Threeway (Ben Crosland – bass composition, Steve Lodder – keyboards, Steve Waterman – trumpet) with guest John Etheridge have a new album, HARKEN!, marking the 500th anniversary of the foundation of Sedbergh School in Cumbria.
Rob Adams writes: Sedbergh isn’t a name that comes up often in conversations about jazz. Situated between the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, it’s a town that’s known for producing rugby players – the Wills Carling and Greenwood among them – and for attracting walkers to the surrounding hills and readers to its annual book festival.
It’s also at the heart of HARKEN!, the fourth album by Threeway, which has a suite by bassist Ben Crosland that honours the local school’s core values of Humility, Ambition, Resilience and Kindness as it approaches its Quincentenary next year.
Crosland also composed the album track Cairnbank in honour of his music teacher at the school, Victor Brook, whose chord charts for Handel flute and oboe sonatas enabled Crosland to accompany his teacher on guitar.
“I treasure those charts,” says Crosland. “Cairnbank was Victor’s house and he still inspires me to this day.”
There’s a pastoral quality to HARKEN! generally. The cover photograph takes you into the dales and the music has a quiet classical influence, as you might expect from a trio of trumpet/flugelhorn, keyboards and bass who are happy to embrace the term chamber jazz.
“I think of the music as conversational,” says trumpeter Steve Waterman. “When I started writing for the group I was listening a lot to those Chet Baker albums where he’s working in a trio without drums.”
Keyboardist Steve Lodder agrees. “There’s a misconception that time keeping is the drummer’s job,” he says. “Whereas I think it’s a corporate responsibility and that the music can have momentum and energy without a drummer.”
HARKEN! certainly has energy and momentum. Crosland’s arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s “Black Crow” is a case in point, capturing the sense of restlessness and easy portability that the parent album, Hejira, conveyed.
Another source of energy is the trio’s guest on the album, guitarist John Etheridge.
“This year marks our twentieth anniversary,” says Crosland. “So, we thought it would be good, as HARKEN! is our fourth album, to introduce a fourth voice. We all know John well and he was a natural choice. He also came onboard with our idea that we should have an even distribution of compositional voices.”
Etheridge’s “AB4BC” is an altered blues dedicated to Crosland and his playing on this, and on Resilience in particular, typifies his brilliant spontaneity, his ability to seemingly produce fire to order.
“John has a reputation for playing fast and strong,” says Lodder. “There are any number of examples of him doing that throughout his recorded catalogue. But what I love about him is, he brings the same sense of daring to a ballad as he does to an up-tempo number. It’s a tremendous asset.”
In addition to Etheridge, there were other important contributors to HARKEN! Waterman, Lodder and Crosland are unanimous in their praise of Ru Lemer, the recording engineer at Temple Music Studio and Andrew Tulloch at The Blue Studio, who handled mixing and mastering.
“Andrew really brought our performances alive. He did an excellent job,” says Crosland. “And Temple is the studio built by Jon Hiseman and Barbara Thompson whose spirit Ru embodies. He’s so easy to work with and he made us feel comfortable immediately.”
“He also has a well maintained piano, a great Fender Rhodes and a lovely Hammond B3,” adds Lodder who enjoyed having those instruments at his disposal.
A variety of sounds, as much as a variety of material, is important to the group.
“We all contribute to the arrangements,” says Waterman. “When I’m writing, a tune might not begin as a Threeway tune but it will develop into one as the recording approaches. That’s when I’ll decide if it’s a trumpet or a flugelhorn piece, if it’s to be muted or unmuted, and knowing there are different possibilities – piano, keyboard, organ, acoustic or electric bass guitar – makes it interesting for me to see where a piece goes.”
HARKEN! will be launched officially at Buxton International Festival on Monday 8 July, with John Etheridge guesting. Before that, Threeway have their 20th Anniversary Concert in Sutton Coldfield on 9th June and concerts in Coventry (20 June), Cambridge (22) and Harwich (23).
“We have gigs into the autumn and a short tour of Cumbria booked for early next year already,” says Crosland. “So we’ll be taking the music from HARKEN! to as many people as possible as we go into our 21st year together.”
