Upstream Jazz Orchestra directed by Graham Collier
February 27th 2011, Halifax Nova Scotia,
Canada
How do Halifax's jazz musicians do
it? Opportunities are few. Occasions to rise above ordinary
excellence even fewer. Yet 14 local players drawn together
as the Upstream Jazz Orchestra came up Sunday night with
one of the hottest jazz bands ever to hit the Dunn stage.
Big bands offer the most exciting possibilities in the
business for firing up the blood. And British jazz
composer, band leader and writer Graham Collier made more
of those possibilities than any of us in the packed
auditorium thought possible.
It was a long concert at a little over two-and-a-half hours
including a short intermission. Yet there were only two big
pieces on the program and three shorter ones. Actually
fewer. The extraordinarily tasty blues, Under the Pier,
with its wide intervals and tonality-twisting chord
extensions was played twice, differently, at the opening
and end of the show.
Together with a new version of an early Collier composition
called The Alternate Aberdeen Angus, Under the Pier
bracketed two, nearly hour-long, suites called The Blue
Suite modeled after Miles Davis (Kind of Sketchy, Kind of
So What, Kind of Freddie, Kind of Green and All Kinds) on
the first half, and Luminosity based on five paintings by
abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann on the second.
The rich fulness of Collier's harmonies, the imagination
and inventiveness of his orchestral colour, and the
marvelous fluency of the improvisations played to an
intensely listening audience over an unfailingly deep
groove.
In both suites Collier mixed the movements together, giving
himself a considerable role in a flowing, ever-changing
composition.
The groove sustained a feeling of motion even when the
decks were cleared for a soloist like Lukas Pearse to open
up his big bass sound right down to the sub-basement of his
extended low register (from an E in the lowest octave of
the piano a further four notes down to a low C).
The sound down there is almost not heard as a pitch. But no
matter considering that Pearse was scrubbing his bow,
across, down and in a circular polishing motion, enveloping
the stage in grinding overtones which felt like they could
polish the grit off your back teeth, and sounded as huge as
the rest of the band put together..
Various other players climbed aboard for a while including
Tim Crofts with some extremely light and transparent
textures on piano and Chris Mitchell playing a fat,
grooving sound on the alto flute.
The full band returned sometimes like a blast of artillery,
and at others by way of accumulating layers of quiet, often
sweet tone colour and melodic energy.
There were too many fine soloists to mention, but Danny
Martin's trombone solo in The Blue Suite, a wickedly
energetic excursion played with undiminished inventiveness,
told us much about Collier's ability to inspire the
musicians.
These, besides Mitchell, Pearse and Martin, also included
Tim Crofts on piano, Jeff Torbert on acoustic/electric
guitar, Geordie Haley on hard-body (a sure fire source of
unexpected yet right-on improvising), Danny Parker on bass
and Tom Roach on drums.
The horn line included Rick Waychesko and Tim Elson on
trumpet/flugelhorn, Paul Cram on tenor sax/clarinet, Jeff
Reilly on bass clarinet, Dawn Hatfield on baritone sax, and
Tim Keels on tuba and bass trombone.
There was potential for confusion in the sheer weight of
tones and energies, and the number of improvisors
(everybody), but Collier kept both musicians and audience
in the loop, the groove anchoring the structures, and his
many devices for changing direction and orchestration and
gestures ensuring that no two performances would sound
alike.