Review: Music

Glasgow Art Club

Rob Adams

IT WOULD be a great disservice to his colleagues to say that bassist Brian Shiels earned the four-star rating all by himself as this was very much a group effort. Nonetheless, Shiels's musicality, allied to a rhythmic nous, spatial awareness, creative sense of enquiry and a rounded tone, was always at the heart, and often the forefront, of a collective spirit that brought the grooving, bluesy drive and smart delivery associated with the prevalent jazz sounds of the 1950s and 1960s into the current age.

There's something of the small orchestra about this quintet. Arrangements are tailored to get the most from the leaders' empathetic trumpet-trombone frontline and even when an untitled original is described, a mite unkindly, as a set of chord changes, there's a sense of creating as warm and involving a mood as possible.

Some of the repertoire actually originated in the period mentioned - Freddie Hubbard's concise, businesslike Jodo and Eric Dolphy's evocative waltz dedicated to Booker Little, for example - but MacNiven and O'Malley are both adding to the tradition, with the former's Kerfunk notably capturing both the funk and, through some superb phrasing, the cheek promised in its introduction.

Both players are improvisers with a sure sense of direction and shape, as was shown by their unaccompanied exchange of phrases on an intriguing, slightly oblique There Will Never Be Another You, and these are traits shared by a rhythm section where pianist Steve Hamilton can conjure both romance and McCoy Tyner-esque power in the same, beautifully developed solo, where Shiels maintains his mighty presence and drummer Stephen Henderson plays with ideal judgement and propulsion.