NAT STEELE - The MJQ Quartet + Grant Stewart play
"Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet"
"Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet"
Vibraphone player Nat Steele has very quickly established himself as a major player on the UK scene, and one of a number of a younger generation of musicians flying the bebop flag. A straight ahead player who is quick to acknowledge the debt of the jazz masters, and continuing to play the music he loves with his own contemporary feel that ensures the music looks forward as well as a backwards glance at the glorious past.
Since 2015 he as been involved in running BopFest as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and releasing his debut album, Portrait of the Modern Jazz Quartet, featuring pianist Gabriel Latchin, Dario Di Lecce on bass and Steve Brown on drums, Nat is now poised to move onto the next project, an exhausting back to back 18 date tour of the UK with US tenorist, Grant Stewart, playing the music of the MJQ with Sonny Rollins.
It was therefore a pleasure to get the opportunity to talk to the vibraphonist about the tour and the music that has inspired the project.
You're about about to embark on a UK tour with your MJQ Quartet, but this time with a difference with the US tenor saxophonist, Grant Stewart. Why have you decided to add an additional voice to the established quartet, and how did you meet and come to play with Grant?
The great thing about having a working band like this is that now it's established as a unit, we can do things like collaborating with other musicians. The original MJQ did this with lots of different people - Rollins, Ben Webster, Lou Donaldson, Laurindo Almeida, Paul Desmond, Freddie Hubbard etc. The list goes on. So there's a huge scope for trying new things with different people and still keeping the chemistry there in the band. I've always been a huge Grant Stewart fan for as long as I've known his playing, and we finally got to meet and play together back in 2018 at BopFest (part of the LJF). It was really that gig that inspired this tour; I mentioned the idea to a couple of different venues and they tried to book us before I'd even checked if Grant was available, so I knew I was on to a winner with it.
Since 2015 he as been involved in running BopFest as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and releasing his debut album, Portrait of the Modern Jazz Quartet, featuring pianist Gabriel Latchin, Dario Di Lecce on bass and Steve Brown on drums, Nat is now poised to move onto the next project, an exhausting back to back 18 date tour of the UK with US tenorist, Grant Stewart, playing the music of the MJQ with Sonny Rollins.
It was therefore a pleasure to get the opportunity to talk to the vibraphonist about the tour and the music that has inspired the project.
You're about about to embark on a UK tour with your MJQ Quartet, but this time with a difference with the US tenor saxophonist, Grant Stewart. Why have you decided to add an additional voice to the established quartet, and how did you meet and come to play with Grant?
The great thing about having a working band like this is that now it's established as a unit, we can do things like collaborating with other musicians. The original MJQ did this with lots of different people - Rollins, Ben Webster, Lou Donaldson, Laurindo Almeida, Paul Desmond, Freddie Hubbard etc. The list goes on. So there's a huge scope for trying new things with different people and still keeping the chemistry there in the band. I've always been a huge Grant Stewart fan for as long as I've known his playing, and we finally got to meet and play together back in 2018 at BopFest (part of the LJF). It was really that gig that inspired this tour; I mentioned the idea to a couple of different venues and they tried to book us before I'd even checked if Grant was available, so I knew I was on to a winner with it.
On the tour you will be focusing specifically on the music of the Prestige album, Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Did the idea for the tour and collaboration with Grant come directly from this concept?
We are playing material from that record but it's really serving as a jumping-off point, rather than an attempt to recreate that music note-for-note. If anything it's a simple way of getting the concept across - it's a famous record with the format of tenor sax + vibraphone-led quartet.
Yes, absolutely the idea to work with Grant came from that record. Grant is quite strongly inspired in his playing by Rollins (and Dexter Gordon too actually) and that record is one of my favourites, so given that I have an MJQ themed band, it seemed like quite an obvious thing to do. It's something that had been in the back of my mind for a few years. Now that the band is quite well established and we've had lots of positive press and venues are booking us, it seemed like the right time to do something to take it up to the next level.
