A WORLD OF JAZZ AND SEASONS GREETING FROM EASTSIDE’S MICK PADDON
For the past four months I have been on a long journey up from Southern Europe through the capitals of Central and Northern Europe then on to the UK. It was not planned as a musical extravaganza, but I have manage to squeeze in visits to jazz clubs in Budapest, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen and London plus a couple of unforgettable gigs at the London Jazz Festival. The travel and the gigs have had me ruminating on jazz as a music made in the moment, but which honours it’s history and the musicians who made it. It is also music which displays its local roots and variations while being essentially international. All of this was in my mind a few weeks ago while I was waiting for performance at the London Jazz Festival billed as Movers and Shakers. A sextet of younger British musicians led by saxophonist Mark Lockheart was about to play their own arrangements of pieces composed and performed by some of the greats of post Second World War British jazz, including Stan Tracey, Joe Harriott and Don Rendell. The long time friend with me, who was instrumental in opening my ears to the music back in the day, had studied saxophone with Don Rendell when he was a teenager. He was telling me that they would spend as much time listening to the latest vinyl Don had just acquired from the States as they did playing. You will find a similar story in the biography of most Australian musicians of the same generation who poured over the latest recordings of the American greats as soon as they could get their hands on them.
The same thoughts about the music’s history, and it’s character as being, at the same time ,local and international, were still in my mind a couple of days later at Ronnie Scott’s. The club has had a renaissance after a few years hiatus when the great man himself died. I was there to hear a quartet led by Bennie Maupin. I still listen to Miles Runs the Voodoo Down from the Bitches Brew sessions, just to hear Maupin’s asides on bass clarinet and play it on my shows on Eastside when I can justify 15 minutes of uninterrupted music. Sharing the solos at Ronnie’s with Maupin’s bass clarinet, tenor and soprano, and getting almost as much applause from a packed audience was Australian born guitarist Carl Orr. I had thought I might get a chance to chat with Bennie (a friend of a friend who had arranged for the tickets is involved in managing Ronnie’s) and was intending to ask him about his sessions and recordings with Mike Nock, in the band Almanac in the 80s. As it turned out I did not get that close.
In Copenhagen’s Jazzhouse, I missed the Necks by just a couple of days, as I was told by the club’s young and enthusiastic barman, who admitted to never having heard of them before but who, along with a full house, had been mesmerised by their music. It’s probably just as well. A year of so ago I dropped into a club in Manchester which used to be my regular hang out when I lived in that city before I moved to Sydney. The unexpected surprise for me was that the Necks were performing there for just that one night. So I also surprised Lloyd Swanton, who is of course the bassist with the trio, and a long time broadcaster with Eastside. I started getting concerned that popping up unexpectedly but repeatedly at Necks performances in european jazz clubs might have given me the appearance of a stalker.
Budapest’s excellent Music Center which has a modern dedicated music space, cafe and it’s own record label, introduced me to a new instrument in a jazz context. The cimbalom looks like a foreshortened piano, is played with two light mallets. It is a type of dulcimer traditional in Central European music , but the closest approximation I could think of in its sound was the effect pianists produce when they dive into the piano to pluck at the strings with their fingers. It was featured in a trio led by local alto player Viktor Toth. As soon as I am back in Sydney I will share these unusual sounds of an alto trio featuring the cimbalom work of a Hungarian virtuoso on the instrument, Gyorgy Lukacs, by featuring the CD on my Eastside show.
Most international of the lot, has been what was billed as an evening of Lithuanian jazz at Prague’s Jazzdock in the Czech Republic. I came away with two more CDs which I am looking forward to playing on Eastside: one by the quartet who were playing that evening. And the other, a double CD celebrating Estonian Jazz whichI was given by the band’s bass player who features on some of the tracks. The quartet, of course, were actually from four different Baltic countries.
In the new year, before coming back to Sydney, I get to enjoy the big one- the jazz clubs of New York. No doubt there will be more music to share on air when I am back on air at Eastside. Until then, best wishes for whatever you celebrate over this season, and I wish us all a more peaceful, as well as a musical, 2015.