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

November 2007
gig reviews

The Necks
Porpoise Corpus
The Chris Lowe Quintet
Evan Parker, Barry Guy
 Paul Lytton, Peter Evans
Ian Shaw
Radioplay
Fraud
Hih
Zoe Rahman Trio
Robert Mitchell
 and Corey Mwamba
Billy Jenkins and
 Steve Morrison

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November gig reviews by Chris Parker

Zoe Rahman Trio

Sunday 25 November

A packed-in audience, listening in respectful silence then showing their appreciation with sustained warm applause Ì Zoe Rahman brought the Vortex's part in the London Jazz Festival to a fitting conclusion with a typically lively but adept and wide-ranging performance, vigorously propelled by drummer Gene Calderazzo and bassist Oli Hayhurst.

The Mercury Prize-shortlisted pianist is adept at interpreting all manner of piano-trio fare, from the melodic, even hymnic, to the quirkily rhythmically adventurous (epitomised not only by her own material but by visits to compositions by one of Rahman's mentors, Joanne Brackeen), with side plates of everything from gospelly rambunctiousness to imaginatively reworked classics (here Duke Ellington's ravishingly lovely 'Come Sunday'), but whatever she plays she approaches with such musicianly brio that her subtle rhythmic displacements and intriguing improvisational routes through familiar changes are made to seem not only entirely natural, but also immediately accessible.

Considerably aided, as she is, by a charmingly self-deprecating stage manner and a patent respect for the tradition in which she operates, Rahman richly deserves the success she has experienced in the past eighteen months or so.

 

 

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