Reviews

After my quartet gig on Feb 2nd 2024 in Brecon Jazz Club from Lynne, Roger, Sharon, Fiz, Ian K, Ruth & Angus

Jazz Club & Muse Team

Hope you all arrived safely back home Friday evening and will have time to let the wonderful success of Friday's evening of jazz and it's rave recption sink in!!

Not by luck, but by total preparation and planning you all put in, and the commitment to make the Quartet work. It was excellent and the audience response so completely and utterly positive with every number performed.

Deborah, your playing was really impressive, including the own compositions, and the set list choices and sequence of experiences we were presented with were a total delight.

What a Quartet and lineup! so lovely to see you all enjoying each other's playing, with lots of space for solos and some really outstanding solo features from Rod, Ian & Phill. But it was tight too and Deborah kept it all moving forward.

We're just so appreciative of all the focus, skill and talent you all bring to this and are delighted to provide a platform to impress at Brecon Jazz Club.

You had quite a wide audience, from people who come regularly to jazz events, and others who are just starting to taste the genre - and you managed to please everyone, and importantly, to bring them back in the future for more. Job done!!

A review of the performance of Jen Wilson's 12 poems at Brecon Jazz 2024 can be found here https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/brecon-jazz-festival-2024-main-weekend-saturday-10th-august-2024 

A review of my informal Trio plus guests gig at Brecon Jazz 2023

DEBORAH GLENISTER TRIO and GUESTS, ST. MARY’S CHURCH

Deborah Glenister – piano, Ian Cooper – acoustic & electric bass, Robert Wheatcroft – drums and guests

It was bucketing down with rain when we exited the Guildhall so instead of viewing the outdoor performance by old Festival favourites Wonderbrass we opted for the sanctuary and dryness of St. Mary’s.

This afternoon’s music programme at the Church featured an informal session from the Deborah Glenister trio plus a number of guest performances.

The core trio featured Glenister, also a talented saxophonist,  at the piano in the company of bassist Ian Cooper and drummer Robert Wheatcroft.

As we arrived Rosalind Moore was singing a version of “Besame Mucho”. A volunteer steward on the Brecon Jazz team Welsh speaker Moore also handled many of the bilingual concert introductions over the course of the weekend.

The core trio then played Glenister’s own composition “Deborah’s Waltz”, an attractive piece with a title representing an obvious tip of the hat to Bill Evans.

Chris Hodgkins came over from the Guildhall to guest on another version of “Pennies From Heaven”, soloing with an open bell. He then played muted trumpet on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia”.

The group expanded to a quintet with the addition of alto saxophonist Leslie Maynerd on Duke Ellington’s “Take The A Train”,  with all five musicians featuring as soloists.

Hodgkins dropped out, leaving the quartet to play another Carmichael tune, “Skylark”, with Maynerd’s pure toned Paul Desmond style alto featuring alongside Glenister’s piano.

The same line up performed “Summer Samba” with Maynerd, Glenister and Cooper featuring as soloists.

Hodgkins rejoined and Cooper switched to electric bass for Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father”. The trumpeter soloed with a Harmon mute, followed by Glenister on piano and finally Maynerd on alto.

This section of the afternoon then ended with another Glenister original, the aptly titled “Moving On”, performed by the core trio of piano, drums and electric bass.

This had been an engaging, good humoured and very informal session that included some excellent playing, and I was pleased to hear a couple of Glenister’s own compositions in there too. Well done to all concerned.

A review of our women in jazz show case in Abergavenny in 2023 by Nigel Jarrett: 

Undeniably there was a point to be made about the final element of Archwilwyr Jazz Explorers, the year-long, all-Wales jazz project focusing on community, education and diversity and aimed at developing work opportunities for Wales-based jazz musicians. And it was this: women still struggle to make headway in the jazz world, though things have improved a lot, so here was a demonstration of what they say the male-orientated jazz business is missing.

A super seven-piece distaff band that included bassist Paula Gardiner, head of the jazz course at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and drummer and percussionist Liz Exell, a member of her staff, also featured multi-instrumentalist Deborah Glenister, violist and clarinettist Maria Lamburn, violinist Xenia Porteous and vocalists Siobhan Ellen Waters and Jane Williams (the latter also doubling piano and ukulele).

It was a sold-out gig, organised by Black Mountain Jazz at the newly refurbished Borough Theatre. There were exhibits from Jazz Heritage Wales’s compendious collection of memorabilia at University of Wales Trinity St David and seven short biographical films by Mark Viveash’s 47 Studios & Productions for each member of the band, screened as they played. Original compositions and jazz standards by women musicians made for an event directed at the audience from different angles.

