The Felonious Monks - Manchester Jazz Festival 2013

The Felonious Monks, St. Ann's Church. Saturday 3rd July 2013

Six o’clock in St Ann’s Church was time for some stepping around in time as part of this year’s world premiere Manchester Jazz Festival commission. Our time travel guides were 'The Felonious Monks’ led by Mike Hall on tenor sax plus various other horns, and Debbie Rogers on alto sax, vocals plus various other horns.  The Felonious Monks explored the fusion of early Renaissance music with contemporary jazz, using a mixture of modern and replica C16th instruments. Compositional devices of the period were employed to structure the compositions, introducing vintage timbres to the existing jazz palette. This concept could easily not have worked, but Hall and Rogers pulled it off with aplomb, clearly having given a great deal of thought to the involved arrangements, as well as putting a lot of time into rehearsal. Many musician’s comfort zones were stretched to include playing crumhorns, shawms, cornamuses, cornetts, sackbuts, and gemshorns to name a few.



The first 16th century sounds we heard came trumpeting out from the church balcony, these players then joining the main band at the front of the stage. Second track ‘Ballo Francese’ bluntly juxtaposed short sections of early music interspersed with short sections of full on bebop. It shouldn’t have worked, but did so gloriously. ‘Robyn’s Lament’ started with some vulnerable period singing from Rogers, Simon Lodge (otherwise on trombone) and double bass player Steve Berry, the latter reaching impressive falsetto heights. I’ve never heard this style of period singing in person before and really enjoyed it. Probably my favourite was the blues based ‘Of The Night’. The track shifted into a classic Coltrane style vamp, the modal chords fitting the sounds of the period instruments really well. This perhaps shouldn’t be so surprising given the crossover of the modal approach between these distant musical relatives. George King on piano vamped out some tasty McCoy Tyner style voicings, Steve Waterman then giving one of a number of blistering solos, this one on the flugel horn.

Berry delivered a touching solo double bass intro to the melancholic horns and vocals of ‘Three Part Intention’. The set closer, ‘Time Trip’ sounded very 1960s US detective movie to me, taking the tones of the evening in yet another unexpected direction.  Players of horns old and new: Helena Summerfield, Jim Fieldhouse, Carl Raven, Russell Gilmour, along with Paul Hartley on guitar and Eryl Roberts on drums, all added to the delivery of these quite tricky but wonderfully unusual arrangements. The evening was a true privilege to experience.