Notes on deciphering a secret code

Folk & Jazz critic

Tuesday 18 September 2012

The phone rang in Phil Robson's house in Margate one afternoon and the voice at the other end asked if Robson would be available to play guitar over three days the following week.

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Phil Robson talks about writing the music for his jazz quintet’s new tour. By Rob Adams

A quick check of his diary told him all he needed to know and he agreed to get together with the caller, Tamil Hendelman, plus a drummer to be arranged and British jazz legend Stan Tracey's regular bass player, Andy Cleyndaert, who'd recommended Robson for this job.

And thus, with a call out of the blue, Robson found himself playing for Barbra Streisand on the Jonathan Ross Show, an experience not without its terrors but one the guitarist would repeat in a heartbeat."The best bit was day two, when we rehearsed with Barbra and it was like a little gig," the guitarist recalls. "We were only down to do two songs, but she had 17 that she wanted to choose from, so we sat and played through them and she sang. She was very relaxed, very nice and it was lovely. "The actual show wasn't so relaxed. They had me sitting in position for ages with a nylon strung guitar under these studio lights and I was terrified that the guitar was going to be out of tune at the big moment. Fortunately, I was able to have a quick little check just as we were about to start and it was fine. But yeah, that was something I never ever expected to be doing."Robson and Streisand may henceforth remain ships that passed briefly but his story is one in the eye for those who told him that moving from London out to the Kent coast would mean missing out on big gigs. Indeed, Robson has been busy enough in his own right since he and his partner, singer Christine Tobin, settled in Margate five years ago. This week he brings his Immeasurable Code Quintet to Scotland for what is only his second visit as a bandleader (the Derby-born guitarist appeared here with his American trio with drummer Billy Hart and bassist James Genus some 10 years ago). The album the quintet was formed for and takes its name from was nominated for the Album of the Year category at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards earlier this year and came hot on the heels of its similarly lauded predecessor, Six Strings And The Beat, which featured a jazz guitar trio with a string quartet. Both albums resulted from commissions from Robson's home-town jazz club in Derby and have thrust the guitarist, who was previously best known as one quarter of pioneering Brit jazz band Partisans, into the spotlight as a composer."I'm not sure if living with the sea at the end of our street has had any great impact on my writing," he says. "But it's certainly very relaxing to come back here from touring. I don't write in any conventional way. I'm not the sort of musician who can say, 'Right, I have Wednesday off, I'll sit down and compose something'. I tend to carry ideas around in my head for ages. Even with the Immeasurable Code commission, which essentially involved coming up with two full sets of music, I kept it up here for months until I had the sound worked out in my mind. Then I wrote it all down very quickly."The Immeasurable Code denotes means of communication, including Morse Code, which was represented on the original recording by the quintet's flautist, Gareth Lockrane. It was, says Robson candidly, really just an idea to get him writing as he finds composing easier with a theme or a narrative to work to."I wrote it with the musicians who were going to play it in mind, as I always do," he says. "It helps to have an idea of the way they play and what sounds and styles they'll bring to the music. The band has moved on a bit from when we made the album. We don't have Mark Turner, who's based in New York, on saxophone any more. But we do have Julian Arguelles, who's also a fantastic player and so I've been writing some new pieces with Julian's saxophone style in mind for the tour."As a composer who responds best to a deadline, and with the quintet's tour coming up, Robson took himself off to Berlin three weeks ago. He spent a fortnight checking out the wide variety of music that the city offers, doing the tourist thing of hiring a bike and cycling round all the places of interest. His ploy worked: two further new compositions materialised and will be premiered on the first date of the tour in Glasgow."It sounds like I find writing a chore," he says. "And it can be quite daunting when you start off with a blank sheet of paper and have no idea where you're going to go. I actually really enjoy it, especially once I have the parts written down. But the best bit is when you bring the band in and they play what you've written for them and the sound you hear is actually the sound you imagined. That's really rewarding."Phil Robson's Immeasurable Code Quintet plays Glasgow Art Club, tonight; Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, tomorrow; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Thursday; and Mareel, Lerwick, Saturday.

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Notes on deciphering a secret code

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