WORLD
AMBROSE ADEKOYA CAMPBELL
London Is the Place for Me 3 Honest Jon's
Previous albums in this excellent series on post-war black London music have taken their cues from different groups of immigrant musicians. The focus here is solely on Ambrose Adekoya Campbell. The Nigerian seafarer was a familiar sight in Soho night-spots in the 1950s and 1960s, where he fronted various bands and introduced West African highlife to the city's club scene. There it mingled with calypso, Cuban and Caribbean styles to create some hugely spirited sounds. He may not have realised it at the time, but Campbell was a trailblazer, and you hear an energetic, enthusiastic sound developing in these recordings. Be it the West African Rhythm Brothers or the Nigerian Union Rhythm Group, tracks such as We Have It in Africa and Lagos Mambo contain a sunny new definition of jazz and evoke a far more innocent and hopeful era. Jim Carroll
JAZZ
BOBBY WELLINS
When the Sun Comes Out Trio Records
Caught live at a jazz festival last summer, this is the quartet featuring the great tenor, Bobby Wellins "firing on all cylinders," as the bassist Andy Cleyndert put it. Wellins was in sublime form, and the others - Cleyndert, Mark Edwards (piano) and a force-of-nature Spike Wells (drums) - were up for it, too. A few blues, Monk's Mood and some imaginatively treated standards, including hugely satisfying outings on Mad About the Boy and When You Wish Upon a Star, comprised the unremarkable repertoire. The rest is down to that special feeling when a band is collectively on song; as Miles Davis said years ago, it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Hard to argue with that. Wouldn't want to, anyway. www.triorecords.co.uk
Ray Comiskey
CLAUDE WILLIAMSON
The Complete 1954-1955 Kenton Presents Sessions Fresh Sound
This is prime, archetypal bop piano from a time when the idiom was still the movement in jazz, by one of its finest, if somewhat underrated, players. Williamson was straight out of Bud Powell. A virtuoso and a brilliant improviser, he could solo coherently even at murderously fast tempos and nourish his creative juices on the Great American Song Book, producing his own surprises. Helping him generate enormous swing in a magisterial demonstration of the bop trio format are the bass-drums teams of Curtis Counce/ Stan Levey, Max Bennett/Stan Levey and Buddy Clark/Larry Bunker. Hard to pick the best, because Williamson and his companions are so remarkably consistent - and so good you wish the tracks were longer. www.freshsoundrecords.com
Ray Comiskey
ANTHONY BRANKER
Spirit Songs Sons of Sound
Composer and orchestrator Branker doesn't play on this fine album, but his writing gives it distinction and affords the excellent sextet he has assembled opportunities to add to its character. Antonio Hart (alto/soprano), Ralph Bowen (tenor/soprano), Clifford Adams (trombone) and the Jonny King-John Benitez-Ralph Peterson rhythm section respond beautifully to the settings he devises. Branker has imagination, good judgement, a taste for the modal (JC's Passion, for example, is a brilliant reworking of So What and Impressions) and, rhythmically, flavours his jazz sensibility with Caribbean, Brazilian and African elements. And in Bowen, King, Hart and Adams he has superior soloists season the mix. Nothing outre here; just excellent craftsmanship and the right balance of freedom and form. www.sonsofsound.com
Ray Comiskey
ROOTS
LAUREN HOFFMAN
Fargo
This album kind of slides into your affections. Its opening track, Broken, is an achingly beautiful slice of romantic regret set against a backdrop of twinkling musical invention, all echoes and floating notes. And it doesn't end there. This is American Lauren Hoffman's third album but the first to reach these ears. And if the references are obvious - a slightly less uptight Laura Veirs, a more upfront Beth Gibbons - the music is no less memorable for that. On her website (www.forlauren.com), Hoffman cites the spirit of Jeff Buckley, and there is certainly mystery and passion aplenty in tracks such as White Sheets, Solipsist and the chamber pop of Love Gone Wrong. Apparently Hoffman lost her way on her first two albums; she has regained it here.
Joe Breen
PEGGY HONEYWELL
Faint Humms Agenda
San Francisco resident Peggy Honeywell follows up her interesting alt.country debut (Honey for Dinner) with what is effectively an unplugged set. The influences are hardcore roots, folk and country, and none of the haunting 15 tracks lasts longer than 2.30 minutes. Honeywell's slight, strange but attractive voice sounds like a field recording, while her sparse instrumentation is limited to her guitar and banjo. Yet she manages to create an intimacy that is oddly compelling - almost like word pictures. Not surprising, therefore, that Peggy Honeywell is actually the nom du disc of multi-award-winning visual artist Clare Rojas, whose distinctive work appears on the sleeve. Joe Breen
FRANCES BLACK & FRIENDS
This Love Will Carry Dara
Frances Black's vocal fragility whispers of an overweening desire to be loved that's won her a swathe of admirers and a few detractors along her life's colourful and often tragic byways. This double CD collection is an able distillation of Black's repertoire, ranging from the highs of her collaboration with Kieran Goss (characterised by the impish Forever Lovin' You), the Black Family and Arcady, and her daughter Aoife (on The Hills of South Armagh). But threaded throughout these 25 songs is the suspicion that hers is a talent that still yearns to go that extra mile. Bathed in arrangements that scream pathos, Black's appeal veers towards a familiarity that risks ultimately breeding contempt. An edgier producer would surely lure much more from such a haunted, sparkling talent.
