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

February 2007
gig reviews

Alex Bonney Quartet
Soren Norbo with Django Bates
Ian Shaw
MA
John Donaldson Trio
Bheki Mseleku
Fraud
Gwilym Simcock
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

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February 2007 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Soren Norbo with Django Bates

Sunday 4 & Monday 5 February

'There's so much listening going on between [the members of the Soren Norbo Trio]' said Django Bates, in explanation of why he was attracted to their music to the extent of wanting to tour with them, playing tenor horn.

The band's short residency at The Vortex more than bore out this assessment. The piano-led trio's music hovers between structure and freedom, even their most fanciful flights loosely accommodated within their pieces' overall architecture, so Bates's humorous, maverick approach fitted perfectly inside the band's musical ethos, his horn contributions, interspersed with snatches of speech and the occasional sound effect (popping bubble-wrap, whistling), giving their sound a valuable extra textural layer, especially when the horn was fed through an electronic gizmo that imparted a wa-wa sound to it.

That Danes are adept at providing a species of deadpan humour laced with bizarre whimsy will come as no surprise to fans of the late great Victor Borge; the sudden a cappella eruption of what must be rock music's most toe-curlingly embarrassing song, Eric Clapton's sexist drivel 'Wonderful Tonight', from drummer Kresten Osgood was firmly within this tradition and epitomised the band's good-natured rapport with the audience. A fascinating display of serious fun.

 

 

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