Luca Manning: Rising Star

Luca Manning may only have left school two years ago, but the young jazz singer with the soulful, gentle voice already has an award on his mantelpiece (Rising Star at the 2018 Scottish Jazz Awards), a debut CD to sell, a CV that many older singers would kill for, a star-studded roster of admirers, and a dedicated entourage which includes a well-kent face from TV.

Manning, you see, is the grandson of Anita – the colourful Glasgow antiques expert on Bargain Hunt – and over the last few years, she and her daughter, Luca’s mother, have become regulars at jazz concerts in Glasgow. Indeed, from being what she described as a “rock ‘n’ roll gal,” Anita Manning now has an impressive jazz collection (“she has loads of Ella Fitzgerald records”) and has helped her grandson by offering him tips on performance, dealing with nerves and keeping energy levels up. “ ‘Eat bananas’ is her top tip for an energy boost,” laughs Manning.

It was always obvious to Luca Manning that his future lay in music – but he only discovered jazz relatively recently. Born in Glasgow’s west end, he attended Hillhead High School where, initially, he dreamt of becoming a rock star – not that he was very keen on practising his guitar.

“I was in a pop/rock band playing ukulele and writing sad songs with four chords,” he says. “I was in a choir in first year – I had a high voice and had to sing with the sopranos. The school had a fantastic, dedicated music department and there was always an outlet for music.”

At home, Manning’s listening tastes were much influenced by his mother who raised him and his older sister by herself. “Mum, who of course is now into jazz, always liked amazing voices – Sinead O’Connor, Jimmy Sommerville, people like that. Great singers with big voices. I went through a lot of phases but the constants were Amy Winehouse (who I think Anita liked first!), Stevie Wonder and soul music. I bought my first album with my mum in Fopp on Byres Road. It was Bjork – Debut and my mum said: ‘If you don’t get it, I’ll get it!’ I think I was 14 at the time.”

Meanwhile, Manning was taking piano lessons, having given up on guitar, and was encouraged by his piano teacher to sing. “I was actually champing at the bit to get singing lessons but I didn’t get any until my voice had broken”.

When Manning was 16 years old, his school suggested he sign up for the weekly jazz workshops run by the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra. One of his tutors there was the pianist Alan Benzie, and when the course ended, Manning was desperate to continue learning, so Benzie took him on as a student. It was he who helped the youngster with auditions and prescribed listening material for him. “Until I did the SYJO classes, I knew very little about jazz and didn’t really know what I was getting into,” says Manning. “But the more I immersed myself in the music – the more I loved it.”

Among Manning’s early favourites was the iconic Chet Baker, whose eponymous 1959 album he will be celebrating at The Blue Arrow in Glasgow next month, as part of the club’s 59:60 series of homages to classic albums from that pivotal year in jazz.

“I instantly fell in love with Chet, both his singing and his trumpet playing,” explains Manning. I love that melancholy fragility and vulnerability; I have an emotional connection to Chet. Crooners never resonated as much with me as much. Mark Murphy’s later records are in the same vein as Chet’s – it’s a different style but he’s not afraid to stick his neck out, be himself, take risks. I also love Amy Winehouse – in fact, I think I got into her because my gran Anita was always playing her records.”

The summer school run by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland proved another invaluable experience for Manning. “I just loved learning. Jazz was like a new musical language, and I remember that it was after that summer school that I came back and told my mum I want to be a jazz musician.” Manning returned to the summer school a further two times, and one of those occasions it led to him appearing at the Proms as part of a choir of students from the course.

Along with Alan Benzie, the much-loved English singer Liane Carroll played a huge part in Manning’s development. Not only did she point him in the direction of the vocal jazz workshops run in Scotland by fellow singer Sophie Bancroft – with tutors including herself, Sara Colman and Fionna Duncan – but she also invited him to sing with her at her Christmas show at Ronnie Scott’s in 2017. She is, as Manning says, “a very generous person and musician”.

Carroll has also been a significant influence on the young vocalist. “Her singing is so honest; every word is so true and she just makes you feel something. No matter which genre she’s singing in, you are guaranteed to be told a story and she has so much fun onstage doing it. It’s infectious. She’s a very natural improviser which I love as well.”

It was during a particular listening phase around 18 months ago, that Manning – who is currently midway through the four-year jazz course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London – had the surreal experience of being invited to support the singer in question at a jazz festival gig.

