MUSIC

Tony Benjamin catches up with cool-voiced jazzstress Emily Wright after a storming set at Brecon Jazz.

When an unsigned band gets a gig at a top national jazz festival, even the Saturday midday graveyard slot, it’s no mean achievement. For vocalist Emily Wright and her band Moonlight Saving Time being booked for Brecon Jazz 2011 was an important opportunity to reach a new national audience. What happened on the day was truly remarkable as tickets started selling like hot cakes, forcing the organisers to move them to a larger venue. Even that sold out, however, with large numbers standing at the sides of the 300-seat hall throughout the band’s effortlessly cool performance. When a very satisfied audience was leaving an hour later, there was an eager queue buying up the last few copies of the band’s self-made CD. How did Ms Wright feel about the experience? “If I’m perfectly honest my first thought was just relief that we’d managed to get through it without any major disasters. But it was amazing to do it – it was my first gig in front of a big festival audience like that and it just flew by. I couldn’t believe it when I’d got to the last tune, it felt like no time. But all gigs are like that, whether it’s a duo thing in a café or a big hall. You use it to learn more about what you can do, it’s always the next part of the journey.”

Emily’s musical journey started with Suzuki violin lessons as a child in Bristol, and the violin became her musical focus as she went on to gain a music degree from Cardiff University. There’d been some classical singing lessons in her teens but it was at a pre-uni summer school where jazz came into her life. “There’d been lots of music but I’d never really been opened up to jazz. Then I went to [home of the legendary Dankworth family] Wavendon and first heard Jacqui [Dankworth] singing. Someone suggested I should have a go and I had a really great time. I still studied straight music for my degree but afterwards I thought I should do a postgraduate jazz course so I went on to the Royal Welsh [College of Music & Drama].” The jazz performance course at the Royal Welsh is highly respected and numbers fellow Bristolian and improvised music guru Keith Tippett among its staff. “He’s great. He actually made me cry once – but in a good way. I used to dread his Friday free improvisation class. He would pick a few people out and you just had to get on with it, with no explanation about what you were supposed to do. All the other singers wouldn’t do it and I was so new to it all. It was a whole new experience...” She grimaces at the memory. “Afterwards I was really glad I’d done it, though, and it’s something I bring into all my work.”

Her fearlessness as an improvising vocalist was one of the things that made her stand out from the crowd when she began to appear on the Bristol jazz scene some five years ago. While most ‘jazz singers’ are very much the centre of attention, Emily takes a more equal role in the Moonlight Saving Time quintet, singing the songs, but also weaving vocal music into the sound like any other instrumentalist. “I’ve never wanted to be ‘the singer in the band’,” she explains. “I’m one fifth of the sound. When you start up a band with four very experienced players like this, you think ‘Oh crap! How can I tell them what to do?’ So we’re always working to discover what our sound will be.” The band members are, indeed, a heavyweight bunch of jazz talents – Nick Malcolm (trumpet), John Hyde (guitar), Will Harris (bass) and Mark Whitlam (drums) – capable of some very accomplished contemporary jazz, but Emily’s comfortable stage manner reflects her confidence amongst them. “People expect you to dance around and do the usual songs, but I’m not a dance-around singer! And we pick the songs we think fit us. Sometimes I’m doing stuff that’s not bog-standard and I can see some of the audience isn’t getting it and I think ‘What am I doing? Why don’t I start a function band?’ But you have to try stuff out, and if you’re passionate about what you’re doing you might even convince other people sometimes.” Given the overwhelmingly positive response to that Brecon performance, there should be no doubt that Emily Wright makes a very convincing argument indeed.

MOONLIGHT SAVING TIME APPEARED AT THE BRASS PIG, BRISTOL ON THUR 13 OCT. FFI: EMILYWRIGHTMUSIC.CO.UK

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2011; pic copyright Bethany Crowe 2011