Music
Spark Trio
Griffin, Glasgow
Rob Adams
four stars
EVEN allowing for jazz already being the sound of surprise, as the late Whitney Balliett described its improvised nature, it can still deliver the unexpected. Who would have imagined, for example, that Old Devil Moon could be refashioned as the spooky, weird and wonderful, intriguing earworm it materialised as here. Or that Bye Bye Blackbird might develop a gnarly edge that made it oddly familiar and yet completely new?
This was the opening night of a new monthly Monday series in the Griffin’s cosy music room and as the hosts and house band for imminent guests, saxophonists Paul Towndrow and Brian Molley, Spark Trio’s manifesto bodes very well indeed. Organist Paul Harrison, guitarist Joe Williamson and drummer Stephen Henderson form a listening, responsive unit. Quite apart from finding fresh ways of presenting jazz standards (they opened with a smart, updated I’ll Remember April) and having original compositions that linger in the mind long after the music stops, they take each number on a spontaneous, conversational journey.
Williamson brings both concision and incision to his solos, sometimes sounding a little like Pat Metheny as notes bend and sigh, and Harrison explores a tune’s whole harmonic chassis with right-handed lines that might easily come from a saxophone while all the time pumping out rigorously swinging bass parts with his left.
Harrison’s bluesy June Tune and Abdullah Ibrahim’s sometime theme tune, the African hymn-like The Wedding brought beautifully restrained passion on fretboard and keys and at the other end of the dynamic spectrum the group surged, being buoyed and propelled by the superb spring and swing of Henderson’s rhythmical perpetual motion. They’re back on April 3. Join them.
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