Out and About again
Redundancy-induced enforced leisure meant that Thursday morning at 10.30 found me at the new Kings Place venue, up York Way from Kings Cross. To see two 45-minute concerts by Abram Wilson, a trumpeter from New Orleans who now lives in London.
(He looks like a shorter Paul Ince - with a shiny mullet). The first show was an exploration of the music in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, and the second a recital of Louis Armstrong standards of (mostly) the 20s.
It used to be rare for black artists to perform the "heritage" repertoire, apart from the Preservation Hall setup which was half-white anyway, but lately there's been that all-black banjo band and a couple of other examples that currently evade me.
Anyway, Wilson was pretty good. It takes some nerve for a trumpeter to schedule a concert for 10.30 in the morning, but his lip seemed pretty secure as he tootled around some ragtime parlour favourites accompanied half the time by a "straight" piano player and the other half by Peter Edwards (?) who was pretty good. He opened, unwisely, with a version of "Flight of the BumbleBee" that had a few fluffs and unwanted elisions.
The Armstrong set followed on - it takes some nerve for a trumpet player to schedule 2 45-minute concerts for a weekday morning - with Edwards and a bass player and drummer whose names I didn't catch. The usual problem with modern players doing the 20s repertoire is that they can't avoid throwing in modern harmonies. Wynton Marsalis' album of Jelly Roll Morton stuff is full of it; English trad bands make a better fist of this material because they don't have the harmonic sophistication. Anyway, Wilson and band obviously can play outside these songs, but they manage pretty well to avoid doing so, and it's all the better for it. A very good cheerful set that held the attention. Nice short pieces.
It's invidious to judge on the basis of these two uncharacteristic performances, but it seemed to me that Wilson doesn't yet have his own fully-formed sound. He's pretty good, plays with humour and swing, keeps things moving along nicely, it's just that he's not got a unique voice yet.
Oh, and the venue is great. Two good concert halls - we went en masse Sunday night to hear a harp quartet - decent gallery space, cheap cafes, decent signage, plenty of staff. And it was packed, Thursday morning and Sunday night. I'd not expected that, it seemed a terrible risk and I wasn't sure there'd been enough publicity. Shows what I know.
(He looks like a shorter Paul Ince - with a shiny mullet). The first show was an exploration of the music in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, and the second a recital of Louis Armstrong standards of (mostly) the 20s.
It used to be rare for black artists to perform the "heritage" repertoire, apart from the Preservation Hall setup which was half-white anyway, but lately there's been that all-black banjo band and a couple of other examples that currently evade me.
Anyway, Wilson was pretty good. It takes some nerve for a trumpeter to schedule a concert for 10.30 in the morning, but his lip seemed pretty secure as he tootled around some ragtime parlour favourites accompanied half the time by a "straight" piano player and the other half by Peter Edwards (?) who was pretty good. He opened, unwisely, with a version of "Flight of the BumbleBee" that had a few fluffs and unwanted elisions.
The Armstrong set followed on - it takes some nerve for a trumpet player to schedule 2 45-minute concerts for a weekday morning - with Edwards and a bass player and drummer whose names I didn't catch. The usual problem with modern players doing the 20s repertoire is that they can't avoid throwing in modern harmonies. Wynton Marsalis' album of Jelly Roll Morton stuff is full of it; English trad bands make a better fist of this material because they don't have the harmonic sophistication. Anyway, Wilson and band obviously can play outside these songs, but they manage pretty well to avoid doing so, and it's all the better for it. A very good cheerful set that held the attention. Nice short pieces.
It's invidious to judge on the basis of these two uncharacteristic performances, but it seemed to me that Wilson doesn't yet have his own fully-formed sound. He's pretty good, plays with humour and swing, keeps things moving along nicely, it's just that he's not got a unique voice yet.
Oh, and the venue is great. Two good concert halls - we went en masse Sunday night to hear a harp quartet - decent gallery space, cheap cafes, decent signage, plenty of staff. And it was packed, Thursday morning and Sunday night. I'd not expected that, it seemed a terrible risk and I wasn't sure there'd been enough publicity. Shows what I know.