EFG London Jazz Festival — 300 gigs showcase eclectic, thrilling mix

The 30th EFG London Jazz Festival has returned to its pre-lockdown pomp with a sprawl of more than 300 gigs. Venues have so far ranged from the capital’s network of concert halls to Woolwich’s Fireworks Factory, in the city’s far south-east. The opening night gala, Jazz Voice, presented its eclectic mix of vocalists to an enthusiastic full house at the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall. Jazz, represented by the technically astute Kurt Elling and Ian Shaw, was in the mix; so too were soul, blues and lovers’ rock. Singer Shingai’s ebullient indie stagecraft found its equal in Marisha Wallace’s Broadway presence.

Previous Jazz Voice galas based their sweep of vocal stylists on themed selections of the American songbook. This year, conductor/arranger Guy Barker’s Festival Orchestra played to each vocalist’s strength and delivered blues shuffles and the snapped rimshots of soul alongside powerhouse big-band brass and smoothing string glides.

Each singer got two songs, one for each set. Ian Shaw opened the evening with the songbook classic “Small Day Tomorrow”, written by Bob Dorough and Fran Landesman. Shaw swooped from low to high and the orchestra was punchy and swung. Soul came next, with imperious big-band rhythm and blues and Dana Masters soaring sensuously on “Satisfied”. Later, the reggae lilt of “Perfidia” lost its bounce but, elsewhere, supple orchestral dynamics and powerful beats in a range of styles gripped.

Both Elling and Shingai delivered highlights of vocal power, technical excellence and narrative control — Shingai with the climactic slow burn “Coming Home” and Elling with a flawless version of his collaboration with Carla Bley, “Endless Lawns”. It ended with an eerie falsetto fade that tingled the spine.

The finale was “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from the musical Dreamgirls. Marisha Wallace delivered it with a soul-inflected operatic power that raised the house. The ovation was immediate, and the encore of Aretha Franklin’s “Think” presented each singer in turn. Not a note seemed out of place. ★★★★☆

Saturday’s Barbican concert, billed as Chicago x London, promised a night of one-off collaborations, bringing together the musical and spiritual connections of the two cities’ jazz scenes. What we actually got was two solid acts from Chicago before the break, and two one-off ensembles with a UK base after.

The evening started well enough with a technically astute, effects-laden solo performance from guitarist Jeff Parker. Lead lines sparkled, his sampled bass lines added depth, and shimmers of vibrating guitar harmonies filled the hall with mystery and suspense. Parker’s guitar tone melded jazz fluency with a hint of country twang, original material was well put together and there was an acerbic reading of the standard “My Ideal”.

A quartet came next, led by multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, based on his album Open Arms to Open Us. Laden with sharp rhythms, folkloric melodies, whistles, flutes and bells, the band sit firmly in Chicago’s avant-garde. Foghorn blasts of Matt Davis’s sousaphone and Gay’s spiky pinched trumpet stabs delivered power while muted trumpet doodles created passages of calm. An episode of handbell trickery by three of the band was pure magic.

Vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid delivered left-field continuity after the break. She orchestrated her special-event quartet playing Sun Ra-like keyboard, burst into punk-energy song and was adept on both clarinet and soprano sax. Theon Cross punched out tuba riffs, alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi delivered phonic abstraction and powerful beats ranged from a funeral dirge to upbeat funk and a waltz.

An overblown set from poet/saxophonist Alabaster DePlume concluded the evening. Harmonised band vocals in the falsetto range, two drummers and a talented line-up promised much. But it was DePlume’s trite spoken word, weak vibrato-laden sax and shouty swearing that dominated. No time for a jam, and at over three hours, the event was already too long.

Earlier in the evening, a tribute to the late trumpeter Jaimie Branch was shown on the hall’s video screen. Branch died in August and was scheduled to appear on tonight’s bill. It showed her working up music with local musicians and playing with fire alongside cellist Tomeka Reid. It was a reminder of what the event promised, but turned out not to be. ★★★☆☆

British saxophonist Xhosa Cole’s Sunday gig at Cafe Oto was based on his recent Stoney Lane release Ibeji. The album presents Cole in a series of duos with seven percussionists and adds his collaborators’ musings on the roots of rhythm, the African diaspora and more besides. Here, the voices were doctored and rhythmically chopped and the duos replaced by a single quartet. Trumpeter Byron Wallen joined Cole in the front line and drummer Hamid Drake and percussionist Yahael Camara Onono delivered a complex rhythmic web. A fascinating album was brilliantly recast into a focused live gig that gripped the audience for two uninterrupted sets.

The event began with the sound of a beating heart and a recorded voice expounding on rhythm and life. Bells tinkled, words were distorted, repeated and cut in two and the percussionists whumped simultaneously, swapped phrases and throbbed underneath. Wallen was the first to solo, delivering controlled lyricism with a rounded tone. The beat became funky, there was a duet of flutes and then Cole’s long, angular lines on tenor sax with assurance and poise.

Both sets were constructed as a series of musical tableaux linked to an organic whole. Cole and Wallen’s multi-instrumental skills added sonic variety — they stretch from conch and percussion to flutes and African thumb piano — and the young saxophonist manipulated his recorded voices with a producer’s skill.

No lulls on the night, and the detailed interplay were outstanding. That said, Cole’s unaccompanied sax effortlessly moving from sub-tone harmonics to high-note sustains was a high, as was Wallen’s breathy lyricism on muted trumpet. The two percussionists’ tight weave of rhythm, crowd-raising dynamics and simultaneous thumps were even more remarkable, considering they had only just met. ★★★★☆

To November 20, efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk