2 December 2019

Post 612: CRAIG FLORY'S 'MINOR FRET'

What a wonderful and complex composition Craig Flory’s ‘Minor Fret’ is. Through-composed, it is possibly the most striking and challenging piece Tuba Skinny ever set itself to learn by heart. 
Beginning (in recent performances) with a single beat played on the washboard, the rest of the first bar has the band holding an E flat minor chord, followed by four (in earlier performances two) more bars of Introduction, establishing the key by firmly laying down that chord on every beat.

This is followed by a 12-bar blues theme in E flat minor, led by Craig on clarinet, with Shaye playing a pretty counter-melody in bars 2 and 4. Then Shaye herself leads the way through the 12-bar blues theme, this time with Barnabus playing the counter-melody.

Now something extraordinary happens: the rug is pulled from under us! There is a startling switch up by just one semi-tone to the key of E minor! The acid E minor chord is hammered out over eight bars, during which Craig plays that counter-melody again – but in the new key. The eight bars end with a heavily-struck B flat 7th chord, which leads us cleverly back into the principal key of E flat minor.

We now have the 12-bar blues in E flat minor again, but usually with the trombone (Barnabus) taking the lead in the final eight of those bars.

Now those final eight themselves become the pattern for a new theme: we have this little theme, played three (in some performances four) times and usually led respectively by the cornet, the clarinet, the tuba and (against offbeats) the guitar. This eight-bar theme uses the chord structure of the final eight bars of the 12-bar blues in E flat minor.

The last of these mini-solos ends on a crashing B 7th chord, taking us for a second time into that wailing Interlude of eight bars in E minor, again including the counter-melody and ending on a sustained B flat 7th chord, which of course takes us neatly back into the key of E flat minor for another run-through of the twelve-bar blues theme and a lingering drop on the final E flat minor chord. Wow!

 You can hear Tuba Skinny play this piece in its mature form, after some months of gestation and tweaking, in this video filmed by my good friend James Sterling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNDWAJvhN_4

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Post 611: RECOMMENDED GREAT TRADITIONAL JAZZ VIDEOS

I leave you some recommendations for videos of traditional jazz bands active in recent years. If you have not seen these videos before, I hope you will enjoy them. If you have seen them, I am sure you will enjoy watching them again!

First, for a relaxed, moving, unpretentious but beautifully-played performance, showing just how perfect a musical form traditional jazz can be, try Whenever You're Lonesome, Just Telephone Me played by members of The Shotgun Jazz Band. The video runs for about five minutes:

For an example of a great jazz band playing one of the very complex tunes from our repertoire - Deep Henderson - watch Tuba Skinny in this next video. It runs for a little over three minutes. Notice how all members of the band, working from memory rather than printed arrangements, play wonderfully as an ensemble through all three sections of this challenging piece, not to mention taking in their stride a change of key and linking passages:


Now, for some passionate 'no frills' traditional jazz, coupled with brilliant musicianship and generating great excitement, I would like to offer you a performance of Royal Garden Blues that I myself had the privilege of filming. This one runs for under five minutes:


Next, I offer you a performance of a good old jazz standard - Savoy Blues - played by The Shake 'Em Up Jazz Band. This video runs for a little under five minutes. I recommend it because it shows what happens when six outstanding musicians come together and - with great respect for each other - play wonderfully as a team, just as our bands should. This performance too is unpretentious and yet you will hardly find a better rendition of this piece anywhere:


Finally, if you have time to sit back for a full half hour and watch six outstanding musicians play a varied programme ranging from storming stuff such as Climax Rag to the tender Love Songs of the Nile, may I urge you to watch this video? You will also hear such tunes as Oriental Man, Yearning, Mobile Stomp and I Can't Escape From You. As one observer said, 'It's the kind of music that makes you cry with joy!' Click on it here:


In my opinion, this is the best 'half-hour live concert' video to have appeared in several years.
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