Electronic Sunshine - Manchester Jazz Festival day 4

I was looking forward to seeing the Arun Ghosh Indo-Jazz Sextet down at Matt and Phreds on the Monday 21st July as soon as I saw the mjf festival program. I caught Arun's fab CD launch gig at the Contact Theatre a few months ago. That one was an amazing gig but this one managed to surpass it.

Arun started the evening with a surging solo improvisation that immediately grabbed the audience's attention and more or less hushed a packed Matt and Phreds, no mean feat and not something I've witnessed before. The band then launched into a punchy and forceful version of 'Aurora', the first track on the new CD and the perfect set opener. Arun really is a captivating and hypnotic performer with real star quality in addition to being a great song composer and lovely improviser on the clarinet. The brooding and intensely epic 'Uterine' was once again a highlight for me with the electronic tanpura accompanied timeless tune leading into a great modal vamp and some ecstatic improvising from Arun and tenor sax player Idris Rahman.

The second set opened with a guest appearance from the omnipresent John Ellis on piano joining in on a simple and expansive South Indian tune that John had introduced to Arun some time ago. Another highlight from the CD was the joyous and life enhancing 'Bondhu' delivered with such swaggering confidence and vigour that by this point the band were so much in the zone they could do no wrong. There were some great moments all through from Kishon Khan on the piano and the rhythm section players Sylvan Richardson on bass, Rastko Rasic on darbuka and Myke Wilson all aquitted themselves admirably.

It was an honour to be a witness at one of the highpoints of this years festival for sure.

Spirit, Form and Frolics - Manchester Jazz Festival day 3

I've never quite managed to get a seat for a Sunday at the festival in the Bridgewater Hall Foyer in previous years so I made it down a good half hour early and still only just managed to get one. It's great to see so much support. As the festival Director Steve Mead said in his introduction to the first band, there was a risk of ODing on jazz today but I figured I'd risk it anyway.

First up was the Gareth Roberts Quintet from Cardiff. Some cool Horace Silvery grooves were mixed with takes on traditional Welsh folksongs amusingly introduced by cheeky chappy trombone playing band leader Gareth. The rhythm partnership of brothers Chris and Mark O'Connor worked really well, the drummer Mark having a pleasing lazy feel exemplifed on the groovy (man) 'Mop Dancing'. The improvisations from Gareth, trumpet player Gethin and piano player Paul were a tad rough at the edges but were made up for by the good feeling the boys were getting across and the strength in the tunes.

The Alcyona Mick Quintet were a different proposition entirely. The material was fast and fullsome from the off. Alcyona is a graduate of the Birmingham Conservatoire and has very impressive technique as do all the players in this group. Most of the tunes were both rhythmically and harmonically complex and frequently delivered at quite a pace too. The music was nevertheless still exciting and accessible and didn't sound academic as can be the danger when students have almost too much technique and knowledge.

By many accounts Free Spirits were the act people to check out in the foyer today and it sounded very promising as I'm quite partial to a bit of indo-jazz as readers of this blog may have spotted. I'm told sitar player Dharambir Singh and tabla player Bhupinder Singh Chaggar are leaders in their field on their respective instruments. I have to confess however that this set left me cold. To my ears the sitar playing was a little unconvincing and lacked ideas, and I didn't get a whole lot from the bass or tablas either. I felt it was left to Lewis Watson on saxophones to give the music a bit more depth and variety and he was doing more interesting stuff harmonically for me at least but the backing only allowed him to go so far.

After a couple of hours break we were in to the double bill of La Gran Descarga and Roberta Fonseca in the Bridgewater main hall. I have a bit of a love hate realtionship with latin jazz so I wasn't sure how I'd take to the evening performances but I was happy to go with an open mind. I'm really glad I did as well as La Gran Descarga put in a great performance and went down really well. This is a big 22 piece band and did they a good job of filling the stage and hall. They cooked up a tasty rhythmic brew with some great horn riffs arrangements from double bass player Matt Owens, some good solos all round with a particularly good solo spot from Neil Yates. Some gusty singing from Kirsty Almeida rounded the whole thing off nicely. Some of the audience were itching to get on their feet and a fair few didn't need asking twice when invited by Kirsty for the last song. Shame they couldn't have asked sooner. A standing ovation from the entire hall made it clear this had been a fab gig. It must be good also for Manchester jazz and the festival. I hope the Bridgewater Hall promoters took note.

Roberta and his group had quite a tough act following the energy and good feeling set up by La Gran Descarga. They did a good job of it on the whole and there was lovely high energy playing but I think I was pretty spent by then. It didn't really sustain it's interest for me for the whole set though there were some great tunes in there and they're clearly a good bunch of players. I think was a bit jazzed out so I need to reserve judgement until I get a chance to listen to some more material.

Phew, so that was Sunday.

Longsight Calling

I'm late getting this review out but I figured it was well worth as it was such a great gig. Matt Halsall has mentioned a few times to me about Arun Ghosh who has been playing regularly at the Royal Exchange Theatre. I still haven't made it to one of those but I did finally get down to the 'Northern Namaste' album launch gig at the Contact Theatre on the 17th of May. Damn glad I did as well as it was a really phenomenal gig. The band for this one was Arun's Indo-Jazz Sextet. Though I'm no expert, indo-jazz describes the overall sound well but there's a fair mix of different styles in there, much of it in a classic hypnotic modal vein. I particularly liked the track 'Uterine' reminiscent of a great Pharoah Sanders slow modal vamp. Another fave of mine was the CD opener 'Aurora' which is quite a tasty uplifting track that sets the mood and tone for the CD well. You can hear a number of the tracks on Arun's MySpace.

Arun is also visually captivating, swaying back and forth with one foot in front of the other propelling the notes forward with extra momentum. He frequently wanders off mic and out of the light adding a distant backdrop to the soloists. There was some great playing all round from the other players with Led Bib Bass player Liran Donin and keyboard player Kishon Khan standing out. I picked up a copy of the CD afterwards and I can highly recommend it. Buy one now.