I’ve got to think of my future…

The wait will soon be over…

Twenty two years ago, a truly talented wise man — one of a trio, fortuitously — recommended a record, “an LP”, that he said helped explain where his own startlingly original, beautiful, frequently funky yet immeasurably moving music had come from. Having sat rapt in attention on the front row of the circle at Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre, elbows on the balcony, my head in my hands, soaking that music up for the first of many times when hours seemed like days, felt like seconds, I had to find this source at all costs… — hoping it would help unlock something… — and it turned out (rather proptitiously, and much to my surprise) that someone who lived near my mum and dad was actually selling a copy. (I think they call this synchronicity.)

It’s a mono record from around the time I was learning to talk, with only a foreign language with lots of accents printed outside and inside; oh, and therefore quite rare… — especially in the UK. However, this appears to be how the world crawls forward meaningfully: one astounding coincidence at a time. Oh, and therefore, the first time I had ever worked abroad, it had been in the city where the wise man was born and grew up with the best friend who now played drums with him (the second wise man): right around the time the band was getting together (with the third wise man) and my son was learning to talk. The city is called Västerås; the first wise man Esbjörn; and his band — which you may have heard, heard of (I do hope so) — was the Esbjörn Svensson Trio.

Esbjörn was right: that record, that remarkable, tear-inducing “long player”, with notes placed like crystalline stars in the silence of the darkest nights — Jazz på svenska by Jan Johansson — did. And it also illuminated the path Esbjörn took with another like-minded magus, Nils Landgren, with Swedish Folk Modern — melding the folk music from which all these other melodic tributaries flow with their future jazz-infused ocean. (Music so “intensely wonderful”, she said, that a good friend had it playing as she passed away: believing it would help transport her to heaven. Atheist that I am, I’m still sure it did. Sadly, both Jan and Esbjörn also died tragically young. They left behind some of the most astonishing music that — in a life bathed in the stuff — I have heard.)

Flowing into this same musical ocean across the North Sea from those original wise men now comes the wise-beyond-his-years (but certainly not wet behind the ears, despite his youth) saxophonist and composer Matt Carmichael, surrounded on the stage at Kirkgate Arts in Cockermouth by…

three other equally astonishingly talented (and young) musicians who conjured up beautiful soundscapes that had me hooked right from those first breathy notes… – and left me wanting more! So CDs bought, and review to follow. Scottish Folk Modern or Jazz in Scottish, you take your pick. Stunning!

So I breathlessly scrawled on Facebook, last night, in a delirium fuelled by wonder: wondering how such talent springs up again and again (and again and again) — not followers, either, but convergent evolution: completely original.

There was not a doubt in my mind that — just as E.S.T. had managed to sound Swedish, somehow, yet utterly universal — here was a (to me, anyway) novel form of jazz with a flavour just as profoundly and engagingly Scottish as the Aberlour A’bunadh that sat in front of me, last night, as I jotted down my (tasting?) notes for this review. This passionate sound was not watered down one drop, however; but was of the highest quality. I was transported again and again back to the wild grassy beaches I had played on as a child; the farm I had worked on in high summers and the high mountains that had challenged me as a teenager; the coastline — particularly that stunning shelf between Inverness and Aberdeen, as well as so much of Skye — explored with my son. Again and again I was pulled back to somewhere ineffably Scottish, incredibly soul-shearing. Places that I miss painfully; but that bring me balm.

It was not just those memories, or that draw this culture and land has always had on me, that held me gripped: there was something symphonically immersive about many of the pieces played; and the rising talent on display — from Matt breathing new life, new sounds, into a beautiful old sax; Fergus McCreadie, cheeky and nimbly inventive on piano; Ali Watson, singing sonorously with his bass; to Tom Potter, stunningly atmospheric on drums (and was that a single-octave shruti box I saw before me?!) — was just miraculous!

And, although Matt is the composer, the name, and ostensibly the frontman, he stood aside frequently to let each member shine: listening keenly to them from some shadowed corner of the stage; sometimes using his distance from the microphone extremely effectively. All four are capable, individually, in varying pairs, trios, or together as the whole quartet, the whole collective… of melody: and it this mellifluousness, this lack of fear of what melody can do — especially emotionally — that, I think, is their hallmark. Plus, of course, their unbelievable brilliance. (Of course.) I would so love to hear them in a bigger space, see them on a bigger stage: knowing they would easily fill it just as E.S.T. did all those years ago.

“Have you heard their music before?” my partner asked just before I went out.

“No! I love a surprise! And there’s not much music that I don’t enjoy on some level!” I replied.

And I enjoyed this on every single one I already knew about; plus some that were completely new to me! Go see! And, if you can’t, go listen! Jazz Music this original and this wondrous only comes along every quarter of a century or so: and you really don’t want to miss out!

Note I bought CDs of Where Will the River Flow from Bandcamp; Marram from Amazon; and Dancing with Embers from Matt’s own website. All three recordings are also available on vinyl and as digital downloads. (I cannot wait for them to arrive!)