Tag: improv

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National Theatre gig…

In my post-Greenbelt blogging frenzy, I forgot to blog about the NT gig with the lovely Theo. It’s amazing that we keep getting booked there, given that most of the music there is either solo classical guitar, or standards. We seem to get away with playing original spacey ambient loveliness in a straight setting. Still, the audience seem to like it, we like it, so what’s not to love?

Anyway, the gig went really well – it’s always too quiet in there, thanks to the powers that be complaining about the volume, but that aside, it was such a joy to be back playing with Theo – he’s an exceedingly nice bloke, and a fantastic musician and improvisor. It’s a really natural musical hookup. Most of the gig was freshly improvised stuff, with a couple of ‘Open Spaces tunes thrown in’ (Flutter, Bernie and Lovely), a solo tune from me (Behind Every Word) and our duo arrangement of ‘All I Know’ from Theo’s excellent Heart Of The Sun album. All in a most enjoyable gig, with a mix of friends and strangers in the audience, many of whom were most complimentary about the music afterwards. We even sold a pile of CDs, which is fairly rare for a foyer gig…

No doubt we’ll be back there soon.

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The finest weekend of the year is over

For another year.

Another magic Greenbelt has come to a close, and we’re home. We drove back late last night, which was pretty hair-raising given how tired we were, but I’ve got a gig today at the National Theatre Foyer with Theo so couldn’t really have stayed over and partied til 4am like so many others…

The last day of GB was a fab one – starting with an organic vegan breakfast, and progressing via a panel discussion on Norther Ireland featuring Assembly members from the DUP and Sinn Fein along with two peace activists, one of whom had had his wife murdered by the IRA. The session was incredible, and what was said was so remarkable, that I doubt they’ll release the tape of the session… A big step forward. Maximum kudos to the most wonderful Gareth Higgins| for chairing the session so well.

After that, I was back into compere mode, to introduce Lleuwen Steffan, Huw Warren and Owen Evans – definitely one of my musical highlights of the festival (that’s their gig, not my introduction, which was good, but hardly a highlight). Amazing music, great performance, very well received.

After that it was full-on Recycle gig logistics – collecting keyboards for Huw to play, getting my gear up to the venue, missing lots of things I really wanted to see… Anyway, got all the gear up to the venue, and set up. Lovely audience comes in along with my co-conspirators.

The gig started with a me-solo set – (Grace and Gratitude, Behind Every Word, MMFSOG, Scott Peck, FRHU, Deep Deep Down and Deeper Still, for those keeping notes), then Julie joined me for some New Standard-ing – Video Killed The Radio Star, I Don’t Wanna Know and Running Up That Hill. Then we went into One Step from the album, and about three quarters of the way through, I gave Huw a nod and he joined in on the baby grand piano that was in the corner of the room, which worked an absolute treat.

After that, he came up to the stage on Keys and laptop, and he Julie and I did a couple of improv things, with them doing a duo version of ‘The Water Is Wide’ in the middle that was exquisite.

All change after that, and Andrea Hazell joined in on voice for our version of Dido’s Lament, which was gorgeous as always.

The wonderful Juliet Turner then got her first taste of Recycling with Harry Napier and I. Most lovely.

And finally, Huw and I played a gentle duet to send the lovely crowd off into the night. All in all, a fab Recycle night. Don’t miss Sept 20th at Darbucka!

Then it was all systems go to get all the stuff packed up before Spearhead started on mainstage. We missed the very beginning of the set, but it must be said that standing in a field at Greenbelt with TSP listening to Spearhead is as close to utter bliss as I can imagine. Really really great way to end a stunning weekend of great music, me-gigs, new friends, old friends, brain food, organic food, camping, chatting, hugging and kissing, laughing, sharing etc. etc. etc. All good nothing bad. Everything was wonderful in this best of all possible worlds.

See you there next year?

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More magical recycling…

It’s becoming a bit predictable – Recycle Collective rolls around towards the back half of each month, and an evening of fabulous creative exciting music ensues.

Audience sizes are less easy to predict, but August is a tough month for playing anything other than festivals in the UK, so I was actually quite happy with our modest gathering of lovely Recyclettes.

We went with the three set/three curators model of Recycling – starting with me playing a couple of solo tunes (Behind Every Word and MMFSOG for those taking notes) and then inviting Andy Hamill up for some bass duets, he on upright, me on fretless, that came out beautifully. Andy’s been playing with Natasha Atlas, and he fed a gorgeous middle eastern melody into one of the improvs.

We then got Seb up to join us on drums, and I looped his drums, and anything else that happened to end up being picked up by the mic over his kit! Much fun indeed, some great noises and great moments.

