Structure, Swing, and Spirit at Jazz Hastings
VICTORIA KINGHAM enjoys the expert accomplishments of Nikki Yeoh’s Infinitum
However you want to classify or define jazz, an important feature of the genre is its endless ability to call up the unexpected, to turn an expected cadence into a discord and back into a harmonic dénouement. There’s often a parallel construction in a novel or film or other narrative – the presentation, the complication, the final resolution. Sometimes the important stories are the ones that subvert the narrative, that lead the reader or listener to expect one conclusion but present a different one, at the same time making it seem inevitable.
Nikki Yeoh’s music does just this. Her tunes are percussive, and she plays open-fronted upright piano with great assurance and joy – her back is to the audience and she leads the trio from the piano. The music grooves along, has structure and cohesion and swing. Time-signatures are mostly non-standard so that the rhythm, while constant, is serrated, and jolts the audience out of their complacency and makes them sit up and listen.
Don’t get me wrong. Some jazz performers and writers will present a tune in an odd time-signature which is excellent, but nevertheless seems to say, I wrote this in 9/8 or 13/4 or 7/4 because it was more interesting. Yeoh’s tunes come over, however, as though they are this way because the phrasing and the melody dictated it. It’s a terrific gift, to make the complex so thoroughly accessible.
COHESION
Clearly, this band have worked extensively together and love it. Mark Mondesir (drums) and Michael Mondesir (electric bass) are brothers with a musical connection obvious to anyone with even half an ear. Both of them are supremely in command of their instruments, of the twists and turns and rhythmic complexities and sheer exhilaration of these numbers. The band’s major strength is in its cohesion: Mark Mondesir has an exceptional, faultless, unusually melodic drum technique. Drums and piano interlace, call-and-respond, complement, and cohere throughout. Michael Mondesir looks as though he was born holding his instrument, managing to make his expert bass lines and innovative solo breaks look as though they spring naturally from musical instinct, instead of the honed reality of long years of experience playing with the best of the best jazz musicians both in the UK and abroad – as is true of the whole trio.
DANCE OF THE SMALL BEARS
The numbers are presented with splendid dynamism. The first number is particularly wild, presaging the evening of exciting improvised crescendo and diminuendo which, Yeoh says (introducing a number called Dance of the Small Bears which sounds like a mad Highland fling with a hint of Mingus) depends on the mood and the response of the audience to the musicians. There is a consistently responsive and positive audience at almost every Jazz Hastings gig. The unfailing enthusiasm of the organisers who give their time and energy, and the exceptionally good sound balance engineered by Roger Carey (Liane Carroll’s bass player) always makes for the best possible show. After the enthusiastic applause has died down, Yeoh presents another surprise: an encore where she sings Bob Dylan’s Hurricane – a difficult song to sing and an even more difficult number to present with a jazz accompaniment, but managed with authenticity.
All in all, a wildly successful evening, stretching the audience’s musical understanding but doing it well, turning and extending the jazz genre yet again. Extraordinary, wonderful stuff.
Infinitum is Nikki Yeoh (piano), Mark Mondesir (drums), and Michael Mondesir (bass).
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