SHIRLEY SMART & ROBERT MITCHELL - Zeitgeist2
Discus: Discus116CD
Shirley Smart (cello); Robert Mitchell (piano)
Recorded 14th January 2020 by Spencer Cozens at Steinway Studios
Given quite different career trajectories, Smart and Mitchell are like two comets pursuing their own orbits and flying in parallel for a short period of time. What each brings to this session is the experience of rich musical journeys. But there is also a warmth and elegance across the tunes on this set, which reflects the ease with which both players navigate multiple musical styles and which also belies the depth of passion that inspired the compositions. Mitchell, known not only for his work with F-IRE collective but the host of awards that he has garnered, is a pianist whose lightness and deftness of touch immediately draws the listener into the intimacy of his playing. This drawing in of the listener is further enhanced by the ways in which Mitchell discovers and develops attractive motifs that often belie the discordance and harmonic complexity he employs to accompany these. Smart comfortably mixes classical, jazz and Middle Eastern approaches to making music and is well-known as an innovative jazz cellist, with a long list of artists with whom she has played. On this recording, she provides both an ideal foil to Mitchell’s playing and a guide to encourage him to new musical terrains. Indeed, the balance between the players is as finely honed as the balance of musical styles that they blend across, and distil within, the tunes.
The liner notes, and Mitchell’s two poems which receive settings in ‘The First Note’ (track 2) [about a world in which peace is permanent] and ‘A Son of Windrush Reflects’ (track 8) [in which Mitchell balances the pride that his Bajan mother has felt as a nurse in the NHS with the shameful treatment meted out by our government on the Windrush generation – ‘it took 135 years to unveil the Mary Seacole monument / Let’s hope it is not 135 more until the Windrush contribution is decently honoured with respectful portent…’], give background to the pieces in this set. As does Smart’s explanation of the tune ‘Anxieties’ (track 3) as ‘a bebop-ish line dissolving into a more modal Middle Eastern mawaal-style invocation.’ Just as the mix of musical styles is apparent in her playing, so her ability to speak Hebrew and Arabic and career that has criss-crossed academia in the Middle East gives her music a sensibility to diverging perspectives. The desire to find a balance between lived experiences does not mean the dilution of one experience or the negation of one by another, nor does it mean a sort of antipathetic fence-sitting; there are still plenty of reasons to be angry and to articulate this anger clearly – as Mitchell’s poems make clear. But it does suggest, particularly in our overly polarised age of social media ‘echo chambers’, that there is a need for dialogue and a need for calm statement of the effects and impact of bad political decisions.
This balance extends to the music, and Mitchell has long been interested in what happens when a pianist only relies on one hand. For an instrument which is meant to provide either the rhythmic or harmonic heart of a jazz group, this feels an odd perspective. But it provides a freshness and challenge to the approach to developing tunes. Mitchell’s exploration of single-hand playing (the Bach piece, ‘Klavierstuke in A’, is an early example of single-hand playing, and Mitchells’ own ‘Zietgeist’, track 4) are not only fine examples of technical ability, but also invite Smart into the insides of the piece. Here she needs to fill the rhythmic and harmonic holes left by the missing hand. In such circumstances, it might be easy to over play, to hustle a bunch of notes that are not required just to fill the vacuum. And Smart is a player with extreme confidence in the gaps between notes and the caesura between themes who is able to navigate this challenge. Not only this, the classical inspirations (themes and tunes from CPE Bach and Liszt played with delicacy by Mitchell and accompanied by Smart discovering ways to improvise around the structures) segue delightfully and often unexpectedly into jazz or Middle Eastern phrasings. I think it worth heaping praise on the production of Spencer Cozens which not only captures the vitality of each players’ control of their instrument but also situates this in the stillness that surrounds them; there is no unnecessary bouncing and echo of sound, but nor is there muffling of the natural acoustics of each instrument. This is beautiful music.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Discus: Discus116CD
Shirley Smart (cello); Robert Mitchell (piano)
Recorded 14th January 2020 by Spencer Cozens at Steinway Studios
Given quite different career trajectories, Smart and Mitchell are like two comets pursuing their own orbits and flying in parallel for a short period of time. What each brings to this session is the experience of rich musical journeys. But there is also a warmth and elegance across the tunes on this set, which reflects the ease with which both players navigate multiple musical styles and which also belies the depth of passion that inspired the compositions. Mitchell, known not only for his work with F-IRE collective but the host of awards that he has garnered, is a pianist whose lightness and deftness of touch immediately draws the listener into the intimacy of his playing. This drawing in of the listener is further enhanced by the ways in which Mitchell discovers and develops attractive motifs that often belie the discordance and harmonic complexity he employs to accompany these. Smart comfortably mixes classical, jazz and Middle Eastern approaches to making music and is well-known as an innovative jazz cellist, with a long list of artists with whom she has played. On this recording, she provides both an ideal foil to Mitchell’s playing and a guide to encourage him to new musical terrains. Indeed, the balance between the players is as finely honed as the balance of musical styles that they blend across, and distil within, the tunes.
The liner notes, and Mitchell’s two poems which receive settings in ‘The First Note’ (track 2) [about a world in which peace is permanent] and ‘A Son of Windrush Reflects’ (track 8) [in which Mitchell balances the pride that his Bajan mother has felt as a nurse in the NHS with the shameful treatment meted out by our government on the Windrush generation – ‘it took 135 years to unveil the Mary Seacole monument / Let’s hope it is not 135 more until the Windrush contribution is decently honoured with respectful portent…’], give background to the pieces in this set. As does Smart’s explanation of the tune ‘Anxieties’ (track 3) as ‘a bebop-ish line dissolving into a more modal Middle Eastern mawaal-style invocation.’ Just as the mix of musical styles is apparent in her playing, so her ability to speak Hebrew and Arabic and career that has criss-crossed academia in the Middle East gives her music a sensibility to diverging perspectives. The desire to find a balance between lived experiences does not mean the dilution of one experience or the negation of one by another, nor does it mean a sort of antipathetic fence-sitting; there are still plenty of reasons to be angry and to articulate this anger clearly – as Mitchell’s poems make clear. But it does suggest, particularly in our overly polarised age of social media ‘echo chambers’, that there is a need for dialogue and a need for calm statement of the effects and impact of bad political decisions.
This balance extends to the music, and Mitchell has long been interested in what happens when a pianist only relies on one hand. For an instrument which is meant to provide either the rhythmic or harmonic heart of a jazz group, this feels an odd perspective. But it provides a freshness and challenge to the approach to developing tunes. Mitchell’s exploration of single-hand playing (the Bach piece, ‘Klavierstuke in A’, is an early example of single-hand playing, and Mitchells’ own ‘Zietgeist’, track 4) are not only fine examples of technical ability, but also invite Smart into the insides of the piece. Here she needs to fill the rhythmic and harmonic holes left by the missing hand. In such circumstances, it might be easy to over play, to hustle a bunch of notes that are not required just to fill the vacuum. And Smart is a player with extreme confidence in the gaps between notes and the caesura between themes who is able to navigate this challenge. Not only this, the classical inspirations (themes and tunes from CPE Bach and Liszt played with delicacy by Mitchell and accompanied by Smart discovering ways to improvise around the structures) segue delightfully and often unexpectedly into jazz or Middle Eastern phrasings. I think it worth heaping praise on the production of Spencer Cozens which not only captures the vitality of each players’ control of their instrument but also situates this in the stillness that surrounds them; there is no unnecessary bouncing and echo of sound, but nor is there muffling of the natural acoustics of each instrument. This is beautiful music.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
