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May 2008
gig reviews

Sleepthief
Lotte Anker
Oriole
Ian Shaw
Pippo Matino
Puma
Eddie Parker's Twittering Machine
Arun Ghosh
Evelyn Petrova and Alexander Balanescu
Julian Siegel Quartet

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May 2008 gig reviews by Chris Parker

Julian Siegel Quartet

Friday 30 May

It's over six years now since Julian Siegel recorded his album Close-up (SoundCD 1001), with pianist Liam Noble, bassist Jeremy Brown and drummer Gary Husband, but as soon as his quartet launched themselves into its material (the pleasantly frenetic bustle of 'Room 518', the affecting ballad 'Shining Light' etc.), it was clear how durable his compositions are: with Oli Hayhurst and Gene Calderazzo replacing Brown and Husband respectively, the quartet positively romped through the pieces' tricksy twists and turns.

Siegel's tenor sound is an attractively reedy, richly textured one, his clarinet (heard on the first set's closer, a free-ish skirl) ditto, and in Noble he has the perfect foil: by turns terse and pungent, discursive and lyrical, he extracts every last drop of musical meaning from the densest or most fleeting of chord sequences, and with Hayhurst and the irrepressible yet consistently sensitive Calderazzo stirling in support, the band pulled off the relatively rare feat of combining considerable punch with spontaneity and just the right degree of informal ease.

Six, as Siegel says in his album notes, may well be 'a good musical mental age' ­ his compositions often have a gleeful, romping quality to them ­ but in general, this was definitely music for grown-ups, sophisticated, sure-footed, mature.

 

 

 

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