This was one of those gigs where it all comes together. The enthusiastic buzz of the audience beforehand, the smiling musicians stepping onto the stage and most of all the instant chemistry between them when they start to play. Julian Marc Stringle (clarinet) enthuses about playing with his Dream Band and it’s easy to see why. Together with the excellent Dominic Ashworth (guitar), Mike Bradley (drums), Jacqui Hicks (vocals) and Davide Mantovani (electric bass) he provided a musical feast for the audience at the Horsebridge from the off.
Stringle has been a pioneer in placing the clarinet in a more contemporary musical setting and this came through strongly in his fresh interpretations of classic tunes, as well as the straight-ahead jazz compositions and the more latin-influenced numbers in the set. During the performance he name-checked key early influences Benny Goodman and Buddy de Franco and he certainly brought together both the awe-inspiring technique and speed of the former and the warm feeling of the latter’s playing to his own pure transcendent tone.
The band kicked off with the latin tune “Hey You, Pretty Thing”, which set the tone with its well-paced, body-moving and confident feel. After Stringle’s soaring opening, Ashworth excelled in his solo, his precise, tangy notes really hitting the spot over Bradley’s distinctively sharp funky drumming and Mantovani’s bass-playing. The latter’s style, including the chordal elements, displayed a real affinity with the Brazilian feel of the piece.
Jacqui Hicks joined the band to deliver two Rodgers & Hart songs including a very fine “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in a samba style to close the first set. Her singing was beautifully judged and refreshingly unfussy, with a focus on the delivery of the meaning in the lyrics. This was backed by some wonderfully supple drumming from Bradley and another crystalline solo from Stringle.
A highlight of the second set was the Ashworth-arranged version of Gershwin’s masterpiece “Rhapsody in Blue”, which had the audience entranced throughout with the sheer quality of the band’s playing. Both Stringle and Ashworth excelled, the former particularly with his effortless swoops and the high-pitch ending of the piece, the latter with the precise interweaving of his guitar notes with the clarinet’s line. Again, Mantovani also impressed with his subtle underpinning pulse.
Throughout the gig, Stringle proved to be both a supportive leader and an entertaining and charismatic figure. At one point he introduced the standard “Poor Butterfly” as his Spurs-supporting nan’s favourite song before relating a good story about her meeting Harry Kane. The audience lapped it up.
Hicks returned to deliver one of her own compositions, the bossa-like “Summer Samba”. In a pleasing change of pace, this was followed by a properly soulful version of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s classic “How Sweet It Is”, expertly delivered by the Shakatak vocalist. On the latter tune, Stringle’s tone was spectacular, especially at the higher registers. The band closed with another Dream Band staple, “Sweet Georgia Brown”, its excellent groove orchestrated by Bradley, before encoring with a pacy “I got Rhythm/Anthropology.”
The audience buzz at the start was still very much there after the music had ceased. Overall, a brilliant gig, and The Horsebridge Arts Centre’s monthly ‘Jazz at the Horsebridge’ series, organised by musical director and singer Kai Hoffman in collaboration with Broad Reach Records deserves a lot of credit for rapidly establishing it as an exciting jazz venue in North Kent and bringing such top artists to its fine performance space.
