Should jazz worry about its visuals? If the average fan's idea of a good show is a bunch of guys in cheap suits, with their backs turned to the audience, does presentation matter? Last night I saw three very differently staged piano-led groups. At the Barbican, both staging and lighting enhanced Tord Gustavsen Trio's priestly demeanour. They wore nice suits. At Ronnie Scott's (not part of the festival, but still jazz, thankfully), I saw the brilliant Ahmad Jamal and his quartet, which included Zawinul/Weather Report percussionist Manolo Badrena. The elegant Jamal, in his late 70s, was smartly turned out in a Nehru jacket; the drummer wore a snow-white beret. It wasn't "staged" - there's no room - but the band's energetic and dignified performance seemed exactly right for their innovative and chilled brand of Latin jazz.
At Charlie Wright's International bar, home of the festival's nightly jam session, presentation is minimal: no lights, no stage. The Barry Green trio improvises on standards with great relish, but the musicians are parked on a narrow bit of floor opposite the bar, you can hardly tell musicians from punters. Which may be the point: most of them are musicians, waiting to jam.
John Hassell and Maarifa Street had a different visual aesthetic for their dreamy, dubby set at the QEH last Saturday. Introspective, and in half darkness, they fiddled with electronics and played without looking up. The exception was bassist Peter Freeman, who actually stood up to play occasionally. With the others, it was difficult to tell who was doing what.
Peter Vermeersch's 14-strong Flat Earth Society are certainly theatrical, but that's in the music, not the way they dress or use the stage. It was riveting to watch them play difficult scores as if they were head charts, disintegrating into a street-brawl of chaotic improvisation before returning to something exquisitely beautiful. The Flat Earth Society often perform with silent movies, which deals neatly with the issue of what to look at.
The band who took the most trouble were Tuxedomoon, with visual artist Bruce Geduldig bang in the middle of the stage. Dressed in an expensive-looking suit, he manipulated film and video and overhead projectors to make an organic and effective (for about half the time) visual complement to the band's angsty sound. Though it would have been better had he been at the side - like filmmaker Biljana Tuturov with Darko Rundek. When the visuals didn't work very well, like a piece of business that involved swigging red wine and regurgitating it through plastic tubing, the results fell far short of the distracting effort required to produce them.
