Jazz festival hosts rising stars and legendary giants

Tim Cumming

• Last Updated: November 15. 2009 4:41PM UAE / November 15. 2009 12:41PM GMT

You’d need multi-dimensional capabilities – or at least stout shoes and a good map –to fully take in the artistry and music on offer at this year’s London Jazz Festival.

It is entering its 17th year, and with around 20 performances every day, from free lunchtime sessions in the suburbs to late-night jams in Soho, you could easily spend the next week in an alternative universe of sound, cutting a path through multiple manifestations of 21st-century jazz’s dazzling diversity.

On all points of London’s compass – from the Vortex Club in Stoke Newington to the 606 in Chelsea, from Ronnie Scott’s in the heart of Soho to the city’s great concert halls – the good and the great, the rising stars and the cutting edge rub shoulders, blend melodies and cut riffs in settings far removed from the X Factor-style shows of today’s mainstream. This is music up front, uncooked and in your face.

For Friday’s opening, the former Miles Davis sideman Mike Stern made two appearances at the South Bank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, first in a free, early-evening conversation and later with his gospel-soaked, molasses-rich Piety Street Band, wielding guitar lines like sheet metal through a viscous mix of New Orleans R&B and rootsy soul reflected on his latest album, Big Neighbourhood.

On the same night, Blue Note’s latest signing, the young Aaron Parks, took to the PizzaExpress Jazz Club in Soho with his quartet, recreating the cinematic, melodic compositions heard on Invisible Cinema, a new set of songs for which the keyboardist flits among piano, mellotron, glockenspiel and synth.

More virtuoso piano was on show earlier in the day – and for free, as are many of the festival’s more intimate and perhaps most precious gigs. Zoe Rahman, the Anglo-Bengali composer and Mercury Prize-nominated pianist, kicked off the festival’s On the Move programme – in which artists play around the city over multiple nights – with a solo performance at Charlton House in Greenwich.

The veteran Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and his Nordic quartet played from their stunning new album, Dark Eyes, while the spicily brilliant German keyboardist Michael Wollny returned with a remarkable solo album combining keyboards from through the ages and a solo show at the Pheasantry in Chelsea.

But the focus of this year’s opening gala concert was the voice. A Century of Song featured an international array of singers backed by Guy Barker’s 40-piece London Jazz Festival Orchestra in the Festival Hall. It was a night of big songs and big anniversaries – there were selections from Johnny Mercer, who would have turned 100 this year, and Billie Holiday, who died 50 years ago, as well as instrumental tributes to Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, all of whom released albums in 1959 – argued by some to be one of the most significant years in 20th-century culture.

Singers included the Ronnie Scott’s regular Natalie Williams, the Sao Paolo-born, Dalston-based Cibelle, and the Chicago-born Blue Note artist Kurt Elling, who took time out from regular nights at Chicago’s Green Mill Jazz Club to perform with Barker on Friday and the saxophonist Ernie Watts on Saturday, premiering the likes of Lush Life and They Say It’s Wonderful from his forthcoming album Dedicated to You, which was inspired by John Coltrane’s and Johnny Hartman’s classic 1963 recordings.

It is sometimes said that jazz is dead, or at least in death’s waiting room, and about as relevant as steam trainspotting to 21st-century culture. But the breadth and vitality of the form in the last 10 years – from new Argentine Tango to the classic bebop vibes of Bobby Hutcherson to the jazz hip-hop of Robert Glasper – suggest the opposite. Traditions continue to be fractured, reflected and reimagined by the old masters as well as youthful players. Live music and small venues are thriving, and young, fresh jazz groups such as Led Bib, Polar Bear and The Blessing have garnered awards, applause, sales and bigger audiences. All three groups have headlining gigs in the festival. Led Bib are scheduled to kick out the jams at the Vortex, while The Blessing (comprised of Portishead’s Jim Barr and Clive Deamer) will share a stage with the hip-hop artist, beatboxer and sampler Taylor McFerrin. And what could beat the Jazz Café’s Friday night post-jazz line-up of Polar Bear, powered by the wild-haired drummer Seb Roachford, and the hard-hitting, discombobulating trios Zed-U and Troyka.

Just as the festival works to promote the young and cutting-edge, so it hosts and honours the great names of the past. The legendary giant of the saxophone Sonny Rollins wielded his improvisatory genius at the Barbican on Saturday night for his only UK appearance this year. Like dozens of the festival’s shows, it sold out long before its Friday launch. Lucky for some. For the rest of us, there’s always the chance to catch up on what went down with a string of BBC radio broadcasts extending into the new year.