Northern climes

David Braid is from Canada and his band was called The North and they are certainly from northerly climes (two Canadians, a Finn living in Sweden and a Dane) but this music was hot. Quite different from some music I've encountered in this space at the Finnish Embassy. I've heard David twice before on visits to Canberra and each is quite fascinatingly diverse. He's clearly classically trained and we hear it in his sonorous solos and in his discussion of jazz composition in the style of Sibelius. One visit was with a string quartet playing his compositions. But this was a clear jazz outing with grooves and some swing and some fabulous crossovers (perhaps these days we'd say intersectionality) that's the essence of contemporary music and society. Coltrane was evident and Lee Konitz was an influence but some earth sounds picturing Novia Scotia were virtual electronica-sounding from sax and to my ear were fascinatingly common with renditions of the Australian bush. I wondered if wilderness has some commonality everywhere, imaged from an increasingly dominant urbanism and receding before climate change. Despite the late night (their 5.30am, after flying in just the day before) this band was on fire. Tenorist Mike had the most glorious of hard-edged Selmer tones but could meld and twist and soften as will. There were some seriously satisfying lines that spelled originality but also great listening. The band played acoustic in a reverberant space and the piano comping was sadly mostly lost from my location behind the louder sax, but David's solos were arpeggiated and developmental and extended and deliciously sensitive. Bassist Johnny was strong and loud, despite no amplification (Why did this cut through and not so much the Yamaha C5 piano? Perhaps my location or a clash in common pitch?) fast and high into thumb positions for solos and nicely syncopated for accompaniment. They dropped out, occasionally for effect and that, too, was powerful. And drummer Dane Anders drove and swung hard, playing fairly mainstream and rich and full, sometimes with brushes, some swapped fours and to my ears highlighted by an immersive solo of density and volume with distinct, snappy accents that floored me: power and purpose and quite magical. They played most of their recent album which won Canada's top music prize, the 2018 Juno award for Jazz album of the year (group), so I'm not alone in my pleasure at hearing this outing. Canberra was early on their Australian tour. They are off to Sydney and Perth and perhaps more before Casalmaggiore and Malmö: catch them if you can. And thanks to the ambassador, who allowed some extra seats so some jazz-tragics (including me) could get in after the show was an early sell-out.

The North comprised David Braid (piano, CAN), Mike Murley (tenor, CAN), Johnny Åman (bass, FIN>SWE) and Anders Mogensen (drums, DNK)

Crossings

David Braid visited again from Canada, again at Canberra Grammar School. Last time he played solo and I heard a rich mix of classical and jazz, in solos, in compositions, so the lines weren't just be-bop runs spelling arpeggios and scales from chords, but richer, subtler, informed by jazz but crossing into classical. His latest visit has just taken that and expanded it. So here he was visiting with the Penderecki Quartet, a classical string quartet of inestimable quality, in residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario since 1991. There's long-term interchange in the quartet and it showed. I felt the some comfort with David, although his recording of these works is with another quartet, the Epoque Quartet. There's rich composition and orchestration here, plenty of unison lines and intriguing harmonies, but also improv. David's improv is closer to the be-bop vein and wonderfully full in rich and correct and with also satisfyingly complete lines, sequences that are untruncated although a sometimes just cleverly left hanging. The improv from the string players was not so obvious to my ears. Classical improv often tends to rhythmic and repetition, strong in its own way but not boppy. I easily caught a later violin improv, but wondered a few times if viola or cello solos were written musics. I presume they weren't. Written or improvised, they were firm, strong, together, expressive. This was a strong quartet. Together with David and his compositions, this was strong music. Just occasionally hinting at heads, sometimes developing grooves, from a piano left-hand or a cello pizz walk, but the chordal structures weren't 32-bar or similarly evident. This is jazz/classical crossover, just accentuated by the sound of classical strings, and gloriously satisfying. And the compositions were nothing light-weight. Joya variations lasted about 13 minutes and the variations were none too obvious, nothing baroque-like although there were spots where the piano sounded Bach-ish. Chauvet was dedicated to the paleolithic cave paintings, starting heavy piano chords with string glissandi and lasting around 20 minutes. There was one touch on standards jazz, I've never been in love before from Guys and Dolls. David had provided the jazz score for the recent film on Chet Baker, and had rearranged the standard for this format. Then a few other tunes, one a picturing of cohesive diversity on a Toronto subway. Overall, a fabulous crossover between classical and jazz from a unerringly committed group of musicians playing intriguing original compositions. I don't know where it sits in the spectrum of music (but neither does Canberra Jazz these days, nor much of the world of music) but this was a world-beating and deeply satisfying outing.

David Braid (piano, compositions) playing with the Penderecki String Quartet comprising Jerzy Kaplanek (violin), Jeremy Bell (violin), Christine Vlaik (viola) and Katie Schlaikjer (cello).

Art in every line

Pic by Gary Taylor

David Braid quoted* this line from Joseph Conrad: “[a] work that aspires, however humbly, to the status of art should carry its justification in every line”. I’d read this before I heard David play at the Grammar Gallery and it came back to me in spades as I was listening to his playing on the night. This music was infused with consistent thought throughout. These were no head-solo-head arrangements, and occasional left hard chords, right hand melody, weren’t too obvious. These tunes were built and performed like classical pieces, where phrases lead to following phrases and they all build to a complex structure. So it’s not surprising that I heard this more as classical in style.

David talks in another article of Mozart as a creative awakener for his development, but I heard Chopin and Ravel and twentieth century in his playing, as well as Keith Jarrett and, perhaps more unexpectedly, Chick Corea. It’s amusing that his encore was introduced with a tongue-in-cheek apology to any who came to hear a mainstream jazz pianist. “What is jazz” is the topic of another essay of David’s, so I won’t get into that, but he ended with a masterful take on Yesterdays ably performed in a string of jazz styles (partly in homage to Oscar Peterson, who was a neighbour of his in Toronto) and then a supremely sparse, emoted take on a ballad by Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass (was it Wait till you see him?). But the rest of the concert was original compositions in David’s solo piano style. One longer tune, Resolute Bay, was inspired by Glenn Gould and the film The Idea of North and time spent alone in the arctic winter and was long and structured. Another was a take on a Chinese folk tune where the piano was prepared with bamboo chopsticks lodged between strings to mimic the tones of Chinese instruments. To my (Western) ears, this was wonderfully successful. Apparently David has a following in China, performing in fabulous new concert halls in unknown cities of tens of millions. He performed another piece on prepared piano with left hand playing all the world like thuddy and buzzing percussion. I was not the only one dumbfounded by the effectiveness and virtuosity. I couldn’t believe there was no loop machine or other electronics, but there was none. He showed me after how it was done (a pretty standard arpeggiated ostinato in the left hand sounding against well lodged chopsticks). I’ve wondered in the past about piano preparation, but this was genuinely valid stuff. I’m a convert. Another piece blended R&B and Chopin and was written when David mused on Chopin nocturnes after seeing the film Ray about Ray Charles. Suffice to say, these are catholic tastes and diverse skills, so what matter “what is jazz”? David’s music was entrancing and informed and intimate and refreshingly different. David Braid performed at the Canberra Grammar School Gallery and joins a string of Canadian performers who have recently visited Canberra.

*How a Polish sailor turned British novelist helped me find a voice as a jazz improviser, by David Braid, in Canadian musician magazine, Autumn 2010, http://www.davidbraid.com/conrad.php, viewed 24 July 2012