Considering the didactic nature of the project and the musicians’ relative lack of familiarity with each other as a group, the sonorities employed were fresh and unexpected. Lamburn on viola and Porteus on violin proved to be a melting combination and when Lamburn switched to bass clarinet with violinist Porteous and Glenister on clarinet for The Honeybee, a jolly number, their trio sound was just so. Lamburn’s We Are The Water employed the same trio combination with sussurating aqueous sounds. Just as bouncy was Porteous’s Saturday Sundae, a chart reflecting her interest in folk and gypsy jazz.

Lamburn’s folk-inspired background contrasted with Williams’ theatrical one, though she (Williams) joined her first jazz band at 18. Her Lylabai (Lullaby) saw the strings-woodwind trio this time giving the proceedings a jazz-meets-cabaret feel, and her heartfelt version of Autumn Leaves, with Gardiner switching to guitar and Porteous joining in, extended the vocal power and range already demonstrated by her and Waters in the opening Roll Jordan Roll. Gardiner reminded the audience that the latter was sung by the all-black Fisk Jubilee Singers on a 19th-century visit to Swansea from Nashville.

Waters, a jazz vocals specialist, draws on other genres and is a songwriter to boot, sharing Willow Weep For Me with Williams, Glenister’s tenor sax and the violin-viola duo, and swinging along proprietorially on her Same Four Walls. An arrangement of Gardiner’s In The Garden accompanied her film. Also catching the ear with their sparkle and originality were Glenister’s Dusk And Daybreak and Lamburn’s Taith Amser (Time Travel).

Exell drew on a London metropolitan provenance that gave her drumming the authority on which the band could stretch out. Her Hello Goodbye, with its almost random bass-drum beats and varied taps was manifestly a drummer’s composition; it prompted pizzicato from Lamburn and a splendid vocal by Waters. Exell, by accident or design, was left in her film to make the all-important points about women in music historically missing out. Gardiner accompanied the film about herself on recorder and guitar and gave concluding fizz with two original numbers that kept everyone alert, not least in a tricky, rap-inspired encore skilfully navigated by Waters and the rest.

Porteous had remarked on how cool it was that the band should be accompanying screened film as in the cinemas of yesteryear. Cool enough. But some might say not as cool as the sight of women musicians standing up for an equality of opportunity denied to many of their forebears.

https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2023/02/12/women-in-jazz-in-wales-menywod-ym-myd-jazz-abergavenny/ 

Another review of the one off women in jazz show case in 2023 by Iann Mann https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/women-in-jazz-in-wales-borough-theatre-abergavenny-09-02-2023 

A review of a short set for the opening of Brecon Jazz festival 2022

The official Festival opening took place in St. Mary’s Church in the centre of town, with the mayor, Councillor David Meredith, and the priest Father Mark both saying a few words of welcome.

What followed was an afternoon of short musical performances, all free of charge and open to the public. The programme was sponsored by Specsavers of Brecon, so thank you to them. It’s good to see such a large public company engaging with local events.

The first performance featured Deborah Glenister, who had also come up from the Northhouse and was here featured leading her trio from the piano. I had no idea she was such a talented multi-instrumentalist. Long was again featured on double bass with Dewi Davies at the drums.

The trio’s guest soloist was the Cardiff born, London based trumpeter Chris Hodgkins, an excellent musician but also an admired jazz administrator who has headed the Jazz Services organisation and chaired the Parliamentary Jazz Awards committee.

Hodgkins and the trio opened here with “It’s Only A Paper Moon” with the trumpeter playing with a Harmon mute and soloing twice, either side of features for Glenister and Long. Hodgkins later informed us that the arrangement had been inspired by a 1941 Nat King Cole version of the tune that had featured trumpeter Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison.

Hodgkins continued with the Harmon mute on a Louis Armstrong inspired version of “Basin Street Blues”, with solos also coming from Glenister on piano (a Yamaha electric) and Long at the bass.

Glenister moved to tenor sax to create a piano-less quartet for an arrangement of Count Basie’s “Jive at Five”. Here she shared the solos with Hodgkins, who had switched from Harmon to cup mute. This was arguably the most interesting number of this short set.

Hodgkins continued with the cup mute on an Armstrong inspired “Pennies from Heaven”, sharing the solos with Glenister, now back on piano, and Long.

Hodgkins runs his own Bell record label and recently released the album “Salute to Humph”, his tribute to the late, great Humphrey Lyttleton. The Jazzmann intends to take a look at this, plus two further Hodgkins releases shortly. Today’s set closed with a Lyttleton inspired arrangement of the jazz standard “September In The Rain” with solos from Hodgkins on bluesy, muted trumpet, Glenister on piano and Long on bass. Drummer Davies also featured in a series of exchanges with the other instrumentalists.

With Hodgkins in fluent form on the trumpet and with his wryly witty tune announcements this was a highly enjoyable set that got the afternoon’s events off to a great start. He was well supported by the multi-talented Glenister and her trio.

A review of the evening where I took a guest spot with Terrance Collie https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/terence-collie-trio-guests-brecon-jazz-club-the-muse-arts-centre-brecon-10-12-2024