Our Monumental & Impressive Endeavour: Jazzwise On Our EFG London Jazz Festival Concert

Jazzwise – EFG London Jazz Festival – Review by Peter Vacher

Paul Whiteman – Bix, Bing & Rhapsody in Blue – Cadogan Hall, 22 November 2015

The Festival’s final day allowed the fleet of foot and this reporter to speed across the capital to embrace jazz in its period glory and then to take in a bracing look at the music today.  Old and new personified.   Where better than the  vaulted space of the  Cadogan Hall to observe Richard Pite’s Jazz Repertory Company in their monumental and most ambitious project to date?   For that matter, hard to improve on Pizza Express to experience small group modern jazz full on and with no holds barred.

Pite had assembled no less than 30 performers, rehearsed them hard, and produced a programme devoted to the music of the mighty Paul Whiteman Orchestra of the late 1920s, with a particular focus on the period when Bing Crosby [as part of the Rhythm Boys] and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke were with the band.  For Crosby, he had recruited Thomas ‘Spats’ Langham, a man who knows how to warble in the old Groaner’s manner, and for Bix, he had enlisted GuyBarker who, complete with an authentic instrument, recreated Bix’s solos with sensitivity and aplomb.  And that’s not to overlook Richard White as the present-day emulator of C-Melody saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer.

With Keith Nichols as Musical Director and Radio 3’s Alyn Shipton on hand to provide the linking narrative, this impressive endeavour opened with a quintet version of the ODJB’s ‘Livery Stable Blues’, in an apparent harking back to Whiteman’s 1924 Aeolian Hall ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’ concert.  Then came the full orchestra to take us through the best of the Whiteman dance-tempo repertoire, with no hint of period parody, just tight, vigorous playing, underpinned by Marc Easener’s perfect sousaphone lines.   Add in the six strings and the sheer pleasure of hearing some of London’s finest musicians at work on arrangements by luminaries such as Ferde Grofé and Bill Challis and you’ll sense that this was a rare and very special occasion.

Made more so by the triumphant presentation of George Gershwin’s full ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ score, also premiered originally at Aeolian Hall in 1924, with Nick Dawson taking Gershwin’s place as the piano soloist and Pete Long conducting.  Dawson had learned the entire piece and played from memory, his faultless keyboard command and the sheer élan of the orchestral playing making this a truly memorable achievement, with that evocative opening clarinet cadenza handled brilliantly by Mark Crooks.

In a concert packed with moments to savour, just to hear Barker’s recreation of Bix’s sublime solo on ‘Singing the Blues’ was a joy but then so too was violinist Emma Fisk’s recall of Joe Venuti on the small group version of ‘Raggin’ the Scale’, complete with David Horniblow’s bass saxophone and the guitar work of Martin Wheatley.  Whiteman’s reputation hasn’t always been without controversy; on this showing his music was eminently worth preserving and most important perhaps, great to hear anew.

Peter Vacher / 25.11.2015  (PHOTOS BY: John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk)

Concerts from the Jazz Repertory Company: