The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, London N16 8JH | Bookings 020 7254 4097 | Enquiries 020 7993 3643 | Email Info at Vortex

November 2006
gig reviews

Oren Marshall - Charming Transport Band
John Law Trio
Andy Sheppard - 200 Saxophones - the opening of Gillett Square
Convergence Quartet
Robert Mitchell and Omar Puente
Ian Shaw
Mike Westbrook Village Band Project
Christine Tobin
Billy Jenkins
Huw Warren and Peter Herbert, Led Bib
Anker, Craig, Cleaver & Curios
Nikki Yeoh
Dog Soup
Sex Mob
Taeko Kunishima

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November 2006 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Billy Jenkins

Sunday 12 - at the Spitz

For my money, the Bromley bluesman is a true homegrown genius, casting an acerbic, even jaundiced eye over the jazz-and-related-musics scene and puncturing pretensions and pomposity wherever he looks, but never letting the satire (unlike Frank Zappa, a figure with whom he's now regularly compared) overwhelm his (extremely exacting) musical values.

Loosely structured around a chronological autobiography, beginning with nursery school ('First Day in Hell') and adolescence ('Brilliant') and proceeding from there to visits to the musical worlds of everyone from Willie Dixon ('of Dock Green') to Ornette Coleman (a thrashing but oddly enlightening version of 'Dancing in Your Head'), Jenkins cajoled a stellar band (tuba player Oren Marshall a particularly apposite addition, plus alto player Nathaniel Facey, trombonist Gail Brand, violinist/trumpeter Dylan Bates and drummer Charles Hayward) through two sets of gloriously unpredictable but intensely musicianly pieces in which his blues-guitar playing (the unique strength of which is often overlooked in all the 'business' going on) simply took the breath away. Another major figure, relatively undervalued by the mainstream press and public.

 

 

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