February’s edition of the Cockpit’s monthly Jazz in the Round performances had a special resonance, as it was the last recording for the BBC’s Jazz on 3 series, winding up after 18 years and 900 shows. It was an emotional night for Jo3’s devoted presenter Jez Nelson (athough his own new slot on Jazz FM is imminent), but an all-star cast of British jazz luminaries could hardly have made it a more upbeat tribute.
The crisply disciplined and just as crisply attired quartet Empirical opened the three-set show with a time-juggling handclap pattern that was stirred by saxophonist Nathaniel Facey into muscular avant-swing and poignant tonal nuances. The grooving and floating flexibility of vibraphonist Lewis Wright’s Mind Over Mayhem (veering between tight arrhythmic games and the composer’s flying bebop virtuosity) and bassist Tom Farmer’s Ornette Coleman-esque Card Clash furthered the impression that this fine group’s long-cultivated empathy keeps on growing.
Pianist Django Bates’ rare solo appearance began with an appealing vocal depicting a conversation between him and the instrument, segueing into a piano ballad of solemn lyricism and a fast E flat horn solo that mixed animalistic snuffles and sleek bebop lines. A rhythmically choppy, South African-inflected piece finally built to a whirling chordal climax, in the midst of which Bates stopped dead, declared “you know the rest”, bowed and left to roars.
The revered free-jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, young trumpeter Laura Jurd, pianist Alex Hawkins and vibraphonist Orphy Robinson wound up the evening with an improv jam that fused Jurd’s staccato enquiries, Parker’s growling tenor-sax rejoinders, Robinson’s ringing rhythms and Hawkins’ percussive chord work. A few more intimate one-to-ones in the band would have varied the interest, but as a tribute to music in the moment, it was exactly what this remarkable evening was all about.
