Gold standard(s)

 

Well, I finally made it right through the massive NBH standards box... virtually, in my case... and I have to admit that in the end, it wore me down and won me over: if you're looking for a collection of standards* played by a band under B's leadership, I really don't think you will ever find one better than this. That probably seems like a pretty redundant recommendation - even for me - given that very few people are going to feel like shelling out for a 13-cd box set, even if they can find a copy; but don't forget, this stuff is available for streaming via Bandcamp, so there's really nothing stopping people from hearing this music, at the very least. As for whether the sheer size of it should put you off: look, if you're reading this at all you are probably familiar with the scale of the maestro's discography at this point, and are unlikely to be deterred by something like that. Right?

In case anyone is wondering, I haven't suddenly gone all sentimental for the new year; I still have my reservations about quite a bit of the material here, much of which is far too saccharine for my personal taste. It's just that on balance, the sympathy between the leader and the ready-made backing trio, and the quality of the playing which results from that, plus the adventurous nature of the interpretations (... when things don't get too saccharine, obviously), left me with the impression that there would be no point in looking for a level "higher" than this on this sort of project. Overall, the undertaking succeeds to such a degree that I'm happy to consider the release which documents it as a pinnacle of sorts. This is the yardstick against which I will be measuring any other such endeavours from now on**. (And yes, dammit, I missed the chance to see this band play in London... I know, I know.)

When I refer above to a "ready-made" trio, I mean that bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis were already playing with Alex Hawkins by this point, and although I have no idea of the circumstances that led to Hawkins being sounded out for this project in the first place***, it can't have been a difficult decision to use his trio for it once that connection was made. Charles was playing in the Hawkins Trio back in 2014; at that stage, the drum chair was still occupied by Tom Skinner, and I'm not sure at which point Davis replaced him, but in any case by the time these 2020 performances came about, the three Brits must have had ample opportunity to establish the sort of quasi-telepathic interplay which is the proud hallmark of the seasoned improvising musician. On this material, they show themselves again and again to be comfortable in the most far-out environments, constantly busy and creative while never being obstreperous or overbearing. If anything, the elements of sweetness which are present here - and which I continue to struggle with - would appear to be down to the leader, not his sidemen. The impression I get is that they would be more than happy to play completely free at all times. 

Hawkins himself was already a player and composer for whom I had a high regard, before I took my long time out from these pages. Academic jazz programmes in the UK had been turning out highly-skilled players for quite some time already, but when it came to the projects led by such players - and to their compositions - I kept finding a mind-numbing homogeneity, doubtless the result of all such musicians being trained on the same materials, and feeding off the same set of modern influences#. To put it bluntly, everyone seemed to sound like everyone else, and this made it impossible for me to delve too deeply into the "British scene" (insofar as there was one). Hawkins, however, did seem to buck this trend and although it might be argued that I came to his work more favourably as a result of my having (sporadically) corresponded with him, I  don't think this is really much of an issue: I am too much of a cynic to allow any personal feelings to cloud my perception for very long, and if I spent plenty of time listening to some of Hawkins' recordings as a leader, that was because I found plenty to enjoy about them##. By the time I came back to him - as a player only, of course, in this quartet context - I marvelled at his ability to condense huge volumes of past musics into his own work, and reflect these back piecemeal in his playing, while retaining his own style. In this regard one might even think of him in the same terms as, say, Jaki Byard or Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Over the course of sixty-seven numbers here, I found myself mightily impressed by his qualities as an interpreter; he really does make an ideal playing partner for B. in this context - and Charles and Davis, in turn, provide ideal foils for the pair of them. What, as they say, is not to like?

