REVIEW: Thursday 24 February 2005 | ||
Roger Beaujolais Quintet | ||
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 | Vibes player Roger Beaujolais, who brought his own quintet to the Spin for the first time last week, started his musical career as a drummer before he began making sweet music hitting metal plates with padded sticks. In reality, there is scant relation between his lyrical playing and anyone’s idea of bashing metal beyond wonderfully sharp accentuation and speed. Roger Beaujolais’s quintet follows the law of jazz that says great musicians will draw other great players to them. With Mark Lockheart saxes, Robin Aslant piano, Jeremy Brown bass and the extraordinary Winston Clifford drums, we have a line-up of strength and empathy, a group able to do far more than just back their leader. Each is a player of individuality who is prepared to support rather than compete thus producing jazz of great excitement and cohesion. This is particularly true of Winston Clifford who by superb awareness and responsiveness is able to makes his rhythms talk back to the solo lines like a magician. The distance between percussion and jazz vibes was perfectly demonstrated in Roger Beaujolais’s playing of the wonderful Mal Waldron ballad, Soul Eyes, in which he made the tune, a favourite with sax players, sing out without recourse to fast embellishing phrases. On the other hand in a solo introduction to Old Devil Moon he showed he can play great flurries of notes without losing the grace of the tune. In contrast to Beaujolais’s driving yet elegant vibes, Mark Lock heart, who was guest soloist at the Spin earlier in the year, played in a looser manner then I have heard, moving from low sombre lines to fast punched phrases from the top of the tenor that looked back to the mysteries of Coltrane. The evening ended with a Beaujolais original, Shuffling the Cards, a storming blues in which every member of the quintet showed us their solo skills one more time and the floor rocked with the tapping of feet. Roger Beaujolais is a masterful player and a truly generous band leader © Paul Medley | |
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