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October 2006
gig reviews
Herb Robertson's NY Downtown Allstars
Brian Abrahams
Nois4
Chris Laurence Quartet
Finn Peters
Centre Line
Barb Jungr
Prevost, Wilkinson, Williamson
Eddie Parker's Mr Vertigo
Aisling Stephenson
Kevin Davy
Evan Parker
Basil Hodge
Turner, Grenadier, Ballard
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2007
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2006
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October 2006 gig reviews by Chris Parker
Chris Laurence Quartet
Saturday 7
'Elegant,
highly individual jazz writers', as promised, provided the material for
the Chris Laurence Quartet.
Starting with a typically driving piece by Steve Swallow, and then interspersing in-band originals with pieces by the likes of Stan Sulzmann and the odd standard ('Body and Soul' received a particularly adventurous reading), the quartet combined polish and elegance with just sufficient idiosyncrasy to put individual wrinkles in whatever they played.
Laurence himself has one of the most sonorous and warm bass sounds in the music, but is also prodigiously technically gifted, and so his bandmembers' consciously tricksy compositions (Pete Saberton and Julian Siegel both provided highly original pieces) were performed with almost insouciant ease, proving that even apparently 'difficult' music can, in sympathetic hands, be unequivocally entertaining.
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