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Mark Bassey

Telling Stories

BASSEY 001

A project ä a quartet (leader/trombonist Mark Bassey, pianist David Frankel, bassist Simon Thorpe and drummer Sean Randle) performing a mixture of music and spoken-word material ä sparked by an invitation from Blow the Fuse to play the old Vortex, Telling Stories does exactly what it says on the tin.

Bassey, instead of merely providing a sparkily interactive band with a bunch of original tunes, has set a number of them in a suite, 'An Underwater Adventure', in which each bandmember introduces material inspired by an aspect of marine life ä 'Swimming with the Fishes', 'Shark Attack', 'Dance of the Crab' and 'Enormous Pink Jellyfish' ä and, in addition, interjected spoken scene-settings and humour into other tunes, so that the album has a sort of cabaret feel to it.

Unusually for jazz, said humour is of the innocent-fun variety rather than darkly sardonic, centring on such topics as 'Road Rage' (in which the band continually shout 'Oi! You') and the unreliability of subjective reaction ('It Happened Like That'), or merely introducing each instrument personified as a hat-wearer ('The Wrong Hat').

The music itself ranges from loping blues-based themes to slightly askew waltzes and latin-tinged material, and is all addressed with verve and aplomb by a lively and accomplished band, and ä like Trudy Kerr's Jazzizit album, Sings Jazz for Juniors ä would make a fine children's introduction to jazz.