From psychedelic soul to jazz improv, Love Supreme festival sweeps across genres — review

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The 10th edition of jazz, funk and soul festival Love Supreme offered popular appeal and hidden depths, each strand balancing old and new. On Saturday’s genre-sweeping programme, Incognito’s slick main-stage acid-jazz set was followed by Greentea Peng’s self-styled psychedelic soul. Tight brass, warm grooves and a rousing rendition of “Always There” reflected Incognito’s early 1990s vibe while Peng’s more contemporary style included swirly keyboards, dubby bass and bursts of rap.

Little Simz was the day’s headline act. Crisp hip-hop beats and a cloud of red smoke cued a stampede across the fields towards the open-air main stage as people realised she had started without them. A scanter crowd drifted into a faraway marquee as saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins was sound-checking. Unfazed, he soon delivered the day’s killer jazz set.

Wilkins’ performance drew on the unfolding themes and interactive rapport that made his recent Blue Note album The 7th Hand a standout. At this gig, the compositions merged into a continuous flow and the band’s focused improvisations were even more intense. Wilkins’ alto sax is the lead voice, with a diamond-hard tone that is matched by precise articulation. At this gig, epic streams of invention supported by an intense collective will engrossed the small but rapt audience.

The performance began with a motif floating over dense piano voicings and drummer Kweku Sumbry working up a dialogue between bass drum and snare. As snippets of melody wound this way and that, pianist Micah Thomas emphasised changes in mood and bassist Matt Brewer twinned double bass thrust with Sumbry’s bass drum beats that were so powerful they reverberated in the chest.

Wilkins, the main soloist, mingled syncopated lines and blues-shaped riffs with an inexorable logic, adding high-note squawks that raised a cheer. But this band is collective to the core, and pianist Thomas, an equally strong voice, conjured short discords and dazzling dialogues between left hand and right. It was his sustained bursts of abstraction that built to a high and ended this immensely satisfying set.

★★★★★

Elsewhere, a strong jazz strand ranged far and wide, skirted extremes and gave jazz newcomers a dedicated space. Vocalist Jazzmeia Horn’s mid-afternoon set twinned legacy elements with new ideas and provided show-stopping moments with ease. Her pianist Victor Gould was more than filler, while bassist Jason Clotter and drummer Michael Reed were a bouncy and supportive rhythm team.

Horn opened with the original “Free Your Mind” from her 2019 album Love & Liberation. “Let your thoughts expand,” she sang over walking-bass swing and songbook chords, before launching an extended improvisation that morphed from swing to hip-hop and moved from Ella Fitzgerald-style scat to moves of her own. Vocals leapt from low notes to high, vowels were stretched sensuously and a sustained upper register had no trace of squeak. Gould set the scene with a two-handed solo that focused the crowd, bassist Clotter tugged at the pulse to cue the change of style.

“Tippin’” came next, a new song themed on taking life to the edge without falling over a cliff. The lyric was clear, as was the playful torch-song mood, but it was Horn’s astounding technique that fully captured the idea. Those high notes were sustained almost beyond credibility, quick-fire vocalese came at speed and control was never in doubt.

Elsewhere, spiritual faith was celebrated over a fast modal pulse — “Bless the most high” was one refrain, repeated by the audience on cue with glee. And the standard “Our Love Is Here to Stay” was pulled thrillingly out of shape. The encore, an audience-requested “Tight”, zipped along smoothly, the drum solo finale played at speed.

★★★★☆

Bassist Marcus Miller opened his equally assured set having to balance the sound. “I’m just going to play the bass while we get it together,” he said, crunching out a bone-shaking riff. The band entered one by one, melodic bass clicked with whiplash drums, brass riffs stabbed and Miller’s first solo wowed the crowd. The gig continued with “Untamed”, from Laid Black, Miller’s latest album. A prowling groove, pregnant with menace, got the song title’s gist, but it was well-crafted control that landed the music’s punch. Trumpeter Russell Gunn’s muted solo gripped, Miller’s was fast-fingered, lyrical and intense and alto saxophonist Donald Hayes mixed bebop and blues.

Miller continued with a bass guitar masterclass of Funkadelic-like lines, thumb-slapped grooves and high-toned melodic intrigue. “Jekyll & Hyde” mixed the cool and the crazy — “I play the cool part,” said Miller, before unleashing high-octane power. The ballad “Mr Pastorius”, released on Miles Davis’s 1989 album Amandla, featured elegant muted trumpet before changing tempo through modern jazz gears. And “Gorée”, Miller’s showcase for bass clarinet, was recast as a resilient song for peace. Brooding at first — Miller wrote the composition after visiting the slave island of that name off Senegal — it had an upbeat ending.

The finale, The Beatles’ “Come Together”, with bass playing lead, was interrupted by an electronic growl of feedback from a misfunctioning PA. “Play in the same key as the feedback,” said Miller without turning a hair. “It’s in the key of G.” The band did, and — problem solved — barnstormed the set to a close.

★★★★☆

In contrast, Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan and his trio kept audience communication to a minimum in a rhythmically intricate set. Hamasyan’s blend of folkloric influences and postmodern jazz juxtaposes bombastic emotions with moments of calm. Bass and drums interwove to a preset plan and sparse snare drum beats were awkwardly placed. Free-flowing improvisation was sorely missed.

★★★☆☆

No such worries with Trinidad-raised steel pan-player Leon Foster Thomas, who spoke warmly to the audience and raised technique to a virtuosic pitch. His midnight set for Jazz in the Round was based on the well-worked grooves of 1970s jazz-funk — one song was introduced as giving a New Orleans speakeasy a Trinidad vibe; a note-perfect “Opus Pocus” referenced the song’s composer, Jaco Pastorius.

Bass, drums and guitar fell neatly into place and Sam Leak’s synth gripped. But it was the unique Thomas who made the band stand out. He strips the steel pan of sentiment without losing the instrument’s warmth and adds chromatic flourishes that are entirely his own.

★★★★☆

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