Second set was Andy’s to curate, and he started it off with a lovely solo piece for looped bass and harmonica, followed by a duet with violinist Julian Ferraretto, who also sang beautifully on Nature Boy – yup, proper jazz at the Recycle Collective! They did another standard after that, My Romance, with Seb on drums, and played it really well – Andy’s chordal comping on the upright was just amazing. Fab stuff.

I then joined them for a quartet improv piece, which started off with a violin and bass loop and spiralled out from there. Such a treat to play with such marvellous musicians.

Seb’s set – the final one of the evening – started with him playing his first ever solo drum piece. Always nice to have firsts at the RC, especially when they’re as good as this. I then went up and we started what was to be about a 20 minute abstract piece that began with me looping his drums, replacing bits of the loop, flipping it back to front and adding some scary elephant noises and spookiness, then moving to a filtered faux-tabla rhythmic thing before andy joined us, and finally Julian and another violinist, Mandy Drummond piled in for a very dark atmospheric finish, with andy playing a sparse groove, seb scattering percussive sounds all over the place and the two violins adding violin loveliness to it all.

All in all, a fab night’s music. Some truly amazing moments and a fascinating journey through a new musical landscape, as well as the first ting-ting te-ting jazz at the RC.

Here’s hope the Bass/Bass/Drums trio happens again very soon!

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Preparation for tonight's gig…

Just getting sorted for tonight’s Recycle Collective gig. I’ve not done an improv gig with a drummer for ages… probably since I last played with Seb Rochford, in Brighton! So that’ll be fun – I’m hoping we can find a way to mic the kit and loop the drums as well, but even if we can’t, it’s going to be so much fun.

Andy Hamill is threatening to bring a harmonica and do a couple of solo things with bass and harp, which is going to be great – these gigs have become such an oasis of relentless creativity and fun in each month for me, I really look forward to them.

If you’re in London, please come down!

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Two nights at the vortex.

Been to two gigs at The Vortex in the last week – last Monday, I went to see the launch of Ingrid Laubrock and Liam Noble’s album ‘Let’s Call This…’ – I’ve heard Ingrid play before, in a quartet, but wasn’t familiar with Liam’s playing other than through MySpace. The music was exquisite, whether improvising or playing Monk tunes, the interplay between the two was gorgeous, with Ingrid switching between squeally extended range techniques and lovely lush full melodic stuff, with Liam providing entirely unpredictable but completely logic accompaniment – a really really interesting piano player.

The album is released – like so many great UK jazz albums – on Oliver Weindling’s Babel Label, home to such artists as Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, Christine Tobin, Huw Warren… definitely worth investigating.

Then this saturday, Lianne Carrol was booked to play but fell ill, so the lovely and ever-so-slightly mad Estelle Kokot was booked to fill in, and did a fab job. It was also a rather nice London jazz hang, with JazzShark over from NYC, Orphy Robinson calling in, Huw Warren visiting from north west Wales, Christine Tobin nursing a nasty cut in her leg from a bike accident, and the aforementioned Oliver Weindling from Babel Label.

The Vortex is a lovely place to hang out – if you see something on their Programme that you’re going to, drop me a line and I might meet you there if I’m not playing myself.

Dalston feels like it’s a bit out of the way, but if you’re driving from north london it’s really easy to get to, and it’s just round the corner from Dalston Kingsland BR station… Go on, go out and support some homegrown jazz instead of wasting your time and money on an overpriced trip to Ronnie Scott’s.

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More recycle bookings…

Been busy over the last couple of weeks lining up the musicians for the new few RC gigs – lots of the people have had on my wish-list for ages are now booked! Yay!

August 23rd – Sebastian Rochford, Andy Hamill and me. This is a bit of a dream line-up. Seb’s one of my favourite drummers I’ve ever played with. We did one gig together in Brighton a couple of years ago, and he listened so well to the loop stuff, and played beautifully. An immensely creative chap, and Mercury Prize nominee last year, no less! He’s in Polar Bear and Acoustic LadyLand and plays with lots of people in the F-IRE collective.

And Andy Hamill. As well as officially being of the nicest people in jazz ever, Andy’s also one of my favourite double bassists anywhere. If you’ve heard either of Theo’s last couple of albums, he’s the low end on there, but has also played with 4 Hero, Carleen Anderson, Shea Seger, Theo Travis, Mark Murphy, Nitin Sawhney, Chris Bowden, Boris Grebenshikov, Cara Dillon, Tracey Thorn, Kylie Minogue, Ben Castle, Ursula Rucker and Harry Hill!

I’ve been wanting to try a trio with drums and double bass for ages, and feel so lucky that the first time I get to try it is with two musicians of this kind of quality. Wow.

