UK Jazz News

Yellowjackets at Soul Mama, Stratford

3 November 2024.

Yellowjackets. Photo credit: Aaron Liddard

Lucky for us, the Yellowjackets come to London often, and their gigs always touch a nerve that gets me thinking and feeling. This time it was that they don’t, or won’t fight. They’re bigger than that. Or is it that in forty five together, years they’ve learned to project without a hint of aggression? 

Over the course of a Yellowjackets set, they will tenderly subvert a room to their understated intense interplay. They move like an essence, a scent, wafting almost imperceptibly between the tables. 

It takes a lot to prevent their ethereal disruption. But it does happen. Drunks talking from a balcony overhanging the stage almost ruined their gig in Camden earlier this year. Another new venue, this time in Stratford, a cavern of glass metal and concrete sporting an open kitchen, presented an aural landscape that threatened the intimacy. But that was all ignored with the grace of their musical nobility.

The Jackets always seem to treat a set as… well, a set. Not so much a performance of songs, more a movement of spirit. A yawn rather than a series of sneezes. The first two tunes always feel like the warm up, after which they begin to dig a little deeper. As if a fluffy family sniffing the air before delving into their burrow. 

Into the darkness, the space enlarges. Barely touching their instruments while contorting their bodies to grace the edges where sound meets emotion meets spirit. And we all gladly goad them on this journey. Some have their eyes tightly shut from the first note. Others are twitching constantly to the effervescent grooves of Will Kennedy, who powers the mothership through the cosmos. 

In world of greed and destruction, the Yellowjackets seem to be focussed on peace and delicate frugality. Detailing the ebbs around ideas, glimpsing eddies of shadows. In a city where jazz is often rambunctious, the Jackets offer the opposite. 

An alternative sound in an alternative space. Bob Mintzer loved the food and complimented the room. Free musicians find the resources to give back in such a grand manner. Some write, others start a label; some do charity work or teach, and the most ambitious open a venue. Many of our best clubs were started by horn players: Ronnie Scott, Steve Rubie at the 606, Matt Nickson & Phred in Manchester, Wynton Marsalis at the Lincoln Center. Most founders have moved in one way or another. Founder of Soul Mama, saxophonist Yolanda Brown has just joined that lineage and I wish her and her team every success in this fresh endeavour. 

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