St Ann’s church is an established festival venue for Manchester Jazz Festival and the concert by Trish Clowes and Ross Stanley continued this tradition as the only concert taking place there in the 29th festival. The great acoustic of the church is ideal for this duo’s music.
Trish and Ross have been working together for some time and the latest incarnation is as a duo of tenor saxophone and piano. Both players are highly accomplished players and improvisers, and there is a high degree of interplay between them.
Ross was most recently previously seen in Manchester last November only metres away from this venue playing organ with Nigel Price’s band in a now defunct piano bar, having had to carry his Hammond organ and Leslie speaker down several flights of stairs.
This concert was straight through with no interval and opened with the Abdullah Ibrahim piece ‘The Wedding’ with the playing of the melody bringing to the fore Trish’s beautiful, focused sound.
Two pieces were featured from their recent album ‘Journey To Where’. These pieces were dedicated to two acknowledged influences of each of them. The tune ‘Perfectly Ripped’ written by Trish is a contrafact of the standard ‘Just In Time’ and is dedicated to Trish’s big hero Wayne Shorter. The melody is made up of bits of Wayne’s improvised lines played on the same set of changes.’ Ashford Days’ is a piece written by Ross and dedicated to the great pianist John Taylor. The title is a nod to JT’s own piece ‘Ambleside Days’.
It was interesting to hear ‘Pie Jesu’ by Lili Boulanger – the piece dictated to her sister Nadia from her deathbed – which apparently had been discovered by local pianist Les Chisnall. Trish commented on the fact it used a similar harmonic palette to Bob Brookmeyer’s writing, but that the piece had been written in 1918.
As a complete contrast Trish’s piece ‘Wake Up’ was written about the son of a close friend who is into the children’s TV show ‘Hey Duggee’.
The influence of John Taylor came up again a bit later where his arrangement of Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke’s ‘The Midnight Sun’ originally recorded with Norma Winstone on the 1988 album ‘In Concert’ was played in a medley along with two pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim.
‘Skin’ by American pianist Geri Allen provided more contrast. Trish pointed out that Geri Allen is one of Nikki Iles’ favourite players before playing Nikki’s piece ‘Awakenings’ which had been commissioned by Trish some years ago. The original setting was for a fairly large group including bassoon and has recently been made into a big band piece by Nikki featured on her recent album with the NDR Big Band ‘Face To Face’. The same piece played by the duo still retained the character of the original, even when pared down to just sax and piano.
The encore was a version of Rodgers and Hart’s ‘Spring Is Here’ which made reference to Bill Evans’ classic recording of the same tune.
A really nice concert by two leading figures of the U.K. Jazz scene played to an enthusiastic and attentive audience.