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, on Sept 20th, we’ve got saxophonist Jason Yarde, one of the most celebrated young british jazzers of recent times. An outstanding performer, composer, improvisor – a really really interesting musician, who will add something completely new to the RC vibe, for sure. Another huge talent.

And with Jason and I, making a very welcome return, Leo Abrahams – currently out on the road playing guitar for Roxy Music, is also Brian Eno’s guitar monkey, and has worked with Imogen Heap, Nik Kershaw, Ed Harcourt, Paul Simon and a host of other great people. He was excellent last time, he’ll be just as great this time.

And at the moment, it looks like October is going to be BJ Cole and Ingrid Laubrock joining me. How lucky am I? Yay!

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Some very successful Recycling

Well, last night’s Recycle Collective gig was an absolute blinder! For starters, it was the biggest crowd we had so far (more than 80, possibly 90…), the air conditioning was just perfect after the sweatiness of London these last few weeks, and then there was the music…

I started off with a solo set – I sat down to play and realised that all my song-remembering space in my head was full of the New Standard tunes, and I wasn’t sure I could remember my own stuff! But thankfully they all went really well – definitely the best solo set I’ve played at the RC. Finished off the set with a lovely and slightly shorter than the album version of ‘One Step’ with Julie. Fab first set, well done me!

Then came The New Standard Edinburgh set – as y’all know, we’ve rehearsed long and hard for this, and it all went off without a glitch… well, without a noticeable glitch. Small screw up on the play out to the last tune, but I rescued it, and I v. much doubt anyone but Julie noticed. Julie sang beautifully, and the audience loved it. What fun!

And Set three started with two solo pieces by Cleveland Watkiss – the first a baroque counterpoint thing that was just sublime, and the second a dub/drum ‘n’ bass/gospel thing that was equally amazing. Two fine trio improvs finished off the evening, and everyone went away happy, Julie and I both sold lots of CDs (Cleveland is his usual style didn’t bring any merch).

I think Edinburgh’s going to be magique.

If you were there, please write a review, and post it in the comments here, or over in the forum – thanks for coming!

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Rock is Dead?

A fabulous post this morning by Jyoti on Why Rock Is Dead.

I emailed him about it, and it seems the tipping point for him was the same band that I was despairing at on the T in the Park coverage last night – WolfMother. How much more could they want to sound like Led Zep? How much more heinously anachronistic could it be to write ‘new’ songs like that in 2006? Is one of them about to buy Alistair Crowley’s old underpants, just to be like Jimmy Page? A really tragic show, and why on earth are they given such a huge platform?

Jyoti’s right – mainstream rock has become hopelessly derivative, retrogressive and stultifying, the record companies having latched onto a certain lazy section of the music buying public’s desire for perceived novelty and nostlagia at the same time. And it’s balls.

What’s worse – a thousand times worse – is that they’re rubbish. They aren’t even 5% the band that Zep were. None of these bands improve on the blue-print, none of them ever take a 70s formula and end up sounding like the greatest band the 70s never had. They just sound like a half-arsed tribute band with copyright issues. It’s balls.

I’ve always said that it’s more important to be good than to be original. But I’m not talking about slavish cloning. The desire for completely new music can be just as asphyxiating as mindless hero-worship, but to do either without coming up with anything worth listening to is the worse crime of all.

Mediocrity is the single most offensive quality in music. Bands that take risks and end up being appalling get my sneaking admiration. Bands that aren’t great, but are stretching towards something don’t sound mediocre, they sound interesting. To be truly dull requires a level of mis-placed self-satisfaction that stops you from ever looking for more, from moving forward, from building on the innovations of your heroes and finding your own space.

My music isn’t completely new – I wear a few of my influences pretty brightly on my sleeve, and am delighted when someone spots that John Martyn or Joni Mitchell or Michael Manring are in there somewhere. But I don’t actually sound like any of them.

The reason for this is pretty simple – I love Joni’s music. Think she’s pretty much perfect. But I don’t want to write music that sounds like Joni – that would be derivative in exactly the same way she never was – no, instead I want to WRITE MUSIC THAT MAKES ME FEEL THE WAY JONI’S MUSIC MAKES ME FEEL. That has that same sense of being spoken to, being taken on a journey, where the narrative and the music are married perfectly without ever feeling like either is being tugged in a wrong direction by some other unnecessary influence. Joni had her influences, from Dylan to Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. She started out as a folk singer. But she always had her own story to tell, and always sounded like no-one but herself.

