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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

Curios

Wednesday 19 March

Having had considerable success ä they were nominated for BBC Jazz Awards Album of the Year ä with their first recording, 'Hidden' (Jazzizit, 2007), Curios (pianist Tom Cawley, bassist Sam Burgess, drummer Josh Blackmore) are moving onwards and upwards, airing material from their forthcoming second album at this absorbing gig.

Many of these pieces take their names from sporting ä particularly Formula One ä figures, practitioners and writers ('Jenson', 'Hughes', 'Roebuck'), but they began with the characteristically percussive 'Little Sharks and Baby Dolphins', in which their highly individual approach to the jazz piano trio format was immediately apparent: Curios dispense neither the luminous, limpid delicacy of Bill Evans nor the rapturous, lyrical mellifluousness of, say, Keith Jarrett, but instead concentrate on textural contrasts, dynamic variation and the creation of unusual timbres.

Cawley does occasionally produce runs and melodic variations in the conventional manner, but more often Curios take a repeated figure (their second number, 'Curious', a good example) and explore it for all its above-mentioned possibilities: texture, dynamics, timbre.

Cawley, Burgess and Blackmore are thus by no means a piano-and-rhythm-section trio but a truly democratic, interactive unit, their ideas seeming to spring as readily from Blackmore's assertive, choppy percussion effects or Burgess's multi-textured bass as from Cawley's alternately robust and meditative piano playing.

The intense concentration evinced by a respectably sized audience on this occasion suggests that this is an approach that is (deservedly) likely to attract and intrigue listeners in increasing numbers.

 

 

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