A Requiem - The Alan Barnes Octet
Featuring Josie Moon
Jazz and poetry commemorating the end of The First World War
The cover provides two glosses on the title of this disc: one begins ‘A Jazz Suite for Octet by Alan Barnes and Pat McCarthy’. If you know Barnes's or McCarthy's work, that will give you an idea of the kind of sounds you're likely to encounter when you listen to the record: characterful writing (the sparkling ebb-and-flow of ‘Sea Jewels’, the dramatic ‘Deadly Catch’) and fine ensemble work by a team of top performers. The other gloss is just as revealing: ‘Music and Poetry Inspired by the Grimsby Fishing Industry Heritage’ – a bit of a mouthful, but it gives important context to where the project began and what it's about (“Grimsby was once the world's premier fishing port built on the back of much heroism and suffering by the fishermen and their families”, to quote the accompanying booklet). The story is conveyed not by a singer, but poet Josie Moon, who recites her own historically and emotionally evocative reflections (‘A Drowning Man’, ‘Minesweeping’). There's no attempt to make the words sit over the music; the spoken-word and musical tracks mostly alternate, the latter velvety-rich, the former spare, more questioning.
1. Epitaph (Barnes)
2. Prelude (Barnes)
3. How Waves Work (Barnes)
4. Seek The Light In The Darkness (Barnes)
5. Inter-Trench Conversation (Barnes)
6. In Memory Of Marion Scott (Barnes)
7. Gurney (Barnes)
8. Return Of Shadows (Barnes)
9. Song Without Words (Barnes)
10. Appeasement (Barnes)
11. Theatre Of War - The Days Of Wrath (Barnes)
12. How Peace Works Barnes)
13. Peace Returns 25th June (Barnes)
14. When Souls Returned to the Stars (Barnes)
15. Dark At Edges 25th June (Barnes)
16. The Holy Places of the Earth (Barnes)
17. Sacred Music (Barnesh)
18. Lambs At The Slaughter (Barnes)
19. Last Post (Barnes)
20. Faith To Find The Light (Barnes)
21. Sunset (Barnes)
22. The Softening Heart (Barnes)
23. Liberation (Barnes)
24. Deliver Me (Barnes)
A Requiem - The Alan Barnes Octet
Mark Nightingale / Alan Barnes Sextet featuring James Davison
Jazz Classics with a twist
The ‘classics’ of the title are the compositions of an impressive list of musical icons – Monk, Parker, Ellington, Hancock, Silver and Jobim amongst them. The ‘twist’ is provided by Mark Nightingale’s artful and consistently inventive arrangements. However, those fearing the contemporary trend toward angular ‘re-harmonisation’ have nothing to worry about; each piece is cleverly but respectfully skewed, Nightingale’s musician’s humour evident in frequent allusions to other themes.