That’s the plan. Is Rock Dead? I don’t see why the behaviour of ‘the mainstream’ should be allowed to be seen as killing of an entire genre, but the challenge is certainly there to avoid sounding like the new wave of ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ shit photocopies of 70s and 80s icons, and instead to take the language of rock into somewhere new and interesting, to tell a post-millennial tale, and sound track the current world paradigm, not the three day week, rolling blackouts and the rise of Thatcherism.

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back from Italy

Back from a fantastic trip to Italy – a hugely enjoyable and creative time with Luca Formentini – a fabulous guitarist, and a great friend.

The trip started with a gig in Brescia, playing a soundtrack to a silent film, ‘The Unknown’ by Todd Browning. I’m not much of a silent/old film buff (I’ve seen Dodgeball more times that I care to remember but had never heard of Todd Browning before, and have never even seen Citizen Kane), but I really enjoyed this film. For the soundtrack I was joined by an Italian guitarist, who did a good job (though the circumstances surrounding him playing in the first place were a little more murky – I’ll save that blog-story ’til an email or two have been sent), and the whole thing was well received.

the plan for the weekend was to record a load of duo stuff with Luca – we’d recorded together before, and one of the tracks has ended up on a compilation of Italian electronica artists (Stefano Lawsoni? perhaps…) – the last time we recorded was certainly interesting enough to warrant a repeat session. With both of us being loopers, it always takes a few sessions to settle into roles and what to do with all the shared sonic space.

However, before that, we had a total nightmare with getting soundcards sorted out – Luca had ordered a new RME card, which wasn’t available in time, so his local music shop (the remarkable Musical Box in Verona) were lending us a card. First up, we took a MOTU 828, which just wouldn’t work at all. No good. Not happy running with Audition on a PC.

Back to Musical Box, and swap it for a PreSonus FirePod. Once again, not happy with the PC set up. Which eventually led to Luca swapping over his looping laptop with the Pc, so he did all his loopage on the desktop and we recorded onto the laptop, finally using Cubase LE.

Much stress and lack of sleep was the result for Luca, so it took us another half a day to settle into playing, but from there on, we got a lot of great music recorded. Whereas the first session was predominantly dark ambient, this time we were more melodically driven with more groove oriented stuff. I’m really looking forward to mixing these tracks…

So lots of recording lovely music was punctuated by regular swims in the pool, great food, much inspiring conversation, cuddling the cats, and generally having a totally wonderful time in Italy…

those of you of a sports-fan persuasion will already have worked out that I was there for the football final on Sunday night, when we decamped to a local restaurant to eat great food and watch the game. Penalties are officially a really shit way to end a football match. I reckon widening the goals by a foot every 10 minutes, and tying one of the goalies hands behind his back to speed up the chance of a goal would be better… I was really glad Italy won, though Zidane’s headbutt aside, the French played MUCH better football in the second half and in extra time…

Tuesday morning I got the train back to Musical Box to talk with the owner about playing at EuroBassDay in October, which is booked now, and to show him and the rest of the guys who work in the shop the looperlative, which naturally they all thought was amazing (because it is).

Then Tuesday afternoon I was special guest at a week-long intensive english language camp for teenagers, playing some tunes and having them interview me about what I do, about live in england and generally allowing them to try their english and stretch them in trying to understand me. A hugely enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, which I hope to get to do again.

And Tuesday night, as if all this wasn’t enough, Luca, Gio and I had dinner with Roberto Zorzi – a fantastic improv guitarist and fascinating bloke all round. Another magical Italy evening.

Got back Wednesday night, and poor TSP drove to Gatwick to pick me up in an overheating car. Need to get that fixed ASAP.

All in a marvellous week in Italy. It’s such a great country, the people are generous and positive to a fault, and the climate is just amazing. Love it.

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Edinburgh Beckons

It’s now just over a month til Julie and I start our run at the Edinburgh Fringe – we’re rehearsing weekly now (a pretty much unheard of phenomenon in StevieWorld), and the set list and arrangements are really coming together.

Today had a bit of an 80s vibe – we’ve just done a killer version of ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ with a couple of other 80s classix woven in in the middle, and we were working on a looped vocal version of Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega, where I get to put my bass down for a tune, but still do the loopage…

The set list is pretty much there, we think – about 12 or 13 songs, no filler material at all. The evidence for this is that I was trying to think which songs we’d do if we got a one or two song set on a radio program or cabaret set at the Fringe (or before), and was really struggling to pick out any one stand-out tune. I’m loving them all!

Don’t forget that we’re doing an Edinburgh Preview show in London on July 26th at This month’s Recycle Collective gig, which is also my official album launch. Yes, it’s going to be an amazing night and all the more amazing because Cleveland Watkiss is coming down to do a lovely improv set with Julie and I to close out the evening. I think ‘unmissable’ is the word. 🙂

see you there, x

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