To a late evening jazz concert in the crypt of St John’s Smith Square. The Harry Baker Trio. A young bunch. We’d not seen or heard of them before, but that’s our problem, not theirs.
A small, select audience. A few younger people, plus one or two other tables of seasoned folk like ourselves.
Here’s a short video of the three of them playing one of Harry Baker’s own moody compositions, which we thought were rather good:
But most of the evening comprised them playing standards, the most effective of which were the livelier ones: St Thomas by Sonny Rollins, Empty Pockets by Herbie Hancock, something less well-known by Thelonious Monk and Tempus Fugit by Bud Powell.
These three know what they are doing and play without pretention and with evident joy.
We very much enjoyed our evening. Good luck to them.
I’m not entirely sure what motivated me to book Joe Lovano, as I was aware that he had some connections with that school but also with many other schools of jazz. I played a few snippets on YouTube and reckoned that Janie’s love of the saxophone would conquer all.
The first two or three minutes did not go well. In particular, Marilyn Crispell’s first few bars on the piano sounded really free, really free, really-really-really free, to me.
Were I a praying person, I would have been praying for the gig to warm up.
It did warm up.
I was more impressed by Carmen Castaldi on the drums than Janie was. He was assisted at times by Joe Lovano himself, who not only played the saxophone but also the gongs and a shaky-stick thing which defies description other than the term “shaky stick thing”. It might have been a cacho seedpod stick. I think that both of them also used some loose seedpods a few times. It all felt a bit experimental and “do what you like” at that end of the percussion section.
But heck, this trio is old enough and experienced enough to do what they like. I have said many times that Wigmore Hall is one of the few places left where stewards refer to us, without irony, as young man and young woman. But these days we rarely feel, as we did that evening, that we are youngsters next to all of the performers. No matter.
Here’s a little documentary released by ECM in 2019 when this trio started working together:
Here’s a recording of a whole live gig from 2022 in Luxembourg, some of which will sound much like the music we heard:
At the end of the evening we ran into John Thirlwell, one of my real tennis pals from Lord’s. Come to think of it, Lord’s is the only other place left, apart from Wigmore Hall, where we are still addressed by stewards as young man and young woman without irony.
We sat directly behind Andrew McGregor, who presented the concert for BBC Radio 3 listeners. It is the first time we have ever sat in those seats, which was enlightening and slightly distracting in equal measure. We did at least, from there, hear what the presenter is telling the Radio 3 audience, which is often a bit more than can be found on the programme.
Actually, for this concert, most of what we wanted was in the programme, which can be found through the Wigmore Hall link or, if that ever fails, here.
If you are finding this within a month or so of the concert, then you can hear it on BBC Sounds – click here.
In the concert hall we got a sweet encore by Pietro Locatelli, which made me realise that I had paid that composer far too little attention, so we listened to a fair smattering of Locatelli when we got home. We also discussed his football skills and his magnificence as a restaurateur.
One of the finest composers Juventus ever produced? And as for Zafferano…
In the first half, Michele Rabbia, Gianluca Petrella and Eivind Aarset played their unusual style of electronically-enhanced ambient music, mostly pieces from the album Lost River.
Here’s an example piece – Nimbus
One lady in our row, clearly not keen on electronically enhanced jazz, decided not to stick around for the second half. That’s a shame, because it was very different and not electronically enhanced at all.
Avishai Cohen and Yonathan Avishai have been friends since they were kids and the camaraderie really showed. Their set mostly came form the album “Playing The Room”.
Here’s a sample from that:
Here is a live video of them playing a lullaby, which i think they used as their encore:
Not a concert to set your pulse racing, but two very interesting acts and a good way to start concert-going in 2024.
But the thing that made this concert so very special was the extraordinary piece we heard. Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo.
Vox Luminis are a wonderful outfit who don’t tend to disappoint. This evening was no exception. They perform with smiles on their faces and clearly celebrate each other’s and their joint success.
Here is a trailer of Vox Luminis performing this very piece in 2021 in Utrecht. Different soloists, but you can’t have everything:
Janie and I are not easily wowed these days – we’ve seen a lot of excellent concerts in our time, but this one blew our metaphorical socks off. Delicious music, sounding a little different from anything we’ve heard before from that period. Sweeter than Monteverdi oratorios, but loads going on in the soundscape.
Strozzi and Caccini provided the songs – I suppose I should call them madrigals from that era. They were all operatic in style, which suits Roberta Invernizzi’s theatrical delivery and powerful soprano voice.
Invernizzi was ably supported by period instrumentalists, all extremely capable on their instruments. Two theorboes and a harp seems almost an embarrassment of plucked-string-riches, but the sound was lovely so we wallowed in the excess.
