Sun Swells
VICTORIA KINGHAM is awed by the talents of Corrie Dick and his ensemble at this month’s Jazz Hastings gig.
There’s always an element of the unexpected in the music of bands led by drummers, and Corrie Dick’s is no exception. All the numbers were taken from Sun Swells, Dick’s latest album, and all were composed by him. “I like to give my musicians space,” he told me. And while these songs are carefully structured, there is a marked emphasis on the freedom of each individual to explore and extend boundaries within that structure.
This spaciousness was fully and joyously utilised by each member of the band, while they never lost the inner co-operation and tightness that produced the fine overall effect. Broadly, the improvisational element of this rather unclassifiable style makes it jazz. Not the ‘here’s the chorus/here’s the solos/here’s the chorus again’ routine, which these days we hear less and less, but rather a controlled exploration into melodic intricacies.
This is only made possible, of course, because despite their comparative youth, these are all musicians of the highest accomplishment. Elliot Garvin kept a solid left-hand undertow while making something constantly new, out-of-whack, investigative, with his right hand, and used the uncovered piano strings to great effect. The arrangements also allowed the extraordinary guitarist Rob Luft to use his trademark foot-pedal to produce a consistent and beautiful overall reverberative eeriness. “The electric guitar” he has remarked in an interview with Tolita, “is like an aeroplane. If you don’t add the pedals, especially in the 21st century, it never really takes off. You’re taxiing along the road.” On upright bass, Calum Gourlay was understated, solid, sometimes inspired, always harmonious and carefully listening. On trumpet, the fabulous Laura Jurd shone. She displayed enormous affinity with this music, and an accomplished ease that comes of long practice, technical prowess and an excellent musical ear. The singer, Rebecka Edlund, was surprisingly not the singer on the album, but was thoroughly at home with the lyrics. Her voice seemed particularly suited to the demands of these songs and to the acoustic of the venue. She was also able to add her own speciality bird whistles and tweets, and further, she enunciated both the sung and the spoken words so very distinctly that I wondered if she had a drama school background. She hasn’t, but she did tell me she was once a child star growing up in Sweden, and this is possibly the explanation of her easy stage presence and clear delivery.
Corrie Dick’s talent has generated a great deal of interest over at least the past ten years. His unassuming presence (he played just one drum solo, on the final number of the evening) belies his inventiveness and his erudition, and he is in great demand as a drummer and composer. His first album, Impossible Things, was innovative and experimental, but on this new album he seems to have come into his own, to have found a personal and unique style.
This is definitely 21st century music. Carefully composed, improvised, folk-influenced, rock-influenced, jazz-influenced, spacious, structured, yet free. All the musicians except Luft, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and also holds a string of awards, are graduates of Trinity Laban, which has emerged in recent years as a spawning ground for excellent and individual talents. Gourlay and Jurd are professors there. All the musicians lead ensembles in their own name. Furthermore, Edlund was taught by local saxophone player, teacher, and composer Josephine Davies, whose profile appears elsewhere in this edition of Hastings Independent, and whose musical philosophy of thinking about the musicians who will be playing her compositions, and ‘allowing space for them’ echoes that of Corrie Dick. Circles within circles, wheels within wheels, and Hastings continues apace as a hub for musical innovation.
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