Paul Medley

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Latest articles from Paul Medley

About Town: Art Jericho

Since cameras got small enough and film fast enough, the street has been an ever-present and richly diverse source for photography. It is no surprise that almost every photographer will at some time go camera in hand to hunt for images in the wealth of passing life.

Matrix: Pegasus Theatre, Oxford

Oxford’s Café Reason Butoh Dance Theatre probably have something of a reputation for performances that push dance and movement to the outer limits of expectation. It is true that butoh, as an experimental dance form originating in Japan, works by creating improvised dance that takes a symbolic knife straight to the raw emotions most of us are so careful to keep in the shade. The resulting performances can be taut, charged and long. But in their latest evening of music and dance, Matrix at the Pegasus Theatre, Café Reason have managed to work the miracle of mixing the mystery and symbolism on which butoh feeds with lightness, energy and humour.

Soweto Kinch: Oxford Jazz Festival

Of the several headline acts at the Oxford Jazz Festival this year, Soweto Kinch was the only one who reaches out from the conventional jazz lover to a younger audience whose musical tastes don’t start with Coltrane and Parker. There are a number of players pushing jazz into new territory while at the same time paying all due respect to the history of the music, and Soweto Kinch with his highly energised mix of jazz alto and hip hop is right there. His music draws in new audiences in a way that much of a more conventional approach significantly fails to do.

Fringe Magnetic and Tree House: Oxford Jazz Festival

With a festival offering so many events, one needs to dig out the lesser known bands in search of an unexpected gem rather than gather round the main acts who are expected to turn out the polished performances for which they are already renowned. Fringe Magnetic have been around long enough for a murmur of approval to precede them and, with a line-up that includes both cello, violin, bass clarinet and two vocalists alongside more conventional jazz instrumentation including Jasper Høiby (pictured) and Ivo Neame, there was an expectation of something different. Led by trumpeter, Rory Simmons, the performance in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall was both idiosyncratic and uplifting. Using trumpet and clarinet as the main solo voices over syncopated and counterpoint lines from the band, Simmons at once set up a base from which he could explore a delightfully wide musical landscape. With the violin and cello staying within a more conventional mode, there were sudden changes of rhythm and texture and complete recolourings of the sound akin to small-scale classical orchestration. Apart from the articulate lead of Simmons on trumpet, one of the high points was the vocals of Norwegian Elisabeth Nygaard, whose magically loose and intense delivery brought in yet another angle. Fringe Magnetic’s ability to throw the roots of jazz in the air and let the pieces fall over a wider musical terrain was imaginative and hugely enjoyable, and made possible by some very individual musical talents. The following evening, Tom Hewson’s Treehouse, playing in the basement of Modern Art Oxford, presented a very different approach to the overlap of jazz and classical. As an organ scholar at Oxford Hewson is a virtuoso piano player. Add to this, Lewis Wright on vibes and Tim Farmer on bass, both from Empirical, and you have the ingredients of a new supergroup. Hewson’s writing is immaculately crafted and full of clever surprises, but although his playing was undeniably superb it was only Wright’s vibes playing that injected some moments of emotional intensity. This was beautiful music that suffered as jazz from its very brilliance. All shine and not quite enough heart.

Ethometric Museum: The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford

The story, as told by an elegantly dressed curator at the beginning of the demonstration of the Ethometric Mueseum, is that Ray Lee was able to salvage and repair the last remaining examples of ethometric instruments in the world, many of which were destroyed in a catastrophic fire in Dalston.

Jazz festival is here again

The new Oxford Jazz Festival, now in its third year, continues to expand at an almost exponential rate. This Easter weekend, from Thursday to Sunday the city will be flooded with music from a diverse range of musicians and composers with 60 different jazz events at 30 different venues.

Review of CD Four Compositions for Orchestra

Small group improvisation has a long history, going back to the very early roots of music. But free improvisation with a large orchestra can be more complex. Many players improvising together can, without some form of agreed intention, easily collapse into musical mayhem. This difficulty can be addressed though the use of ‘conduction’, in which a conductor directs the music by the use of signals to the players indicating form, length, pitch and exact players throughout. The success of this approach depends, of course, on the skill of the players but most importantly on the ability of the conductor to create a piece of music ‘within the moment’.

Alexander Hawkins and Nick Malcolm

When Alexander Hawkins turned up at an improvisation session in Oxford a few years ago he already had a fierce technique and a sharply perceptive ear. Now with a burgeoning international reputation as a highly innovative pianist and free improviser Hawkins has combined a remarkable awareness of style and harmony to this technical virtuosity. This makes him a jazz musician of considerable stature. It was also very special that he was joined at the Spin Jazz club by trumpeter Nick Malcolm (pictured), who played at the Oxford Jazz Festival last year and also, like Hawkins, has a mounting reputation on the jazz and free improvisation scene. As these two have played together several times recently there was no doubt that combining with the Spin trio would trigger music of exceptional quality.

Snake Davis: The Spin, Oxford

Snake Davis has been a highly respected session musician for many years, working and recording with some of the big names in rock, blues and Tamla. A glance at his website shows he’s also a busy gigging musician in his own right. Nevertheless, the big names and the big stages he has worked on have not been in the mainframe of jazz, so he is not an obvious choice as guest musician at the Spin Jazz Club. But you don’t get to have such a reputation in those circles without a weight of musicianship, which Chris ‘Snake’ Davis has. Playing both flute and the whole family of saxes he’s the sort of player who can whip up a storm on a blues or throw out eloquent phrases on a ballad with equal musical intention.

Preview of Cohesion 4: The Pegasus Theatre

This is the fourth year that Oxford Improvisers have put on a special event to celebrate improvisation in all its multiple forms. The first Cohesion Festival brought together ethnic instrumentation and the Western roots of music from Oxford Improvisers in a two-day event, some of which is on CD as further proof of the musical genius of Pat Thomas. The following two years continued with the merging of music with other art forms, with last year a strong emphasis on song, drama and a rich interlacing of musical history. This year, with a move to the new Pegasus Theatre, Cohesion 4 takes up the theme of sound and vision creating “an exhilarating cocktail of improvisation with musicians, dancers and visual artists exploring the real-time interplay between music, visual imagery, film and movement”.