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Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring and jazz are roughly of an age and there have been several jazz adaptations of the composer's famously riot-causing work. New York trio The Bad Plus have recently also been marking the Rite's centenary. Precedent doesn't lessen the triumph, however, of Edinburgh pianist Dave Patrick's channelling of this orchestral masterpiece into a highly credible and genuinely exciting piece for jazz septet.
Patrick, with a little valuable input from his German drummer Ole Seimetz, spent four months working on a reduction that retained all the distinctive qualities of the original – the lovely folk melodies balanced by those insistent, irregular, almost angry metres – but allowed space for improvisation and his musicians' own personalities to come to the fore and for the music to move naturally into swing and freer time-keeping.
His writing for a frontline that, between them, handled much of the clarinet, saxophone and flute families plus trumpet and flugelhorn, captured all the essential phrases with rich, strong voicings and even replaced the bassoon introduction with Sam Coombes's yearning soprano saxophone without provoking any thoughts of irreverent tampering.
And contrary to the original's reception in Paris, there were people on their feet cheering and clapping after the slamming finale.
Elsewhere in a programme that drew on Herbie Hancock, Count Basie, Joe Henderson and Patrick's own compositions, the pianist showed a fine talent for more conventional jazz arranging.
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