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June 2008
gig reviews

Round Trip
Jason Yarde - Trio WAH!
In Cahoots Sextet
Finn Peters Finntet
Barcode Trio /
Leo Altarelli
Bobby Wellins/Kate Williams

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June 2008 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Jason Yarde Trio WAH!
McCormack/Yarde Duo

Tuesday 3 June

Beginning with a duo featuring pianist Andrew McCormack, Jason Yarde swiftly demonstrated just why he is so highly rated on the contemporary jazz scene: his tone on both alto and soprano is unusually textured, incorporating everything from rasps and controlled shrieks to mellifluous warbles, he shapes his solos so that they simultaneously surprise and satisfy with their completeness and aptness, and he infuses everything he plays with intensely communicative emotional urgency.

McCormack, who provided some of the duo's material, and whose tricksy arrangement of Bernstein's 'Something's Coming' (from West Side Story) was one of the evening's highlights, proved the perfect partner, discreetly propulsive and robustly assertive as required ­ interspersed by Yarde's amusingly laconic announcements, this was a thoroughly absorbing first set.

Yarde's Trio WAH! (completed by bassist Larry Bartley and drummer Mike Pickering) then took the stage; the programme had promised 'contemporary jazz grooves', and the band duly provided them, Pickering's bristling energy and Bartley's big, driving sound providing the perfect platform for Yarde's vibrant soloing.

Whether playing within relatively tight grooves or more loosely, flirting with rhythmic freedom, the trio demonstrated an impressive, almost hypnotic commitment ­ on the evidence of this gig, it's difficult to believe, as Yarde ruefully asserted as he introduced them, that they play only two gigs a year: they exhibit the well-stretched muscle and controlled power that characterise a band that plays together every night.

 

 

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