Wakefield Jazz have been hosting top quality gigs for over 30 years at their Wakefield Sports Club home, and Friday night’s event was no exception. Following a successful performance at The Vortex on Wednesday, Alexander Hawkins and Marco Colonna brought their celebration of the great Eric Dolphy – who died 60 years ago – to the club and put on an exceptional show, full of drama and a fitting tribute to one of the masters of the bass clarinet.
The evening featured a selection of Dolphy’s compositions, many from his 1964 classic album Out To Lunch, interspersed with a number of Marco Colonna’s own tunes. Opening with a driving rendition of “Miss Ann”, Hawkins’ pounding left hand providing a foundation for Colonna’s soaring and spluttering bass clarinet. “Out To Lunch” was soulful and nourishing, as one would expect, and the first set continued in this vein, one tune segueing into another before Colonna’s tune “Frame” brought an end to the sequence. Colonna then finished the first set with an extraordinary solo rendition of “God Bless the Child”.
The second set opened with “Something Sweet, Something Tender”, Hawkins’ hands dancing up and down the keyboard before the bass clarinet introduced the melody and the intensity slowly gathered before ebbing away as the tune gave way to Colonna’s composition “Fishbone”, the title of which leaves little to the imagination; very spiky, with Hawkins delving into the piano’s internal workings, damping and plucking the strings to great effect.
More from Out To Lunch followed, with fine a performance of Straight Up and Down followed by Colonna’s Indelebile and a quirky, humorous take on “Gazzelloni”. “Mariposa” followed and the evening was brought to a close with a slow, bluesy version of “245”.
This was an assured and remarkable performance with both artists at the top of their game. Marco Colonna is one of the few bass clarinettists performing today who can adequately do justice to Dolphy’s compositions and Alexander Hawkins is the ideal foil, his consummate skill as a performer injecting new life into Dolphy’s extraordinary repertoire.
Sadly, this was the final date on this brief tour, but the duo’s 2020 CD Dolphy Underlined is available via Bandcamp.
Set 1
Miss Ann
Out To Lunch
Un Filo (Colonna)
Serene
Phalena (Colonna)
Frame (Colonna)
God Bless The Child
Set 2
Something Sweet, Something Tender
Fishbone (Colonna)
Straight Up and Down
Indelebile (Colonna)
Gazzelloni
Mariposa
245
Compositions by Eric Dolphy except where noted.
