Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2016: Diplomats of Jazz

Diplomats of Jazz, City Art Centre ****

For several years, it was a tradition for this reviewer to request a ticket for the Friday afternoon gig at the Royal Overseas League – and to be told that it had sold out days before and there were no spare tickets. So it was great to see in this year’s programme that the ever-popular Edinburgh band the Diplomats of Jazz were playing their annual Jazz Festival gig at this event’s new venue, the City Art Centre’s fifth floor, which clearly holds a larger audience than the ROL.

It’s no wonder the Diplomats have such a strong following and can easily pack out venues even at a time of year when there are plenty of out-of-town bands around to choose from. They are wonderful purveyors of classic jazz which they play with good humour and style. And it’s always a delight to hear the combined sound of cornet, clarinet, banjo and sousaphone.

Last year, the band’s cornet-playing leader Jim Petrie had a not-so funny turn during their gig and had to be taken to hospital, but he was looking and sounding good on Friday – though his cornet had less of a work-out than his gravelly vocals, and he was suffering from the intense heat from the stadium lights on the stage.

Despite their discomfort, the fully dinner-suited quartet served up an hour’s worth of swinging tunes. Among the catchy highlights were East Coast Trot and Yearning, both of which showcased this band’s top-notch ensemble playing as well as some terrific clarinet solos by Bob Busby, whose spiky-round-the-edges sound brought the great Sandy Brown to mind.

First published on HeraldScotland on Sunday July 24th

Diplomats of Jazz, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Friday July 22nd

Angry

She’s Funny That Way

New Orleans Shuffle

Baby Won’t You Please Come Home

East Coast Trot

Yearning

Give Me a June Night, the Moonlight and You

Crying’ For the Carolines

Swing That Music

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