English Clubnight at Jazzahead

It’s early in the morning, this brain hasn’t had coffee and isn’t fully in gear yet, but I need to explain how some impeccably logical thinking came to fruition last night. Here goes:

Theatre from the British Isles has a home in Bremen. The Bremer Shakespeare Company puts on multiple productions of the Bard of Avon, but also of Virginia Woolf, Mike Bartlett and others in the current programme….

So… therefore – as Mike Flynn pointed out from the stage last night– Sybille Kornitschky, who runs jazzahead for Messe Bremen has wanted jazz from the British Isles to have the same home for one night each year during the world’s largest gathering of the jazz industry.

Last night, it happened.

Peter Conway, Nick Brown and Mike Flynn, together with Jakob Fraisse of jazzahead worked with the team from the theatre to put on a great night. The quality of sound from the stage was praised by some. Others gave five star reviews to the extremely welcoming Falstaff bar, a place difficult to leave even if there’s a great concert going on in the same building.

This was a well balanced programme. First was Jo Harrop. The subtle ways in which the vocalist – with Sam Watts and Jack Garside last night – knows how to connect with audiences with authenticity, directness and her complete heart and soul are something very special indeed.

We then had Rebecca Nash’s trio with Henrik Jensen and Dave Smith giving a premiere of “Aurum”, “a musical journey inspired by the legend of the Merchant Royal,” a shipwreck from 1641. How music so new, fresh and vivid can also be in such astonishingly balance is due to the craft of all three players. To this trio context, Dave Smith gives such astonishing delicacy, it is hard to imagine (and possibly not that relevant to recall) that this is the same musician who spent six years rocking festivals with Robert Plant. The movement “Hallucinations” from this new suite of music is the kind of piece whose subtlety and vividness and flow makes the listener want to hear it again. Soon please!

The arrival of Mark Kavuma’s band raised the temperature and the mood in exactly the right way. The leader himself sets the tone by playing in a way that is not just clear and bright and leaves space, but also has a communicative warmth that spreads through the room. ( I need to add more here!)

There was also a jam session starting at midnight, and we hope to add a report later. Elsewhere in Bremen there was a jazzahead showcase by Norman and Corrie, a duo set from Brigitte Beraha and Ant Law and a Sendesaal concert by Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio.

“This scepter’d isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise” was out in force in Bremen last night.