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

March 2008
gig reviews

Mark Lockheart and Friends
Amy Gamlen
Bryan Corbett
Carlos Lopez-Real/Fini Bearman Band
Curios
David Friesen
Will Collier Septet
Outhouse

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March 2008 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Amy Gamlen
with the Hans Koller Quartet

Thursday 6 March

Being a Paris resident (she moved to the city in 2001 after graduating from Graham Collier's jazz performance programme at the Royal Academy of Music), UK-born alto/soprano player Amy Gamlen is a rare sight in London jazz clubs, although this gig reunited her with a former leader, pianist Hans Koller, in whose band, Magic Mountain, she used to play.

Fronting a band completed by trombonist Jeremy Price, bassist Dave Whitford and drummer Paul Clarvis, she revealed herself as a neat but adventurous player with an urgent, occasionally even pleasingly strident tone and a striking compositional gift.

Whether addressing Koller compositions or her own, she plotted highly individual but satisfying courses through the tunes' absorbing changes, and these, coupled with her ability to blend with Price « both in harmonised theme statements and (more tellingly) during the odd exhilarating passage of dual improvisation « marked her out as a genuine original.

Her band's approach was relatively straightforward « theme, solo round, theme « but what raised this performance out of the ordinary was the sheer quality of said solos: witty, full of subtle felicities of time and timbre, but consistently accessible. A great start to the East Festival at the Vortex, which goes on until Tuesday 11 March.

 

 

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