www.frances-black.net Siobhán Long
TRADITIONAL
NOEL HILL
Teacht Aniar No label
It's been 18 years since Noel Hill graced a recording studio, and Teacht Aniar bristles with the freshness of an appetite long-gestating. This is an unapologetically old-fashioned gathering, delivered with a vitality born of a prolonged absence from the front line. Hill has a reputation for elevating the concertina to plains where previously only the pipes resided. Accompaniment from fiddler Liam O'Connor and guitarist Arty McGlynn bestow a depth to the arrangements. The closing set sealed by Devanney's Goat captures the spirited essence of Hill's music, while his crystalline treatment of Boulavogue is a reminder of the value of letting the tune do the talking. Sadly, Steve Cooney's over-zealous guitar accompaniment overwhelms The Ballydesmond set, but Hill's bareboned playing shines with an effervescence that's all his own.
www.noelhill.com Siobhán Long
CLASSICAL
MOZART: STRING QUARTETS IN C K465 (DISSONANCE); IN D K499
Belcea Quartet EMI Classics 344 4552
The Belcea Quartet's new CD lavishes post-Beethovenian expressive emphasis on Mozart. The tone of the group's leader, Corina Belcea-Fisher, moves freely into an area of edgy, sometimes shrill and vibrato-rich intensity. She's not so much dotting her i's and crossing her t's as highlighting them with dayglo marker. If your tolerance is not unduly tried by these effects, you'll find much to enjoy in the Belcea's highly-wrought approach, which also leaves few stones unturned at the other end of the expressive spectrum. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan
DELETED PIECES
Dublin Guitar Quartet Greyslate Records GREYCD014
The Dublin Guitar Quartet's repertoire, like that of most guitar quartets, is full of arrangements. But this group seems to be interested only in contemporary music, and that's what dominates on their debut CD, specifically Kevin Volans's White Man Sleeps and part of Henryk Górecki's Quasi una Fantasia, plus a version of Redneck Manifesto's Soundscapes Over Landscapes. The group, which uses a range of non-standard guitars (with up to 11 strings), seems to be aiming for a mixture of street band funk and classical sophistication. They favour a tight rhythmic delivery as a solid background to a style that delights in colouristic and pitch shifting effects. This impressive if rather short (42 minutes) disc also includes two original pieces, Leo Brouwer's delicate Cuban Landscape with Rumba and group member Brian Bolger's in-your-face Weak. www.dublinguitarquartet.com
Michael Dervan
PLEYEL: STRING QUARTETS OP 2
Enso Quartet Naxos 8.557496 (Quartets 1-3); 8.557497 (Nos 4-6)
The string quartets of Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831) were praised by Mozart, who wrote, "it will be a lucky day for music if later on Pleyel should be able to replace Haydn". And Haydn, the young Pleyel's teacher, presented some of Pleyel's piano trios to a publisher as works of his own. The string quartets of Pleyel's Op 2 were published in Vienna in 1784, and these nicely judged performances by the young American Enso Quartet suggest that Haydn might not have been ashamed to have attached his name to them either. On initial acquaintance at least, the second disc - Nos 4 to 6 - seems the richer. And, yes, it was this same Ignaz Pleyel who founded the famous music publishing and instrument-making firm which published the first miniature score, built the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and is still making pianos to this day. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
THE ART OF BARRY TUCKWELL
Barry Tuckwell (horn), plus various performers Decca 475 7463 (2 CDs)
Barry Tuckwell, last heard in Ireland in 1996, the year he retired from horn playing in favour of conducting, has just turned 75. Decca's birthday celebration reaches far and wide in the discography of the man who dominated the world of the horn in the 1960s and 1970s. The repertoire ranges from an early classical excavation by Knechtl, through Michael Haydn, Franz Danzi, Mozart and Beethoven to Richard Strauss (and his horn-playing father, Franz) and then beyond to the concerto Alun Hoddinott wrote for Tuckwell in 1969. Tuckwell combines soundness of musical vision and fearlessness in technical matters, and he's heard to best advantage in the confident stride of the concertos by Richard Strauss, recorded in 1966 with the LSO under István Kertesz. A second two-disc Decca compilation (475 7104) focuses solely on Mozart, the solo concertos, the Sinfonia Concertante for four wind instruments, the Horn Quintet and the Piano and Wind Quintet.
www.deccaclassics.com Michael Dervan
CD reviews compiled
by Tony Clayton-Lea