I'm guessing that the MJQ's meeting with Rollins shook up the Quartet sound that they had established. How did you find that adding Grant to your MJQ Quartet has influenced the dynamic within the group?
By the time the MJQ recorded with Rollins they'd been working as a band for 4 years, so I think he added something to it rather than shook its foundations to the core! They all knew one another and had played together with Rollins in various combinations between them, so it wouldn't have been a huge revelation. It wasn't the first time they'd worked with someone else either - they'd already made an album with Lou Donaldson a few years earlier, and one with Ben Webster too. But it definitely changed the dynamic because suddenly John Lewis had someone to comp for besides Bags.
A two-horn front line is always a different thing to just one frontline instrument with a rhythm section. You've suddenly got a relationship not only with the rhythm section but between you and the other front line player, so it is quite a different dynamic. The rhythm section have to create a different sound for each soloist and it really opens things up.
Working with Grant in 2018 was magical for us - for me and Gabriel in particular, being slightly obsessive fans of his music (we both own all of his records) it was really a dream come true. As soon as we played the first note together on stage at BopFest you could feel this chemistry on the bandstand - the audience could tell straight away too; there was a huge buzz in the room. Grant is such a high level player, one of the best in the world, that he instantly raised everyone's game in the band and it made the music that much more intense and swinging. It's one of the best musical experiences I've ever had.
We are playing material from that record but it's really serving as a jumping-off point, rather than an attempt to recreate that music note-for-note. If anything it's a simple way of getting the concept across - it's a famous record with the format of tenor sax + vibraphone-led quartet.
Yes, absolutely the idea to work with Grant came from that record. Grant is quite strongly inspired in his playing by Rollins (and Dexter Gordon too actually) and that record is one of my favourites, so given that I have an MJQ themed band, it seemed like quite an obvious thing to do. It's something that had been in the back of my mind for a few years. Now that the band is quite well established and we've had lots of positive press and venues are booking us, it seemed like the right time to do something to take it up to the next level.
I'm guessing that the MJQ's meeting with Rollins shook up the Quartet sound that they had established. How did you find that adding Grant to your MJQ Quartet has influenced the dynamic within the group?
By the time the MJQ recorded with Rollins they'd been working as a band for 4 years, so I think he added something to it rather than shook its foundations to the core! They all knew one another and had played together with Rollins in various combinations between them, so it wouldn't have been a huge revelation. It wasn't the first time they'd worked with someone else either - they'd already made an album with Lou Donaldson a few years earlier, and one with Ben Webster too. But it definitely changed the dynamic because suddenly John Lewis had someone to comp for besides Bags.
A two-horn front line is always a different thing to just one frontline instrument with a rhythm section. You've suddenly got a relationship not only with the rhythm section but between you and the other front line player, so it is quite a different dynamic. The rhythm section have to create a different sound for each soloist and it really opens things up.
Working with Grant in 2018 was magical for us - for me and Gabriel in particular, being slightly obsessive fans of his music (we both own all of his records) it was really a dream come true. As soon as we played the first note together on stage at BopFest you could feel this chemistry on the bandstand - the audience could tell straight away too; there was a huge buzz in the room. Grant is such a high level player, one of the best in the world, that he instantly raised everyone's game in the band and it made the music that much more intense and swinging. It's one of the best musical experiences I've ever had.
In the current climate organising a 18 date tour is no mean feat. I would imagine that this was pretty gruelling to arrange, as I understand that funding from the Arts Council was not secured until quite late on?
I wouldn't call it gruelling exactly, but it was definitely very time consuming to put together. I started organising it in December 2018 and we just had the last bit fall into place a couple of days ago, so it's taken a while! I started with a few big venues and hung the rest of the tour around them.
