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Alec Dankworth

Spanish Accents

Basho SRCD 21-2

As its title suggests, this album takes its inspiration from jazz's 'Spanish tinge', deploying various combinations of bassist/composer Alec Dankworth, guitarist Phil Robson, saxophonist Julian Argüelles, violinist Chris Garrick, bagpiper Jean-Pierre Rasle and Barcelona-based drummer Marc Miralta (plus singers Emily Dankworth and Cleo Laine) to range through a skilfully varied repertoire including everything from Rodrigo's 'Concierto de Aranjuez', through traditional pieces and appropriate material by the likes of Chick Corea and Jack DeJohnette, Pat Metheny and Dizzy Gillespie, to original compositions by Dankworth himself.

The core of the band, the trio of Dankworth, Robson and Argüelles, recorded a mysteriously underrated album, If You're Passing By (Candid) in 2003, and there is consequently a fine easy coherence to the group's interaction here, Argüelles's familiar bubblingly elegant saxophone sound affectingly set off by Robson's wonderfully versatile guitar playing (filigree-delicate one minute, spikily assertive the next) and Dankworth's full-bodied but agile bass.

Garrick's violin and Rasle's pipes provide welcome touches of stridency to the sound-mix as required, and with Miralta subtly driving the whole either with kit, percussion or hand-clapping (palmas), the album's textural and rhythmic variation renders the programme wholly absorbing.

Emily Dankworth has a beautifully pure, ringing voice, particularly appropriate for the traditional love song, 'Los Cuatros Muleros', and with Cleo Laine bringing all her warmth and experience to the album's closer, 'Dreams of Castilla' (which she wrote with Alan Clare), this is a fine, wide-ranging but ultimately pleasingly homogeneous album, impeccably performed and intelligently programmed.