The glorious waves of the music furiously swirled and crashed around me, stirring all my senses and sending my spirits soaring. I thought: “This must be what white water rafting is like.”
The Double Quartet of saxophonist and composer Paul Dunmall gave a truly thrilling performance in a packed Eastside Jazz Club – diving straight into a vibrant and slightly wild version of Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance” before turning up the emotional level further with intense free improvising and absorbing duets.
But before exploring the Birmingham performance in detail, let’s celebrate the impressively creative and long career of the leader, for Dunmall has an astonishing list of achievements to his credit, including a huge recorded legacy and countless ground-breaking concerts.
They include a stint living in the USA, where he performed with harpist and pianist Alice Coltrane and Johnny “Guitar” Watson among many other American musicians, and a huge variety of projects in the UK and abroad ranging from free improvising to big band work and folk music.
A highlight was his long association with pianist Keith Tippett in the highly acclaimed improvising group Mujician. His creative drive shows no sign of running out of steam, as was well demonstrated in the concert by his Double Quartet, which also appeared the previous evening at Cafe Oto in London.
The group featured Dunmall with trumpeter Alex Bonney, pianist Liam Noble, guitarist Steve Saunders, bassists John Edwards and James Owston and drummers Mark Sanders and Miles Levin.
Dunmall’s playing has extraordinary dynamic power, and even in “free flow” mode his phrasing has a solid sense of structure, while creating moods that draw the listener into his creative world. And what a wild, thrilling world it can be,
The idea of opening – and later closing – with a freely-phrased version of “Freedom Jazz Dance” was a good one. There has long been a tendency for many “freely improvised” performances to open gently, with musical lines that are either fragmented (with little honks or squawks) or lazily wandering before building to a noisy climax and then receding towards a gentle conclusion. It too often means that, ironically, “free” music can be more predictable than more conventional structured jazz.
With Dunmall’s band, the powerful opening created the possibility of any direction being taken spontaneously, and that is indeed what happened.
L-R Liam Noble, Miles Levin, Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Alex Bonney, John Edwards, James Owston, Steve Saunders. Photo copyright John Watson/jazzcamera.co.uk
Promoted by TDE Productions, the two concerts gave fans the chance to hear just how impressive and exciting free improvising can be when handled expertly. Quite a white water raft ride.
The evening had begun with a set from three impressive student musicians, in the group Threak: drummer Dom Holyoake, bassist Angus Sharp, and alto saxophonist Nat Evans. The Conservatoire has a fine track record with its jazz course, and I’m sure we’ll hear these players again, perhaps in a more conventionally structured context, or perhaps with even greater skills as impressive free improvisers.
