Selling the music - Music - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Selling the music

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Double album launches like this are a good idea. They halve promotion costs while offering fans two groups for the price of one. Anita Wardell gave them nearly all the songs from her latest offering, Kinda Blue. Complex scatting is her speciality but Little Girl Blue also showed the warmth and tasteful simplicity of her ballad side.

At fast tempos her impressive rapport with pianist Robin Aspland was evident during a tearaway Limehouse Blues, the tricky Race Against Time and the fiendishly dissonant Teenie’s Blues. Adam Glasser’s harmonica joined her for Right to Sing the Blues and Steve Brown replaced drummer Tristan Maillot on four numbers, just as on the album.

Saxman Tony Kofi then delivered a blazing taster of his quartet album The Silent Truth. His fast-improving technique now finds him playing alto and soprano with real authority and intensity, though his writing strayed rather too close to jazz standards.

Giants recalled Freedom Jazz Dance, Dante recalled Giant Steps, and If I Spoke My Mind recalled Impressions, yet pianist Jonathan Gee’s great sense of structure gave every original a distinct shape, and sonorous bassist Ben Hazelton and power-drummer Winston Clifford made a strong rhythm section.

Joop Visser, the Specific Jazz label boss, left with a satisfied smile, no doubt feeling that if these two albums didn’t sell well he’d be a Dutchman.

Specific Jazz Presents The Tony Kofi Quartet & Anita Wardell & Her Trio
Purcell Room, Southbank Centre
The South Bank Centre,Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX

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