In truth, to our taste, the trio sonatas and passacaille of Leonarda and Jacquet De La Guerre respectively were more to our taste than the madrigals, but we enjoyed the whole concert.
Here is an example of a Leonarda sonata – coincidentally from an album primarily containing Roberta Invernizzi but not on this instrumental piece:
Below, from a separate recording, is Roberta Invernizzi singing Strozzi’s Sino Alla Morte, one of the madrigals we heard:
Almost everything that I want to say in words about this event is contained in the “match report” on King Cricket – click here or below, where, in case you didn’t know, dear reader, I am Ged and Janie is Daisy:
If anything were ever to go awry with the King Cricket site, click this link for a scrape of that report.
Janie took a ludicrous number of pictures – you can see them all through the Flickr link below:
Janie and I were very motivated by the live appearance of Rudimental and mugged up on their hits in advance of the concert…I mean Finals Day.
I expected that we might see live performances of at least four Rudimental bangers and we were treated to all four of the ones I expected we’d see:
I was also hoping for this next one, which I especially liked when mugging up, but they didn’t do this one. Shoulda been a bigger hit in my opinion, but my opinion didn’t guarantee hits even when I was younger, let alone now!
You find out who your friends are when you go to this sort of concert…
…or more realistically, The Wigmore Hall management finds out who its friends are.
Frankly, I booked this concert because I fancied hearing the Liszt transcription of Beethoven Seven, which, in the end, Igor Levit decided not to perform. Never mind. This is the concert programme he chose instead.
Anyway, the “Friends Party” aspect was secondary in my mind.
Janie and I didn’t know that the Friends of Wigmore Hall had been going for 30 years. We are mere arrivistes at the place, starting our adventures there a mere 25 years ago, in 1998, with this concert:
..for which we befriended the place and then attended pretty regularly (several times a year, pandemic aside) ever since.
After saying some fine words about how important the Friends of Wigmore Hall is to the hall and how important the hall is to his artistic life, Igor Levit played Schumann and Brahms instead of the Liszt.
After the concert, maintaining the Brahms and Liszt theme (did you see what I did there?) a drinks reception with Champagne for those who like alcoholic fizz and sparking elderflower presse for those who, like me, prefer their fizz non-alcoholic during the day.
On departure, Janie and I decided to thank John Gilhooly, who has been running the place extremely well for years, for the party.
Janie and I confessed to not having been supporters for all 30 years. John told us that we didn’t look like those who had been supporting for 30 years. Perhaps he underestimated our ages and wouldn’t have guessed that we have supported for 25 of the 30.
We then chatted briefly about John’s campaign to try to introduce a younger audience to the Hall, which Janie and I applaud. John then made a slightly off-colour remark about the reception being a bit of a legacies marketing campaign event…”but not directed at you two, obviously”, he said.
So I suppose we’d better remove The Wigmore Hall from our bequests list, then. 😉
The theme of this rather wonderful BBC Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall was imitations. All of the pieces had themes within them in which the music imitates some sort of natural sound.
Janie and I thought this was an excellent and very interesting concert. We very nearly missed it, as I, in an extremely rare omission, forgot to write this Wigmore Hall date in our diaries when I booked this back in February. It was only because there was a small change to the programme that I was alerted to my omission and fortunately we were both able still to make the date.
The headline picture is sort-of an imitation too – that painting by Jan Voorhout was once thought to be Dieterich Buxtehude, the composer of the first piece we heard, but is now believed simply to be a domestic music scene of that baroque period.
If you just fancy one little listen to some Baroque imitation, then the third movement of this sonata by Johann Paul von Westhoff, which we heard, should thrill your ears.
Continuing the theme of imitation, I suppose I spent the day “imitating” a young man. I have said in recent years that there are now only three places left where people sometimes call me “young man” without irony: Wigmore Hall, Lord’s and Gresham Society. Today I enjoyed all three.
After Wigmore Hall, I went on to lord’s for a cracking game of real tennis doubles.
2016 Picture by Toni Friend – I was so much younger then
Then on to the National Liberal Club for the Gresham Society AGM and dinner. For reasons known only to him (and in a style only Tim could muster), Professor Connell invited me to sit at the top table:
Would you care to join us on the top table tomorrow night?
Everyone else has refused and it will look a bit odd if there is no-one on it.
It would have been hard to refuse such a courteous request.
Tim Connell promised to keep the formal AGM bit to seven minutes but those around me suggested that he strayed into the 10-15 minutes zone, as usual.
Worse yet, despite spending the day in all three places where I am still occasionally addressed as “young man”, no-one had done so that day and no-one did so that evening.
Still, I chatted with lots of interesting people and enjoyed a good dinner.
Sir Thomas Gresham: 1519-1579 – I’m even older than him now
