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August 2006
gig reviews

Malene Mortensen
Jacqui Dankworth
Don Weller

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August 2006 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Don Weller

Saturday 5

A real treat on Saturday night: Don Weller has calmly got on with what he does (exploring standards' chord sequences in the most imaginative, entertaining manner possible) for 40-odd years now, and all this experience and skill is audible in every solo he plays.

'Just One of Those Things' was a fast-paced opener, 'Yesterdays' brought the tempo (but not the energy-level) down a little, 'Hey, There, You with the Stars in Your Eyes' was given an unusual rhythmic twist; in a sense, though, Weller's material is merely a springboard, a pretext.

Barrelling and buzzing through the bar lines after his trademark blearily dignified theme statements, Weller is both immediately recognisable and firmly in the centre of the modern mainstream tradition, and his rapport with his band (pianist John Donaldson, bassist Larry Bartley, drummer Dave Barry) is at once pleasingly informal and whip-smart.

All the defining features of mainstream jazz (climactic fours-and-more trading at tunes' ends, democratically allotted solo rounds etc.) are present, providing a universally understood language (jazz Esperanto, or Volapek, if you like); it is the little personal details (the varieties of tone and timbre, little melodic and rhythmic felicities, flashes of wit) that delight in this sort of music, and a decent-sized audience was duly delighted by a typically unfussy but committed performance from one of the UK's best-loved jazz figures.

 

 

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