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The new ambassador of jazz
By Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard 07.11.06
Man on a mission: jazz maestro Gwilym Simcock
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If anyone can persuade new audiences to venture into jazz, Gwilym Simcock, one of the highlights of this month's London Jazz Festival, could be the man. His musicianship is prodigious. Whether as pianist, French horn player or composer, as soloist, in a trio, or big band, his talent is spellbinding.
His string of prizes includes a Perrier Award, BBC Jazz and British Jazz Rising Star Awards 2005. And he is the first jazz musician to become a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, an international scheme for young virtuoso musicians, until now all classical.
From a jazz perspective, one feature especially marks him out: he is only 25 years old. Some regard jazz as a moribund musical form, with dwindling, greying audiences.
Yet given the commercial success of pop-jazz artist Jamie Cullum, the vitality of outfits such as F-IRE Collective and the Vortex, and the bustling jazz activity in music conservatoires, is that a fair perception?
"It's certainly true that at some gigs I'm playing for the old guys," says Simcock. "I'm not unhappy. To play to anyone who listens with passion is all a musician asks. But I look out there and think, 'How can I get people of my age here? How can I show them that jazz is music of beauty, melody, feeling?' It's not scary or alien or difficult but a huge, all encompassing world with so many styles and such lyricism ... "
His own background is classical. An only child growing up in Cheshire, initially he was home-educated by his mother. He played the piano from the age of three, encouraged by his father, a church organist who worked for the local brewery but whose first love, improvising at the keyboard, soon rubbed off on his young son.
By seven, Simcock was travelling each Saturday to Trinity College of Music, London, for 30-minute general musicianship classes. All that way, for half an hour? "Yes. We left home about 4.30 in the morning. My parents had seen I was quite musical." Did he know other children at this point? "Yes, I did swimming and that kind of thing. I didn't feel particularly lonely."
Aged nine he moved to Chetham's, the specialist music school in Manchester. "I missed my parents a lot at first, and being in a big city was overwhelming. But otherwise I loved it." Two years on he was playing concertos and reached the semi-finals of an international Mozart competition, one of the youngest competitors-A career as an international concert pianist beckoned. Then, in his quiet way, he rebelled.
"I was about 15, a bit nerdy I guess. I didn't like the competitive aspect of music, the sense of being played off against your peers, all playing the same pieces of Chopin or Rachmaninov. I'm quite a nervous player. I still get worried if I know there's a pianist in the audience. The thing I found most frustrating was being expected to play all the notes as written on the page. I wanted freedom - to do my own thing."
One of his teachers, ex-Loose Tubes player Steve Berry, had the insight to make up a jazz cassette tape for him. "Keith Jarrett was the first jazz I ever heard. A piece by Pat Metheny, also on the tape, was the second. I found them beautiful, very melodic. It seemed a template of what music can do. It's what we're here for: to move people. What else is there?"
From then on, he was addicted. "There was a lot of pulling and tugging me back at Chet's, but they were generally supportive."-What about his contemporaries-Did they shun him? "Well, they made me head boy so I can't say I was shunned!"
He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music jazz course with a first-class honours degree and the principal's special prize for outstanding achievement. Only four years on, he has bookings with many of jazz's living legends, mostly three or four decades older: Kenny Wheeler, Stan Sulzmann, Bill Bruford, Chick Corea.
Simcock's own playing style is distinctive, knees pressed up against the instrument, long pale fingers elegantly arched, left wrist suddenly dropping to emphasise a left-hand figure. He is as likely to play one of his own meditative, rhapsodic compositions as to switch to some Chopin, remembered from his child prodigy days but now a starting point for improvisation. "Music is like language. You can't help using what you've grown up with. In my case, Stravinsky or Rimsky-Korsakov, or Bach especially. For others it might be rock or pop or Latin."
His time is split between various groups including the trio Acoustic Triangle; he's as happy playing upstairs in a pub as at Wigmore Hall. "As long as the piano is OK. When it's not I'm thrown. It's amazing how venues think that if you're a jazz pianist you won't mind a bad piano. But I have to make the piano sing. I need to hear tunes in my head when I'm improvising."
He lives in north London in a house full of musicians his own age. Most cannot afford to come to his concerts. "I know I'm lucky. I get paid more for a gig than other musicians my age. I'm very aware there's not enough work around. But things could be done to make life easier." Such as? "On tickets, offering student or Musicians Union discounts for a start. Ronnie Scott's used to be a place where young jazz musicians could go and hear their heroes. And actually to play a week at Ronnie's was a dream. Now it's changed hands it's a different story."
As for gigs, he singles out the 606 Club in Lots Road and the Bull's Head, Barnes as places young players can have jam sessions and try out material, often only getting paid door money - "You ask a jazz musician how they get by and they'll all say, a bit of teaching, a few gigs, this and that..."
He readily acknowledges his potential as ambassador for jazz. "Having a spirit of adventure is crucial. When you hear live jazz, it's the only time it'll ever exist. It's such a precious thing. And to achieve that moment of music, musicians have to give their all. That's what I live for."
He looks at his watch, anxious not be late for his weekly football match, as player not spectator. Isn't he nervous of injury? Simcock shrugs. "We're all musicians in this team. We know how far to go and when to stop."
Some of his fellow players are in their sixties and seventies. As in jazz, so in football. "It's fantastic, playing across generations. What's touching is finding some of these guys, fabulous musicians, can play a dream trumpet or viola. But they can't score a goal." It's no surprise to find Gwilym Simcock is a striker.
• Gwilym Simcock Trio, with John Taylor Trio, Wigmore Hall, 7.30pm Friday 17 November.
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I've heard Gwilym a number of times at the Swanage Jazz Festival and, of course, on CDs (Acoustic Triangle - and John Horler was a hard act to follow). I think he is, quite simply, a unique talent. Already, at 25, he's possibly the best UK jazz pianist ever - his versatility and technical skill seemingly knows no limits, be it his wonderful classically-influenced work or hard-driving bop to which he brings startling harmonic invention - he truly makes Bill Evans sound tame! I have no doubt that he will go on to take the world by storm.
- Nick Wilson, Near Crewkerne, Somerset
The Wigmore Hall concert was one of the most absorbing and beautiful things I have heard in a long while. I have been a fan of both Gwilym Simcock and John Taylor for a long time and the duet at the end of the concert was stunning. More concerts please....
- Christine Steuer, London
This is an interesting interview in giving the background to Gwilym. I have been a keen follower for two years and firmly believe he is at the forefront of jazz piano style. He is creative, innovative and sound. Never boring, avoiding repetitive cliches - the fallback for so many jazz musicians. His point about needing good pianos is important. Too often venues think they can get away with substandard pianos, or they amplify a poor one thinking it will cover inadequacies. Amplification is often badly handled by incompetent 'engineers' and that it terrible, since they have the professional reputation of the artist at stake - and should not be allowed to be in the loop unless of the very highest ability. Gwilym's recital at Wigmore Hall last night was superb. It was good to see him with his teacher and mentor John Taylor. They clearly come from the same school. The final two-piano duo was stunning. A truly brilliant display of piano duoing of the very highest order. Only the Lebeque Sisters could compare - their sense of rhythm and timing was so well matched that they were inseparable in sound. Quite outstanding and an extremely rare performance. I only hope that it was recorded and will at some stage will be available. Lasting over half an hour, it ranged through the musical emotions and techniques, and had the audience spellbound. Very well done - both.
Gwilym deserves the highest level of support in his future career, in the vest venues and on the best pianos.
- Goron Cumming, Wendover, Bucks
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