Despite the difficult climate at the moment, there is actually a big network of jazz clubs run by very dedicated and hardworking people all over the UK, and it's very rewarding to be able to put something together like this and take it out on the road with their help. I think with it being something MJQ related, and Sonny Rollins related, it really helped the clubs go for it. That and the absolutely phenomenal musicians involved. I think we could have easily done a third or even fourth week of gigs, but this is my first ever tour under my own name so it was difficult to judge. Now I know!
The way the funding from the Arts Council works is that everything has to be in place before you can apply, so I basically had to take a chance myself and get it set up, and then hope they'd see that it was worth funding. Because all the venues book at different times - some just a few weeks ahead, some 2 or 3 years ahead - it was necessary to apply relatively late in the process to make sure I had as many gigs as possible in the diary so it would look viable to ACE. Now that I'm more familiar with how it all works, I think I'll be able to get the funding secured a bit more in advance next time!
Is it realistic or even possible to tour on this sort of scale without funding?
The funding from ACE makes a huge difference to be honest - it's absolutely vital to the jazz scene in the UK. They're providing funding to cover all the expenses like flights and hotels and to top up some of the fees in venues where it wouldn't otherwise be economically viable to play. They're also giving us an advertising budget, which means we're able to get the gigs out there in the media and hopefully attract larger audiences than the venues might otherwise usually expect. That way our music gets exposed to new people. It also helps us get to play in venues away from London because suddenly the cost of the travel isn't an issue; it's a very London centric scene on the whole so I think that in particular is really important.
Without the funding something would be possible, but not on this scale and not with someone from the US - not without taking a big hit anyway, and it's not really sustainable for the bandleader to be making a loss on his own tour!
The tour is a straight through affair with no days off at all, and I'm guessing will take some stamina to perform on such an intense schedule?
It's going to be really intense, yeah! It's 18 in 14 days. The plan was to have a few days off over the two weeks but the gigs kept on coming in and it was very difficult to say no. That said, playing with great musicians like Grant, Gabriel, Dario and Steve is always invigorating, so it's just going to be fun, and a great musical challenge. They're a great group of people to spend time with so it'll be enjoyable on a social level too. I'm quite excited to get to spend time in a tour bus driving around the UK to be honest!
I also have a portable in-car espresso machine that I'm going to be bringing with me on the tour bus, so if all else fails I'll rely on that to get me through!
By the time you get to the end of the tour, I would imagine that the quartet would be really cooking, do you have plans to record the music with Grant?
Yes, in fact the day after the last gig on the tour we're going into the studio to make an album. I'm very excited about getting to record with Grant, and have been wanting to make a new album with the band for a while now anyway, so there couldn't be a better opportunity.
We're trying a process that's new to us - it's going to be entirely analogue, on reel-to-reel tape, through valve equipment and vintage German microphones, which is exactly how they did it back in the day. It's a high-risk strategy because editing is extremely difficult compared with digital, but then given that we'll have been playing solidly everyday for 2 weeks by the time we hit the studio it'll be just like doing a gig. That's how some of the best albums were made anyway; 2 or 3 hours in the studio just playing live to tape.
I don't know exactly when we'll get the album out, or which label it's going to be on (there's been some interest from across the Atlantic), but I do know for sure that there's going to be a long album release tour, hopefully including some gigs in Europe - watch this space!
I wouldn't call it gruelling exactly, but it was definitely very time consuming to put together. I started organising it in December 2018 and we just had the last bit fall into place a couple of days ago, so it's taken a while! I started with a few big venues and hung the rest of the tour around them.
Despite the difficult climate at the moment, there is actually a big network of jazz clubs run by very dedicated and hardworking people all over the UK, and it's very rewarding to be able to put something together like this and take it out on the road with their help. I think with it being something MJQ related, and Sonny Rollins related, it really helped the clubs go for it. That and the absolutely phenomenal musicians involved. I think we could have easily done a third or even fourth week of gigs, but this is my first ever tour under my own name so it was difficult to judge. Now I know!
