Paul Towndrow Organ Trio
Paul Towndrow Organ Trio
Glasgow Art Club
Rob Adams
The established order of saxophonist-led organ trios in jazz put forward persuasive tunes with an inherent groove. Altoist Paul Towndrow's team does that very 1960s thing - and then it takes the idea off into the realms of adventure.
Towndrow is one of the UK's truly resourceful, imaginative jazz talents. In the summer he staged one of the most ambitious projects in recent jazz history in the shape of his Pro-Am Commonwealth Games commission for two big bands, and you don't pull off something like that without stamina, determination and a ready supply of creative thinking.
His trio benefits from these traits, too. The new compositions have a spark and spikiness that keep listeners and musicians alike on their toes. Like the sporting heroes Towndrow celebrated in Pro-Am, these pieces duck, dive, and change pace and direction. There's collective effort as the players respond to each other and fall on set patterns and some very energetic riffing, and yet each musician - Peter Johnstone (organ) and Alyn Cosker (drums) are Mr T's partners - gets space to develop his own ideas.
The sense of renewal extends to well-known tunes as well. Thelonious Monk's Bye-Ya and Wayne Shorter's indecently catchy Yes Or No retained their appealing idiosyncrasies while undergoing an athletic re-energising process. What's New became a hymn of solo saxophone praise before settling into its gorgeous ballad familiarity, its chord changes supplying Towndrow with apparently unlimited ideas for logical development. The result: lots that was new but that was also guided by the value of knowing what the song's about before taking that improviser's leap.
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