Sonic Collisions in The Nest
BEN THOMPSON, long-time journalist, music critic, music writer, comedy historian and ghost (writer), relishes the first Hastings festival of spontaneous improvised music.
Trevor Watts
An enthusiastic full house at the Nest for the opening Friday night of the inaugural Two Ship Festival must have been balm to the souls of organisers who had surely experienced the odd sleepless night pondering the sanity of putting on a whole weekend of improvised music in Hastings.
There was more good news in the return of much-loved local jazz powerhouse Jason Yarde. After suffering a massive stroke onstage in France last October, Jason has fought his way back to performance fitness with the help of a huge outpouring of warmth – and perhaps more importantly, financial support – from the international jazz community.
It was a joy to see Jason reclaiming centre stage with a fine selection of farty Troublefunk, b-side-style keyboard noises from his trusty Organelle and infra-red theremin combination, before picking up his sax to reveal that the beautifully assured, rich, throaty tone of his playing has come through this traumatic health interlude miraculously intact.
Yarde’s sonic collision with powerhouse bassist John Edwards got the weekend off to an electrifying start: Edwards plucks and hums and saws at his instrument with the intensity of an Arctic explorer whose leg has lodged in a crevasse attempting to saw through the bone with a nail file to escape an advancing polar bear.
And organiser Olie Brice’s free-flowing power-trio Somersaults – celebrating their tenth anniversary this year – kept energy levels in the red zone with a performance whose stage directions might have read: “Swarm of bees! Car crash! Swarm of bees! Wolf whistle”. Drummer Mark Sanders is a mesmerisingly compact bundle of percussive impulses and ‘Why hit the cymbal with a stick when you can flick it with your fingers?’ is one of a number of unofficial mottos of an art-form (and by this I mean improvised music in general, not just drumming – although the drummers often seem to have the worst of it) which requires total physical engagement.
BREAKING THE RULES
Saturday afternoon’s session was a chance for a smaller crowd to catch its collective breath. Hannah Marshall’s refreshingly meditative solo cello set made the perfect backdrop for the car driving up the high street with its stereo turned up to eleven, and the birdcall and shaker-toting cr-ow-tr-io getting full use out of their ‘access all areas’ pass to the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s prop department.
Saturday night was packed to the rafters again for wry Tynesider Faye MacCalman’s bold attempt to integrate elements of sung melody and structured songwriting into an improvisatory framework. She was arguably breaking all the rules by giving house room to such taboo elements but happily did not find herself chased through the Old Town by a pitchfork-wielding mob.
Hastings’ most mercurial eighty-something, Trevor Watts, brought down the curtain on an unforgettable weekend with some of the interplay between his Eternal Triangle helpmeets – Jamie Harris (congas and hands-on cymbals) and Veryan Weston (Nord Stage 2 keyboard and grandad shirt) – scaling heights of improbable funkiness so sublime that Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock would’ve been chuffed with them.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply