MUSIC

Worth Matravers, Dorset (Fri 2/Sat 3 Sept) Imagine a busload of Bristol and Bath’s finest jazz musicians arriving at an idyllic cliff-top pub offering splendid ales, home-pressed cider and the best pasties you can eat anywhere and you’ll have the flavour of this excellent annual event. Organised by drummer/promoter John Blakeley in collaboration with the family-owned Square & Compass pub, it’s a cultural exchange mission whereby the jazz-loving citizens of the isle of Purbeck get top jazz entertainment and a couple of dozen urban musicians get to scamper around by the sea. This year’s event sees a Friday evening programme with the spaciously contemporary piano threesome An Ernest Trio using Jon Short’s compositions to great effect. The band are sandwiched between contrasting Brazilian music: Cathy Jones’s band exploring the soft-shuffle beats of bossa nova with her lilting vocals and Kevin Figes’s (pictured) cutting flute in nicely balanced form; later the grooves get very dance-friendly, with the electronic drive of Brazilian funk revitalised by The Transworld Quartet. Saturday’s programme begins with the Euro-klezmer flavoured Quirkish pleasures of Gina Griffin (violin) and Chris Powell (guitar) and mainstream jazz classics from singer Emily Wright’s Quartet. John Blakely’s own ‘Messengers’ project is appropriately big and upbeat in its 60s modern jazz retro-sound, while Andy Nowak’s trio sounds contrastingly contemporary and deftly constructed by comparison. The Baker Boys gypsy swing set has all the zip that you’d expect but it’s the last two acts that really make an impact: apart from their sheer volume, wonky art-rockers Chairfight are an ear-grabbing instrumental spectacle of crosscut beats, crazy phrasing and post-rock ideas. Long-lost drummer Daisy Palmer leads, with Dave Johnston’s bass and Aaron Zahl’s guitar equally frenetic around her. It’s so wrong it’s right, basically, and throwing a sharp relief on the cool grooves of the Mike Willox Quartet, with Daisy still behind the kit, Will Harris on bass and contributions from Kevin Figes’s sax and Emily Wright (vocals). This is goodtime music, playful yet disciplined, evoking Ramsey Lewis and other masters of the style, and it makes the perfect happy end to a perfectly happy weekend. (Tony Benjamin)

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2011