It's always going to be the case that I come to this sort of recording with some reservations - and I feel as if I have done this subject to death already, so don't wish to bang on about it again now - and my initial optimism on hearing Gigi Gryce's "Minority" (the very first track) didn't take long to be tempered; overall, though, I found more to like than dislike. But the general seesawing continued right to the very end of the album. (It feels slightly ridiculous to refer to a collection as long as this one as an "album" - but I suppose that is what it is.) The last disc - which comprises six tunes - is particularly heavy on the stuff which I would never willingly listen to ("I'll Never Smile Again", "It's The Talk Of The Town", "Thanks For The Memory"), although the band doesn't really play these numbers like the old chestnuts they are; it ends on a high, with the Mingus composition "Peggy's Blue Skylight", but thrown in the mix we also get another modern jazz tune, "Strange Meadowlark" (by Mr and Mrs Brubeck), which is so honeyed up that it might as well be one of the old chestnuts, and I did struggle with this. On the other hand, the twelfth disc includes a rendition of "Django" by John Lewis - I don't know the original, but I think I am right in saying it's an MJQ number - which is so utterly "out" that there is nothing standard about it. There are two statements of the core theme, early on and towards the end, and in each case this is followed by passages of completely free expression, in which all four players dig deep into the bag of extended techniques, and take the music very far away indeed from what we might traditionally expect from a "standards date".

I suppose what I'm saying here is that there is probably something on offer for (almost) everybody: there are enough numbers which I struggled with (and probably won't listen to again) to keep happy those with more conventional tastes, whilst there is also plenty herein for B's natural audience. This makes the project worthy of its compendious dimensions, coming as it does so late in the maestro's career; and it makes it very easy to recommend. There was a lot of music here which I will happily revisit - and in the meantime, I have some catching up to do, with Alexander Hawkins...

***

Still on the subject of standards: something quite rare has just recently turned up for sale on Discogs... a new seller account has just popped up with quite a bit of B's stuff for sale, almost all of which I already have on CD###; one which I not only don't have, but have never heard, is the double-CD which B. cut with the Fred Simmons Trio in February 1993^. This is absolutely not an item which is easy to find, and I confess I am curious; but then I would be, simply because of the album's scarcity. My curiosity is not likely to be satisfied: the days have not yet come when I could declare that money is no object, and I just have to have any album of B's that I don't already own; and in the meantime, £25 is (I think) too much to ask for this, and certainly quite a lot more than I might be willing to shell out for it. Interesting, though...

* As always, when I say "a collection of standards", I don't mean a project dedicated to one specific composer; that type of undertaking is essentially different. 

** Just last April, I rather in passing gave this notional honour to the second volume of standards B's recorded for Magenta. I have now changed my mind.

*** Which is to say, I have not (yet) taken the time to read David Grundy's liner notes for the box set - not that I have the box set, you understand. I don't even know whether those same notes explain how this tour came about, but it seems likely that they might. [Sorry, David - if you're reading! I will get round to it at some point, and in the meantime: if it's any consolation, it's not any reflection on you... I do tend to put off reading this sort of thing. Undoubtedly this is one of my numerous shortcomings.]

# I am certainly not the only person to have come to this conclusion. A few months back, Youtube tried to tempt me into watching a video which purported to answer the question "Why do all modern jazz musicians sound the same?" I did start it, though I quickly lost interest - and it did seem very much as if contemporary academic syllabuses were going to get the blame (as well they might)...

## By way of contrast, having very much enjoyed Julian Siegel's unexpected moment in the sun - leading a trio with two vastly more experienced and in-demand sidemen - a decade or so ago,  I took the time to check out some of Siegel's other work as leader-composer, but lost interest very quickly indeed, once I realised that this was going to mean sitting through yet more of the same reheated MBASE-meets-Berne-via-the-Guildhall fare that I had already grown more than tired of. The point here is not to bash Siegel, who was really no more guilty than anyone else in that scene, but to emphasise that I went in with an open mind, and didn't like what I found at all. My occasional correspondence with Hawkins would not have prevented the same reaction if his music had been of a similar stripe. I carried on listening to his music, only because I actually liked it. [One of these days I may find time to make some related observations about Ingrid Laubrock... but this is not that day.]

### Pretty much any time someone lists more than a handful of B's albums for sale, these days, you are guaranteed to find Leo Records well represented - especially those albums which tended to come up in that label's annual sale. The same ten or fifteen albums do tend to keep each other company quite a lot, on eBay. (Of course, the Fred Simmons album is also on Leo, but must have sold out its only pressing; I'm sure it was deleted long before the label ever started its online sale.)

^ The only other time this album has previously even come up for passing discussion in these pages was last year, when the fifth footnote on my Parker post saw me mention Mr Simmons for the first and only time, before today...