St George’s Bristol is a 200 year-old Church but a posh new addition gives us the Glass Room, an excellent smaller space to enjoy this rip-roaring five-piece band up close. It was a stirring homecoming gig for Out Front’s instigator, trumpeter Nick Malcolm, tenorist Jake McMurchie and Somerset resident, drummer Dave Smith, after a stretched out seven-date tour with bandmates Jason Yarde on alto sax and (co-leader) Olie Brice on bass.
Even more stretched out than the tour was the band’s gestation, which began in early 2020 but only came to fruition after unusual vicissitudes, not all of them pandemic-related. But the excellent notion behind this ensemble, to explore the compositions of two of Malcolm’s main men, Booker Little and Andrew Hill, carried them through.
From the first number, Hill’s classic Black Fire, this was music worth waiting for. All three horns responded joyfully to Hill’s insistent theme. This band, pianoless, lent it a freer sound than the original, the more so as Brice and especially Smith are less concerned with keeping strict time than Roy Haynes and Richard Davis were back in 1964.
That, as the band made clear over two blistering sets, was where this music was headed more than half a century ago. Hill, whose style Brian Morton and Richard Cook aptly termed “forceful dissonance”, and the woefully short-lived Little both pointed toward the era when rhythm became implied as much as stated, complementing horn-players who were liberated by the broader harmonic palette of post-bop. It’s music that is uncompromising in its way, resolutely exploratory, full of high drama. Where there is lyricism, it is usually slightly tart; when there is poetry, it may have a few cracks. Their composing, for all that, was still highly organised, and the unpredictable, sometimes precariously maintained balance between inside and outside playing gave their music a delicious tension.
It must also still be some of the hardest music to play well, but these five grew up with that challenge and in this band they offer a real thrill-ride of soloing and intensely focussed ensemble playing. Brice’s huge bass sound is ever-present – he can supply the deepest groove while getting a bounce from the strings worthy of Johnny Dyani. That allows Smith to boil and fizz around the beat like water on a hot plate. The soloists are in their element. Malcolm, as ever, recalls the links between Booker Little and Kenny Wheeler’s intervallic leaps, McMurchie has a rich compendium of tenor styles at his disposal, and Yarde’s alto, once heard with Hill himself, is as incisive as he is inventive.
Together, they make Hill’s Dusk and Yokada Yokada, Little’s Bee Vamp – memorably recorded in 1961 with Eric Dolphy – Bee Tee’s Minor Plea, and Moods in Free Time, from the album the band takes their name from, into vital contemporary music. Hill’s later piece Time Lines, combining a wondrously off-kilter bass figure with three horn polyphony, is a second set highlight.
This is not just a revival project, though. Both sets also feature new compositions for the band by Malcolm. They plan to record in 2024, and no doubt there will be more new music by then. Meantime, let’s hope this rare quintet’s diaries allow them to schedule more live dates, and rekindle the fires that blazed on this chilly evening in Bristol.
Jon Turney writes about jazz, and other things, from Bristol. You can find him on WordPress and Bluesky.