Big Band at Flatland
HARRY HAWKINS AND VERA BELL
Staged within the space of Tawfik Nas’s installation at Flatland Projects in Bexhill, the 17-piece incarnation of the Statue of Liberty Big Band (SoL) was brimming with inchoate noises – and this is a small format for them.
Statue of Liberty Big Band
As before, SoL performed to raise funds for the local Refugee Buddy Project (see details below). Arriving early at Flatland to browse some of the art installations and exhibits, I could hear the band settling themselves, although it occasionally sounded like some contorting machine, freewheeling electronics running against clusters of horns.
Produced and conducted by Ed Baxter, the group capped off the first day of Bexhill’s Art Weekender, performing a particularly inspired, inclusive selection of glorious tunes, many politically motivated. The works of composers and musicians from Chile and Peru were represented, as were some from Sweden and Japan (composed by the fiercely improvisational saxophonist Eiichi Hayashi), among other gems such as Pretty Fly, Walter Schumann’s eerie, premonitory theme from The Night of the Hunter.
Moving closer to home, they played Another Green World (the Arena tune) by Suffolk-based ideas genius and producer Brian Eno. Eno was/is seminal as a musician in Roxy Music and with Robert Fripp, and producer of class acts Talking Heads, Devo and Coldplay, but achieved immutable world-wide fame as composer of three-and-a-quarter seconds of Windows 95, bing-de-bang-bong, bang-bong – you know the one!). Hastings-based improvising minimalist from Slapp Happy, Anthony Moore, generated the electronics. Baxter clearly carefully chose the set for its universality, its radical nature and its inclusiveness, characteristics which also exactly represent the ethos of the Refugee Buddy Project.
The band’s personnel is employed comprehensively, to great effect. The work of the percussion section – Kit and Julian – was particularly impressive. It brought strong momentum and some lively, Latin-tinged grooves like Entradita de la Cabana, whilst Adam’s vibraphone feature on the classic Left Bank Two theme perfectly fitted its art environment. Music of political resistance was expressed through the words of Chilean political martyr Victor Jara’s El Derecho de Vivir En Paz (The Right to Live in Peace), sung passionately by Spanish-speaker Otti Albietz.
The closing suite (combined Sun Ra and Anthony Moore) ensured plenty of rebellious, free-form wailing by horn players Toby Bula and Stuart Griffiths. A fitting end to a marvellous afternoon’s music.
On 15 August, The Statue of Liberty Big Band was: Ed Baxter: producer and conductor, Otti Albietz guitar, voice on El Derecho de Vivir en Paz, Matt Armstrong: bass, Ted Barrow: electronics, Kit Bula: drums, Toby Bula-Edge: sax, Adam Bushell: vibraphone, Julian Humphries: percussion, Anthony Moore: electronics, feedback generator, Lucy Griffiths: oboe, sax, Stuart Griffiths sax, Helen Heleni: voice on Pretty Fly, Kitty McCarron: voice on Bad Samaritan, Love in Outer Space and Slow Moon’s Rose, Vladimir Miller: piano, Jude Montague: keyboard, Robbie Robson: trumpet, Eoghan McCarron: mixdown.
Refugee Buddy Project: therefugeebuddyproject.org.uk/; Flatland Projects: flatlandprojects.com. Review by Resonance fm: tinyurl.com/yc2x2amy
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