He explains: “I was really getting into Georgie Fame – I love his Portrait of Chet album; he’s an amazing singer – and was listening to him a lot early in 2018. I sang one of his vocalese numbers at the launch of The Blue Arrow club and Jill Rodger, the director of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, heard me and said: ‘Georgie Fame is playing at the jazz festival this year. How would you like to open for him?’”

And so it was that Manning and the similarly youthful pianist Fergus McCreadie came to be the support act for Fame last year, and then Ruby Turner this summer. (The pair have now, separately, been nominated in the Newcomer category of the prestigious Parliementary Awards, taking place in London in December.) Understandably, this was a pretty daunting experience, but Manning took his cue from his more experienced, then 20-year-old, musical partner. “We decided not to tailor the music to the person we were supporting. Fergus reminded me never to compromise as a musician. He said: ‘Let’s just do our thing unapologetically’.”

It’s little wonder, given the trust he has in McCreadie, that Manning chose to record his debut CD, When the Sun Comes Out, with him earlier this year. The original idea was not to record an album, but just to make some recordings together. “Sara Colman, my mentor and tutor at Guildhall, and I had spoken a lot and she suggested we go in and record enough material so I could make a CD if I wanted. We recorded at the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s HQ – a room that we were already familiar with – and that was a great way of minimising stress, by being in familiar surroundings. Sara sat in on the recording and helped produce which also helped me feel more comfortable and confident.”

His confidence was further boosted by the involvement of leading alto saxophonist Laura Macdonald, who had given him sax lessons at school before he took up singing. “I love her energy and her playing. We’ve always stayed in touch, and she has been a really good mentor to me. I wanted to have a duo on the CD – but then I thought it would be nice to have a guest and Laura was the first person to come into my head. And it was the idea of having her, rather than the idea of a sax. It turned out just as I envisaged: she came in on the second day and completely changed the energy. I was almost pinching myself. Everyone in the room loved it. Fergus hadn’t played with her before. We had a quick run-through. It was very much of the moment.”

The bottom line for Manning was that this debut CD was an accurate reflection of what he does in a gig. “All I wanted was honesty. I didn’t want multi-tracking or mixing, and I wanted a maximum of two or three takes. Some of the songs were new to us; some we’ve done before. There is no theme to the album but the songs are connected in a way because there are themes of home, identity and love. I was thinking about how there is pressure to release ALL new music that’s innovative and new, but I didn’t want to write ten new tunes – I wanted to do what I’d do on a gig.

“At the end of the day, it’s an honest snapshot of who I am. And I just love great songs.”

*When the Sun Comes Out is available now; Luca Manning – Chet Baker: Chet is at The Blue Arrow, Glasgow on Thursday October 24; www.thebluearrow.co.uk

Text (c) Alison Kerr, 2019; album cover artwork by Irenie Blaze-Cameron; portrait by Delilah Niel

Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2017: Remembering Chet – and Gerry

Remembering Chet – and Gerry, Rose Theatre ****

 

The deservedly popular tribute group Remembering Chet – a swinging trio with Iain Ewing (vocals) and Colin Steele (trumpet) reflecting the twin facets of the late, great Chet Baker’s music-making, and Euan Stevenson (piano) accompanying them – has been a staple of the last few Edinburgh Jazz Festivals. For this year’s event, on Saturday lunchtime, the band added a new dimension by bringing baritone saxophonist Billy Fleming in to the mix, thus allowing them to broaden the programme out to include some of the classic numbers Baker recorded with Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s.

 

It certainly gave the group – which, Ewing explained, he had been about to retire – a new lease of life; Fleming’s graceful baritone forming a formidable front line with the ever-eloquent Steele trumpet, notably in their unaccompanied climax to Bernie’s Tune, one of the compositions famously recorded by Baker and Mulligan’s radical piano-less quartet but here benefitting also from Euan Stevenson’s elegant keyboard skills.

 

Ewing, as ever, kept his patter lighthearted and often very funny to offset the melancholy that characterises the greatest hits from Baker’s back catalogue as a singer. As Steele headed offstage to sit out one ballad, Ewing quipped: “Colin’s away to mainline in the toilets. We are a Method Chet Baker tribute band. I, of course, represent Chet Baker after he died.”

 

As for those melancholy songs, Ewing – like Steele on trumpet – did his usual terrific job of stylishly channelling the Baker hallmarks – wistfulness, a soft, gentle tone, simplicity and vulnerability – while avoiding sounding like an impersonator. The many highlights included I Get Along Without You Very Well, which featured an exquisite, Satie-esque accompaniment from Euan Stevenson.

