“I wanted to explore the 70s Brazilian sound…I met Luiz Morais and that just clicked into place.” UKJN spoke to Cheltenham-based saxophonist Dom Franks about the second instalment of his twin album project, and about his enthusiasm for what is happening on the West of England jazz scene…
Following the release of Duality Pt. 1 back in 2024, Cheltenham-based saxophonist Dom Franks is back with his Strayhorn band – since 2010 a showcase for Dom’s compositions, featuring a revolving cast of the West of England’s finest jazz musicians – for the second half of his Duality project: an album set for release this September. While Duality Pt. 1 served as a tribute to Hammond organists Larry Goldings and Joey DeFrancesco, featuring plenty of original funky Hammond riffs and post bop grooves, the second instalment takes things in a different direction.
It’s a collaboration with a number of different musicians, including Brazilian arranger Luiz Morais, the Carducci String Quartet and fellow West-of-England-based guitarist Aidan Pope, plus bassist Jules Jackson, Alex Steele on keyboards and Andrew Brotherton on drums.
While not an album of Brazilian jazz per se, Duality Pt. 2 is “a love letter to 70s Brazilian MPB [Música popular brasileira], jazz and funk, with a nod to the contemporary string arrangements of Vince Mendoza”.
Pt. 2 has quite a different sound to its predecessor, and the string arrangements are lush and well-written (Franks is no stranger to working with orchestras and larger ensembles). The funky grooves aren’t lost though: the third track, Full Time Mover, serves as a stylistic bridge between the twin albums. Other highlights include the title track, Duality (Twin Poles), an emotive, filmic ballad in which the Carducci String Quartet’s contributions can really be appreciated, while Lullaby for Yerevan is a reflection on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I chatted with Dom Franks about the album’s influences, Brazilian music, and the West of England jazz scene.
The project was born out of Franks’ desire to create his own voice, and Pt. 2 started to come together when the opportunity to collaborate with Luiz Morais arose. “As I recorded Pt. 1, it gradually became clear to me what I wanted to do with Pt. 2, and that was to explore that 70s Brazilian sound. And then I met Luiz Morais and that just clicked into place.” The timing was perfect: “I’d already sketched out some string arrangements but I’m not a trained string arranger so I wanted to do a better job than I could do myself. [Morais has] learned with Vittor Santos in Rio and he’s the real deal. It was great collaborating with him.”
A self-confessed music geek, Franks has been obsessed with Brazilian music since he was a teenager: “I probably got into it through Getz and Jobim like everyone else, and then got into Pat Metheny’s 80s stuff. I was probably 13 when I first started playing sax.” He recommends a good playlist’s worth of stuff here: as well as Morais’ own Brazilian Big Band, there’s Metheny’s collaborations with Milton Nascimento and the Pat Metheny Group’s Letter From Home, Caetano Veloso, and Milton Nascimento. “Obviously Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobim, all the MPB singer-songwriters. I think I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into it because it’s maybe like a meeting point with the classical music that I grew up with. You’ve got these really rich harmonic palettes that are influenced by American jazz, there’s lots of improv. But they’re more than that. There’s a richness to the harmonic language that I’m totally in love with. And then you’ve got the grooves!”
Perhaps a bit less exotic than Brazil but no less important to Duality is the West of England: Birmingham-based guitarist Aidan Pope is described as “very much a West Country boy”. And then there’s the Carducci: “They can just do anything you put in front of them. They’re the perfect string quartet who are really open-minded and can turn their skills to anything, and they have big open ears.”
Franks talks about the West of England scene with no less enthusiasm than he does about Brazil: of the growing scenes in Stroud and Frome and a host of other musicians including Daniel Inzani, Jules Jackson and John Law.
So what’s next? I’m told a tour is in the works, as well as more writing: “I wrote a tune yesterday, and surprise surprise it’s got Brazilian influences in it. The thing that interests me is how to write a good melody. The tunes that I’ve written that seem to stick around tend to be the ones where there’s just something about the melody that’s clicked. This bossa I wrote yesterday I’m quite pleased with: I couldn’t tell you why, it’s just that it came organically and I wasn’t thinking too much. Pat Metheny has this great quote: ‘Even now, if I’m honest, I’m always happiest when I don’t really know what I’m doing’”.
The first single from Duality Pt. 2, “Simple Song (for Jimmy Webb)” – Spotify embed above – is out now. It is a collaboration between Cheltenham-based composer and saxophonist Dom Franks, Brazilian guitarist-arranger Luiz Morais, and the Carducci String Quartet. A contemplative, uplifting track, Simple Song treads a path between melodically-accessible contemporary jazz, the classically-styled string arrangements of Vince Mendoza and Giberto Gil, and the rich harmonic sound world of songwriting great Jimmy Webb – whom Dom has long admired.
The album is set for release on 17 September.
