although again there were some nice moments and accomplished playing, having the drummer lead the band in this instance led to much to prominent drumming.  A bit of an ego-trip maybe ?

Blue-grass is not my thing, but he does it really well.

Before I forget, I should say that the Black Swan has Skipton Brewery’s Copper Dragon on tap - delicious golden stuff.

Tom McConville is an Iriish Geordie, which takes the more extreme edges off both caricatures and ends up with a really warm humorous presentation.  He plays a wonderful lively fiddle and sings some great songs - a wonderful version of “Beeswing” sticks in the aural memory particularly.  A pity the room wasn’t as packed as it was for Chris Wood last week; to my mind Tom is just as good.  David Newey must be 40 years younger than Tom.  He plays a very unassuming guitar, respectful of what Tom’s up to, and with some accomplished solos.

I say “the singing one” because I do know one in a cycling and pub-crawling context. It’s not him, though a pub and drink were involved.  Chris Wood plays guitar and fiddle, used to tour as a duet with Andy Cutting, but turned up at the Black Swan as a solo act.  He’s big, bluff, assertively Southern (Kent) performer, hiding behind a very fine London area accent, complete with the occasional glottal stop.  The slightly rough stage persona is belied by some of his songs, however - the exquisitely sentimental and tender “One in a Million”, and a song for the victim of the Stockwell tube police murder.  He didn’t sing one of my favourites “Hares on the Mountain” which is a lovely little number about the yearnings of boys for the girls who seem so inaccessible.  He also started the evening with an obviously new song about the credit crunch and the bankers.  He’s good, though the length of his introductions and rambling diversions mean that I felt slightly short-changed in terms of number of songs.