 

* First published in The Scotsman on Monday July 24th

Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2016: Remembering Chet Baker

Remembering Chet Baker, City Art Centre ****

 

It may sound like the title of a show, but Remembering Chet Baker is the name of the Scottish trio which, for the last four years, has been celebrating the music and musical style of the jazz icon who died prematurely 28 years ago. As they hinted during Monday afternoon’s performance, there’s not much point in celebrating Baker’s life or him as a person: he seems to have hurt everyone in his life and, by all accounts, was really not a very nice human being.

 

That, combined with the inescapable fact that Baker was a master of melancholy famous for such mope-fests as the misery-laden ballads The Thrill is Gone and You Don’t Know What Love Is could have made one suspect that this would not be the cheeriest way to spend a Monday afternoon. However, nothing could have been further from the truth – thanks to the fact that singer/presenter Iain Ewing punctuated proceedings with cheeky patter, and kept the mood light.

 

Both Ewing and trumpeter Colin Steele, who was on top form, have clearly been influenced by Baker’s lyrical, pared-back style and gentle, soft tone – but, refreshingly, neither attempts to mimic him or recreate his solos. It’s as if both musicians have been so steeped in Baker’s recordings that they can give the standards associated with him a lovely, Baker-esque, flavour, without resorting to impersonations.

 

Among the specific highlights were the classy, upbeat opener There Will Never Be Another You, which featured the first of a series of gorgeously understated solos by Steele; pianist Euan Stevenson’s elegant, Satie-like accompaniment on I Get Along Without You Very Well, and the two instrumentalists’ electrifying duet on All the Things You Are.

* First published on HeraldScotland, Wednesday July 20th

Jazz @ the Edinburgh Fringe 2014

Here’s my pick of five jazz gigs to catch during this year’s Fringe…

* Colin Steele & Brian Kellock: My Fair Lady, The Jazz Bar, August 9th & 23rd. The wonderful songs written by Lerner & Loewe for the 1956 Broadway musical version of Pygmalion have long been favourites of discriminating jazz musicians – especially trumpeters, from Chet Baker to Ruby Braff. Now, for the first time, it’s the turn of the lyrical Colin Steele and his dynamic pianistic partner in crime, Brian Kellock, to serve up their take on such loverly melodies as The Street Where You Live, Show Me and I Could Have Danced All Night. With a little bit of luck, they’ll invite the audience to shout out the key line on The Ascot Gavotte. ..

* Remembering Chet, The Jazz Bar, August 16th & 18th. Scottish vocalist Iain Ewing’s must-see homage to the great Chet Baker was a winner at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival and last year’s Fringe … Accompanied by the Baker-inspired trumpet of Colin Steele and  Euan Stevenson’s classy piano, he sings and swings with a Chet-like simplicity and elegance, while putting his own stamp on a string of classic Baker songs. No need to bring the hankies in readiness for Baker’s tragic life story; Ewing’s patter is witty as well as informative. A funny – and stylish – valentine.

* Joe Stilgoe – Songs on Film, Assembly Checkpoint, August 4th-22nd. Mr Stilgoe’s love of film shone through on his fab solo show a couple of years ago, when he seduced the Fringe audience with a bittersweet ballad inspired by the masterful, bittersweet Billy Wilder movie The Apartment – (That’s The Way It Crumbles) Cookie-Wise. Now he’s back with a trio gig entirely themed around songs from the movies, including (if the CD of his London Jazz Festival Songs on Film concert is anything to go by) a mixture of more of his original tunes as well as favourites from his formative years in film buffery.

* The Cabinet of Caligari, The Jazz Bar,  August 13th-15th; 18th & 19th. And speaking of film, if you like your silent movies to be screened with atmospheric original music, check out the screenings of the Expressionist classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) which will be accompanied by a performance by guitarist Graeme Stephen of his new, specially written score.

* Jazz Rite of Spring, The Jazz Bar, August 20th-24th. Pianist David Patrick’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s groundbreaking and riot-inducing masterpiece has been critically acclaimed; my Herald colleague Rob Adams describing it as “highly credible and genuinely exciting”. I haven’t heard it yet but am intrigued by the “12” certificate. Maybe they’re expecting Paris-style trouble; let’s hope The Jazz Bar has the riot police on speed dial..