The way the funding from the Arts Council works is that everything has to be in place before you can apply, so I basically had to take a chance myself and get it set up, and then hope they'd see that it was worth funding. Because all the venues book at different times - some just a few weeks ahead, some 2 or 3 years ahead - it was necessary to apply relatively late in the process to make sure I had as many gigs as possible in the diary so it would look viable to ACE. Now that I'm more familiar with how it all works, I think I'll be able to get the funding secured a bit more in advance next time!
Is it realistic or even possible to tour on this sort of scale without funding?
The funding from ACE makes a huge difference to be honest - it's absolutely vital to the jazz scene in the UK. They're providing funding to cover all the expenses like flights and hotels and to top up some of the fees in venues where it wouldn't otherwise be economically viable to play. They're also giving us an advertising budget, which means we're able to get the gigs out there in the media and hopefully attract larger audiences than the venues might otherwise usually expect. That way our music gets exposed to new people. It also helps us get to play in venues away from London because suddenly the cost of the travel isn't an issue; it's a very London centric scene on the whole so I think that in particular is really important.
Without the funding something would be possible, but not on this scale and not with someone from the US - not without taking a big hit anyway, and it's not really sustainable for the bandleader to be making a loss on his own tour!
The tour is a straight through affair with no days off at all, and I'm guessing will take some stamina to perform on such an intense schedule?
It's going to be really intense, yeah! It's 18 in 14 days. The plan was to have a few days off over the two weeks but the gigs kept on coming in and it was very difficult to say no. That said, playing with great musicians like Grant, Gabriel, Dario and Steve is always invigorating, so it's just going to be fun, and a great musical challenge. They're a great group of people to spend time with so it'll be enjoyable on a social level too. I'm quite excited to get to spend time in a tour bus driving around the UK to be honest!
I also have a portable in-car espresso machine that I'm going to be bringing with me on the tour bus, so if all else fails I'll rely on that to get me through!
By the time you get to the end of the tour, I would imagine that the quartet would be really cooking, do you have plans to record the music with Grant?
Yes, in fact the day after the last gig on the tour we're going into the studio to make an album. I'm very excited about getting to record with Grant, and have been wanting to make a new album with the band for a while now anyway, so there couldn't be a better opportunity.
We're trying a process that's new to us - it's going to be entirely analogue, on reel-to-reel tape, through valve equipment and vintage German microphones, which is exactly how they did it back in the day. It's a high-risk strategy because editing is extremely difficult compared with digital, but then given that we'll have been playing solidly everyday for 2 weeks by the time we hit the studio it'll be just like doing a gig. That's how some of the best albums were made anyway; 2 or 3 hours in the studio just playing live to tape.
I don't know exactly when we'll get the album out, or which label it's going to be on (there's been some interest from across the Atlantic), but I do know for sure that there's going to be a long album release tour, hopefully including some gigs in Europe - watch this space!
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Dates around the UK in February 2020
Tue 4th Watermill Jazz Club, Dorking Wed 5th Public workshop at LCCM, London 5 - 7pm Wed 5th Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, London (11pm) Thu 6th Folkestone Jazz Club, Folkestone Fri 7th Royal Festival Hall Foyer, London South Bank (1pm) Fri 7th Steyning Jazz Club, Steyning (8pm) Sat 8th Lincoln JazzPAC, Lincoln Sun 9th Lincoln Cathedral Jazz Mass (10.15am) Sun 9th Peggy’s Skylight Jazz Club, Nottingham (6pm) Mon 10th Severn Jazz, Worcester Tue 11th Theatr Clwyd, North Wales Jazz Wed 12 Concorde Club, Eastleigh Thur 13 Shepperton Jazz Club, Shepperton Fri 14 Malcolm Frazer house concert, Manchester Sat 15 Bear Club, Luton Sun 16th Cramphorn Theatre, Chemlsford (12.15pm) Mon 17th The Oxford Tavern, Kentish Town (London) Tue 18th Fleet Jazz at the Harlington, Fleet |
Click on the image for full details
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