DJANGO BATES & BELOVĖD - Tenacity
Lost Marble: LM009©Django Bates
Django Bates (piano, vox) Petter Eidh (double bass, vox) Peter Braun (drums, vox) with the Norrbotten Big Band. Recorded at Studio Ascusticum, Pitea, Sweden. 2020.
As he turns 60, Django Bates, the enfant terrible of European jazz, can no longer lay claim to the enfant bit but his almost wilful iconoclasm remains as vivid and untarnished by the passage of time as it was when he was writing charts for the Loose Tubes collective back in the eighties. Here, with his Belovèd trio embedded within a virtuosic, brass heavy Swedish big band he gives post -modern, avant-garde expression to tunes composed by and associated with Charlie Parker, this being the father of be-bop’s 100th anniversary. Alongside these he includes three of his own original compositions which deploy the same shape shifting characteristics, all of which require a degree of tenacity on the part of the listener if the music’s torrential twists and turns are to be fully appreciated.
Bates and his trio serve both as a rhythm section and concerto -grosso element within the 14 piece Norrbotten band which confines itself largely to the realisation of the complex scoring. There are a couple of occasions when soloists emerge in full jazz solo flight but given the textural quality of the orchestral passages one becomes aware of the contribution of many individual instrumental voices and to this extent the whole piece could be described as a concerto for orchestra.
This is music that doesn’t stay in one place for very long, constantly changing gear and moving between chamber music episodes of almost celestial delicacy and exultant -at times terrifying – orchestral flourishes driven along by manic rhythmic choppiness. Their version of `Ah Leu Cha` takes on the rustic exuberance of a folk dance whilst the ballad `Laura` starts out by caressing the melody and investing it with an overblown Hollywood style romanticism before puncturing the mood with some irreverent Spike Jones style hokum and jokey electronic effects. In marked contrast the centrepiece of the set is a Bates original `The Study of Touch` which in the course of twelve minutes of mounting agitation exercises the ensemble’s capabilities to the full and contains a lusty tenor solo by Karl-Martin Almqvist, arguably the most powerful jazz moment of the set.
The question is: do these re-interpretations capture the Parker essence? We are told that as his career progressed Parker expressed an interest in exploring more experimental `Third Stream` ideas and had a dialogue to this effect with the composer Igor Stravinsky. His `personal problems` and untimely death meant nothing came of it so these arrangements might be seen as the fulfilment of an unrealised ambition or at least Bates’ idea of what it might have sounded like, however, it has to be said that whilst the music references Parker’s mischievous risk taking qualities it s largely missing his profound blues sensibility and his innate ability to swing.
Finally, mention must be made of Mark Solberg’s surrealist sleeve art-work which captures to perfection the ethos of Bates’ ambitious music.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
Lost Marble: LM009©Django Bates
Django Bates (piano, vox) Petter Eidh (double bass, vox) Peter Braun (drums, vox) with the Norrbotten Big Band. Recorded at Studio Ascusticum, Pitea, Sweden. 2020.
As he turns 60, Django Bates, the enfant terrible of European jazz, can no longer lay claim to the enfant bit but his almost wilful iconoclasm remains as vivid and untarnished by the passage of time as it was when he was writing charts for the Loose Tubes collective back in the eighties. Here, with his Belovèd trio embedded within a virtuosic, brass heavy Swedish big band he gives post -modern, avant-garde expression to tunes composed by and associated with Charlie Parker, this being the father of be-bop’s 100th anniversary. Alongside these he includes three of his own original compositions which deploy the same shape shifting characteristics, all of which require a degree of tenacity on the part of the listener if the music’s torrential twists and turns are to be fully appreciated.
Bates and his trio serve both as a rhythm section and concerto -grosso element within the 14 piece Norrbotten band which confines itself largely to the realisation of the complex scoring. There are a couple of occasions when soloists emerge in full jazz solo flight but given the textural quality of the orchestral passages one becomes aware of the contribution of many individual instrumental voices and to this extent the whole piece could be described as a concerto for orchestra.
This is music that doesn’t stay in one place for very long, constantly changing gear and moving between chamber music episodes of almost celestial delicacy and exultant -at times terrifying – orchestral flourishes driven along by manic rhythmic choppiness. Their version of `Ah Leu Cha` takes on the rustic exuberance of a folk dance whilst the ballad `Laura` starts out by caressing the melody and investing it with an overblown Hollywood style romanticism before puncturing the mood with some irreverent Spike Jones style hokum and jokey electronic effects. In marked contrast the centrepiece of the set is a Bates original `The Study of Touch` which in the course of twelve minutes of mounting agitation exercises the ensemble’s capabilities to the full and contains a lusty tenor solo by Karl-Martin Almqvist, arguably the most powerful jazz moment of the set.
The question is: do these re-interpretations capture the Parker essence? We are told that as his career progressed Parker expressed an interest in exploring more experimental `Third Stream` ideas and had a dialogue to this effect with the composer Igor Stravinsky. His `personal problems` and untimely death meant nothing came of it so these arrangements might be seen as the fulfilment of an unrealised ambition or at least Bates’ idea of what it might have sounded like, however, it has to be said that whilst the music references Parker’s mischievous risk taking qualities it s largely missing his profound blues sensibility and his innate ability to swing.
Finally, mention must be made of Mark Solberg’s surrealist sleeve art-work which captures to perfection the ethos of Bates’ ambitious music.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