Man of Steele

Trumpeter Colin Steele has no fewer than three Edinburgh Jazz Festival gigs in the next week, followed by a residency at the Jazz Bar during the Fringe. Hardly headline news you might think, given how well established he is on the Scottish music scene. But it is actually pretty remarkable: six months ago Steele was unable to get even a single note out of his horn, and four months ago the most he could muster was Three Blind Mice.

The 43-year-old Edinburgher, who made his name on the jazz scene in his twenties, and went on to become known for his crossover work fusing other forms of music with jazz in his playing and writing, has been through hell in the last year – and at one point had to face the”terrifying” possibility that he might never play again.

Rewind to last summer, and Steele was prominently featured in an Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra concert. What nobody knew at the time was that he was struggling to re-learn how to play the trumpet, which he had never been properly taught – and this involved un-picking years of bad habits.

Steele explains: “When I learned trumpet at school, it was just a matter of getting a sound and getting on with it – but I never did anything correctly. Later on, I always practised more than anybody else practises but I never really improved, and nobody liked to tell me I was doing stuff wrong – fundamental stuff like taking a really deep breath before playing.”

Of course it didn’t help that Steele’s primary influence was Chet Baker. “He had this very light, soft sound – and that was what I was aiming for. I found I could emulate it by taking very shallow breaths but there was no finesse, and no underlying power. If I had to play a high note, I didn’t know how to.”

Steele tried, unsuccessfully, to address the problem in his early twenties. It wasn’t until last summer that he decided to have another go. “After every gig my mouth would be cut to shreds – and it would only be by about late afternoon the next day that it would have healed enough for me to play. Last year I noticed that it was taking longer and longer to heal.

“The other issue was that because I felt that I was hurting myself when practising, practising itself became sort of self-defeating. If I had a gig at night, I felt I couldn’t practise as I’d knacker myself so I was frustated because I wanted to play.”

As a pre-emptive strike, before anything else went wrong, Steele began to look for a teacher. He settled initially on Adam Rapa, an American trumpeter, who gave him some lessons via Skype, prescribing the same sort of radical change Steele had tried in his twenties.

This time, Steele persevered, but being tutored over the internet, with the tutor unable to see at first hand what he was doing, proved, ultimately, disastrous: he ended up with a whole new problem, of his throat closing up when he went above a certain note. During a gig in December, his throat went into excruciating spasms . “By this point I couldn’t play the old way or the new way. It all fell apart and I had to cancel gigs.”

It was two weeks before Christmas, and Steele – a father of three, two of whom are under ten years old – not only had no work, but also no idea whether he’d be able to work again. “I was terrified I’d never get it back,” he admits, “and although I did wonder what I might do if it didn’t work out, I couldn’t really come up with anything. The last thing I did was study accountancy at university until I was 19, but I took a year out when I got offered the chance to join Hue and Cry, and I never returned.”

At this point he reached out to John Kenny, an experienced and highly regarded trombonist and teacher with whom he had worked many times – and he began to deal with the throat problems, while Steele was also working on his breathing and his posture. Meanwhile, he wasn’t earning. Did he work out how long he could afford to give himself to re-learn the trumpet?

“No, because if you start giving yourself deadlines then you put yourself under pressure and then things are going to go wrong the second you panic. I needed to be able to play in a relaxed way – so it was a matter of digging deep into credit cards for a while, remortgaging, keeping the head down and not panicking.”

However, panic – and grim despair – did set in. “It took six weeks for me to blow one note,” explains Steele. “I was so excited that I expanded that very quickly, and got so carried away that I hurt my throat again, and went right back to the beginning: I couldn’t play. I did think ‘maybe this is never going to work’. I’d pushed it too far too fast. It was devastating. I felt like I was facing losing my identity.”

Despite being depressed about this catastrophic setback, Steele, who admits to being a stubborn character, started all over again. And exactly six weeks later, he managed to play a note without any side effects. Needless to say, this time he proceeded with extreme caution.

Realising that Steele needed to see someone more regularly, John Kenny put him in touch with the BBC SSO’s principal trumpeter Mark O’Keeffe who agreed to take him on – and, like Kenny, refused to take any payment. At their first session, O’Keeffe asked Steele to play Three Blind Mice, and immediately identified his problems. “He gave me loads of incredible advice. Everything he said made perfect sense, and it wasn’t radical change he was suggesting – it was a natural approach. I would go in with an issue and within five minutes he’d have explained the whole thing and I’d be doing it correctly – after 20-odd years of doing it wrong.”

