STRANGENESS & CHARM - Music for The Book of Deer
Largo Music
Richard Ingham, saxophone, bass clarinet; Maarten Verbraeken, trumpet, flugelhorn; Fraser Burke, keyboards; Kenny Irons, bass, acoustic guitar; Andy James, percussion.
Recorded 1st-3rd February 2020 at Watercolour Studios, Ardgour, Scotland
Music for The Book of Deer is a suite of music intended to illustrate the named book, a 10th-century, Latin Gospel Book incorporating early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It is noted for containing the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland. While the band’s catalogue includes music from such as Michael Brecker, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny, ‘Deer’ is a fairly unique sound, integrating melodious, ethnic sources with folk, funk, fusion, jazz and Latin, but permitting adequate structure and flexible scope for solo improvisation.
Leading musician, saxophonist Richard Ingham, is the composer, with a wide experience in composition for chamber and jazz ensembles, orchestras and soloists. It is, I feel, the extent of his practice and experience that has enabled him to bring this quintet to complete and deliver such a complex synthesis of the medieval and traditional; plainsong and reels fused together as though they were so destined.
Most religions, in their day, have brought on artistic responses, especially when an object such as this historical book is in sight of disinterment from the depths of memory, to laud its very existence, when that, in fact, was inevitable, given that such objects were tied to a deeply spiritual belief. So, I’m finding the ‘jazz tag’ unnecessary, somewhat dated perhaps, as it seems to sit in that category of music which likes to be thought of as ‘jazz’ when really, it’s just jazz-like – quite a commonplace misnomer these days. It doesn’t match the sounds of any of the jazz genres with which I am familiar – maybe it’s really ‘folk’ or ‘world’?
The book, its illustrations and its languages together make a truly beautiful object, one which perhaps needs no further adulation. This may be true equally for the music, for its creators and fans alike, but I hear a mismatch between the two.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Largo Music
Richard Ingham, saxophone, bass clarinet; Maarten Verbraeken, trumpet, flugelhorn; Fraser Burke, keyboards; Kenny Irons, bass, acoustic guitar; Andy James, percussion.
Recorded 1st-3rd February 2020 at Watercolour Studios, Ardgour, Scotland
Music for The Book of Deer is a suite of music intended to illustrate the named book, a 10th-century, Latin Gospel Book incorporating early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It is noted for containing the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland. While the band’s catalogue includes music from such as Michael Brecker, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny, ‘Deer’ is a fairly unique sound, integrating melodious, ethnic sources with folk, funk, fusion, jazz and Latin, but permitting adequate structure and flexible scope for solo improvisation.
Leading musician, saxophonist Richard Ingham, is the composer, with a wide experience in composition for chamber and jazz ensembles, orchestras and soloists. It is, I feel, the extent of his practice and experience that has enabled him to bring this quintet to complete and deliver such a complex synthesis of the medieval and traditional; plainsong and reels fused together as though they were so destined.
Most religions, in their day, have brought on artistic responses, especially when an object such as this historical book is in sight of disinterment from the depths of memory, to laud its very existence, when that, in fact, was inevitable, given that such objects were tied to a deeply spiritual belief. So, I’m finding the ‘jazz tag’ unnecessary, somewhat dated perhaps, as it seems to sit in that category of music which likes to be thought of as ‘jazz’ when really, it’s just jazz-like – quite a commonplace misnomer these days. It doesn’t match the sounds of any of the jazz genres with which I am familiar – maybe it’s really ‘folk’ or ‘world’?
The book, its illustrations and its languages together make a truly beautiful object, one which perhaps needs no further adulation. This may be true equally for the music, for its creators and fans alike, but I hear a mismatch between the two.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
