Jeremy Pelt is a class act from across the pond

After five consecutive years as Down Beat magazine’s Rising Star on Trumpet, Pelt is no longer a boy wonder. He has reached his thirties and make-or-break time is looming but class will usually tell. He showed no sign of strain last night, opening a short European tour on the homely, matt-black-draped college-theatre stage which had hosted him twice before.
Propelled by the tight-knit rhythm section of pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Vicente Archer and thumbs-on-top drummer Gerald Cleaver,
Pelt and tenorist JD Allen hit the ground running on numbers from their current MaxJazz album, November.

With a spacy, post-bop ambience, these intense originals seemed to anticipate where jazz might have gone had Miles Davis not disbanded his second great acoustic quintet for a late shot at Hendrix-style rock superstardom.

Avatar, Clairvoyant and Neftis were elegant themes scored in hip two-part harmonies for the horns. They sounded simple enough but masked testing chord structures that called for quick thinking when solos came around.

Allen, an interesting player whose hard, dry tone reflected both Wayne and Trane, edited his ideas to the bone, offering only occasional bursts of complexity.

Not so Pelt, who played fast and high from the start, uncoiling long lines before his trumpet and flugelhorn had hardly warmed up. But his ballad version of Shirley Horn’s song, You Won’t Forget Me, was tender and brilliant.

Grissett, perhaps the night’s most original performer, comped beautifully and swung as hard as anyone, mixing dazzling right-hand ideas with rich two-handed chord voicings of his own.
Pelt’s powerful set-closer, 466-64 (Freedom Fighters), was Nelson Mandela’s prison number. "After playing the 2007 Cape Town jazz festival, I visited Robben Island and saw Mandela’s cell," he explained.

"I was shocked — it was so small. You then realised anything is possible." Later the guide mentioned that he, too, had been an inmate at the time. "I thought, if I’d been released from that prison," Pelt added, "I damn sure wouldn’t have taken a job there."

Concerts resume in September. Information: or@redleafpr.com.

Jeremy Pelt Quintet
Lund Theatre, University College School
Frognal, Hampstead, NW3 6XH