The Manchester jazz scene currently seems to be enjoying the sort of productivity that its club and indie cousins enjoyed in the 1990s, with young bands blossoming in considerable numbers.
Two of them were presented here as a festival closing night showcase for Gondwana Records, whose founder, trumpeter Matthew Halsall, also happens to lead one of the bands.
Halsall's music leans quite heavily towards Debussy-like impressionism and Japanese culture. The presence in his sextet of wooden flute and concert harp, taking a koto-like role, emphasised the latter, while the general mood was of an understated and well-tempered airiness. Halsall himself plays with considered lyricism, soloing with a nicely rounded tone, and his compositions, mostly taken from his latest album, Fletcher Moss Park, left space for flute, harp and – to a lesser extent – piano solos that nudged the music along gently. One flute solo, giving an impression of birdsong over a waltzing, undulating rhythm, was a particularly nice touch, although a little more fire overall wouldn't have gone amiss.
There's no lack of energy in piano-bass-drums trio GoGo Penguin's approach. Openly indebted to EST, although also showing quite a lot of the Neil Cowley Trio's influence without quite the same dynamic range and definition, they present a kind of motoring minimalism, buoyed by Rob Turner's fine, lightly propulsive drumming. Their set here wasn't helped by an unflatteringly dull double bass sound, and while their compositions, using simple phrases and repetition rather than development, have a surface attractiveness, they're a bit light on variety and the kind of improvisatory inquiry that made EST at their best so compelling.
Glasgow Jazz Festival
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