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. ‘Joy Spring’, for example, contains brief idiomatically apposite shouts stolen from ‘Parisian Thoroughfare’, ‘Anthropology’, ‘Afternoon in Paris’ and ‘The Eternal Triangle’, while Horace Silver’s ‘Peace’ is ingenuously underpinned with a motif from Satie’s ‘Gymnopédie No.3’. The real tour de force where thematic relationships are concerned, though, is the closing ‘Straight No Chaser’ into which Nightingale has seemingly woven a good third of Thelonious Monk’s other compositional output.
Each soloist shines brightly within these novel frameworks. Co-leader Alan Barnes’ peppery alto darts dazzlingly here and there (there’s a single, wistful clarinet outing on ‘Peace’), the astonishingly mature Davison displays a natural affinity to the style of Clark Terry and Harvey reveals why he’s widely regarded as one of the UK’s best post-bop pianists. Likewise, Brown and Thomas never put a foot wrong. Nightingale’s own improvisations are things of intricate yet robust beauty, fully supporting his reputation as a master soloist, each chorus a perfect marriage of intellect, facility and genuine spontaneity. Try ‘Skylark’, a ballad performance for the ages.
Is there any better exponent of post-bop jazz trombone playing anywhere today? I think not. I can’t think of many sets that pack in so much detail, subtlety, craftsmanship and pure pleasure as this one. A record on which everyone stands tall, the end results proof positive that there’s simply no substitute for exacting standards.