Two Ships Come Sailing In
BEN THOMPSON looks forward to a night of maverick shredding and skronk
A Saturday night in Hastings generally promises a splendidly broad array of entertainment options, with the town’s various musical tribes – techno grandads, drum ’n’ bass babies, jazz-funk dandies, reggae builders, loon-panted seventies rockers – all amply catered for. The range of possibilities got even broader when jazz double bass player and band-leader Olie Brice and composer and multi-instrumentalist Tullis Rennie launched their Two Ship night of improvised music at The Nest in the Old Town in the summer of 2022.
Schizoid Sounds
One of the joys of this event (which recently celebrated its tenth iteration with a successful last-minute venue shift to the Beacon) has been watching the looks on the faces of passers-by confronted with the sometimes extreme fare being served up on the Nest’s small, brightly lit stage. Whether it’s the Heath Robinson clatter of virtuoso Norwegian percussionist, Stale Liavik Solberg, or the phenomenal shredding of This Is Not This Heat guitarist, Alex Ward, the physical demands this music makes on listener as well as performer virtually guarantee a strong audience response.
“Can you even call that music?” “Is that person mentally ill?” “Why are they holding their trumpet the wrong way up?” These are just some of the questions which have sprung to the lips of bewildered bystanders. All are perfectly legitimate enquiries to make of improvised music, which, as seriously as it sometimes takes itself, can also be very funny.
The Freedom Gap
Olie Brice first discerned the possibility of an audience for this sort of thing when he put on a one-off show of his own small ensemble, Somersaults, and a duo featuring Godfather of Hastings improv scene Trevor Watts and drummer Mark Sanders at the Beacon a few years back and drew an unexpectedly large and enthusiastic crowd. Tullis Rennie had noted that in “a vibrant scene for jazz and experimental musics” – with Sonics Festival and East Hastings Angling Club jazz nights singled out as particular bright spots — there was “also perhaps a gap for acoustic free improvised music”. As Two Ship has set about filling that gap with a compelling array of super skronky sax players and maverick asthma-attack emulating trumpeters, it’s been exciting to watch the audiences grow for this challenging but often incredibly dramatic music. This month sees the first ever Two Ship Festival, spreading six sets from 13 artists over three separate shows at the Nest.
Local, National, International
One of the things I most like about Two Ship is the equilibrium it maintains between national and sometimes international figures and local talent. As well as another chance to experience Brice’s Somersaults – now celebrating their 10th anniversary – the festival promises welcome returns for much-loved local jazz fixture Jason Yarde and Spontaneous Music Ensemble legend Trevor Watts, who has done more than anyone else to keep the flame of improvised music alive since he moved to Hastings in 1982. Watts will be playing with Eternal Triangle, the trio which recently sold out at the Kino. He’ll be hoping for a better response than he got while playing with violinist Peter Knight at their regular spot at the Nelson back in the dark distant eighties: “Everyone just walked out before we even started to play,” Trevor remembers with a grimace, “That was quite significant.”
A £15 advance Two Ship Festival ticket from Eventbrite covers all three performances – 7pm on Friday 19th May and 2pm and 7pm on Saturday 20th May – with tickets for individual shows £7 on the door.
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