Steele’s progress from this point was “shocking – I felt even from the first day that I was getting 10% better every day”. After three weeks, he played I Loves You Porgy and O’Keeffe said: “That was beautiful.” And that, says Steele, “was the best compliment I’ve ever had. I felt that I was finally at the beginning of something.”

“Another great supporter,” he says, “was Bill Kyle [who runs The Jazz Bar]. He was one of the first people I confided in last December, and every month he would phone me to see if I was ready to come and sit in.”

Steele’s “second chance” at the trumpet coincided with the Fringe programme being finalised so when Kyle called him three hours before the programme deadline and said that a five-gig slot had become available, he grabbed the opportunity to realise a project he’d long hoped to do: a duo with pianist Brian Kellock. And, as luck would have it, he was back in action in time for the Edinburgh Jazz Festival programme too.

Having turned the corner, Steele has just got better and better – and is now “over the moon” with his sound. “I think it’s better now than it was before all this. It’s stronger and warmer and much, much closer to the tone I’ve always wanted to have. Chet may have sounded as if he was taking shallow, very light breaths – which is what I used to do – but he didn’t play that way. And now I don’t either …”

* For details of Colin Steele’s Edinburgh Jazz Festival gigs visit www.edinburghjazzfestival.com. His duo is at The Jazz Bar from August 6-11.

CD Recommendations

John Sheridan’s Dream Band: Hooray for Christmas! (Arbors Records) 

Yup, it’s an early Christmas album – and an early Christmas gift for anyone who likes to keep the music swinging through the “holiday season”. Pianist/bandleader Sheridan has compiled a lovely selection of off-the-beaten-track festive songs, several of which originate in movies set at Christmas time, and assembled a terrific band to play them. Among the individual stars in this 12-piece outfit are sunny-voiced singer Rebecca Kilgore; cornettists Warren Vache and Randy Reinhart, and clarinettist/saxophonists Dan Block and Scott Robinson.

Chet Baker: It Could Happen to You (OJC Remasters) 

This classic 1958 album is one of my all-time favourites, and it’s just been reissued with two more alternate takes than when it last came out on CD. The great trumpeter and singer Chet Baker interprets a superb collection of songs in his unique, wistful way, showcasing a vocal style which is plaintive-sounding even on the uptempo tracks. Unlike the other Chet Baker vocal albums, this one features scatting – which sounds like trumpet solos without the horn.. Ace singer-trumpeter, ace quartet; a must for anyone interested in jazz.

Ehud Asherie: Welcome to New York (Arbors Records) 

Asherie is a young Israeli-born, New York-based pianist who has soaked up influence from the great Harlem stride pianists as well from the bop masters. On this beautiful solo album, he reveals the most delicate, Waller-like of touches and a lyrical style which lends itself elegantly to the 13 Manhattan-themed tracks. Highlights include the rarely heard Lovers in New York (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and Manhattan Serenade, a theme used on everything from the 1936 comedy My Man Godfrey to the Tom and Jerry classic Mouse in Manhattan.

Stewart Forbes: High Five (Birnam CD) 

Scottish alto saxophonist Stewart Forbes’s memorable duo gig with pianist David Newton at the 2009 Glasgow Jazz Festival was undoubtedly the inspiration for this CD which finds him reunited with Newton, and playing duets with four other pianists – Mira Opalinska, Alan Benzie, David Patrick and Richard Michael. Forbes’s alto is forthright and feisty-sounding and, on the two Ellington numbers, he evokes beautifully the majesty of the great Johnny Hodges. The mix of pianists and moods works well, as does a two-track switch to soprano sax.

Edinburgh Jazz Festival: Curtis Stigers

Curtis Stigers, The Hub

****

Friday night was ladies’ night at the jazz festival – at least it was for many of the punters who had gone to hear former pop star Curtis Stigers and his band. Stigers has something akin to the Michael Buble effect on middle-aged women – thanks to the killer combination of Chet Baker cheekbones, a great line in torch songs and some borderline saucy patter.

With a craggy voice which sounds as if he’s borrowed it from an old, Afro-American bluesman (who forgot to put his teeth in), Stigers’s singing is something of an acquired taste. However, by the time he reached his third song, even the most cynical among us had acquired it – thanks to a spellbinding interpretation of the ballad You Don’t Know What Love Is.

Stigers is a consummate storyteller who brings lyrics to life and doesn’t get in the way of their meaning or the emotion within them. That stand-out ballad – along with his equally superb encore, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning –  were further enhanced by John Snider’s pared-down trumpet solos. Like the Stigers bone structure, these were pure Chet Baker.