John Turville performed at the first Shearing Hour last night at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in a new early-evening piano hour slot at the Soho club in London. The theme of the hour was the music of George Shearing, and award winning pianist Turville whose album Conception, the title track of which is one of Shearing’s best known compositions, performed some newly transcribed material associated with Shearing. He interpreted Shearing’s signature “locked hands" style admirably, with a nuanced airy feel, and the club’s newly tuned Steinway sounded a treat. As well as ‘Conception’ he played the great Horace Silver’s composition ‘The Outlaw’, which appeared on the Shearing Quintet’s 1960 Capitol album San Francisco Scene, and another of Silver’s, ‘Room 608’. The set also featured ‘Station Break’, a lesser known tune from the Shearing live album Rare Form recorded in San Fran, the standard ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon’, ‘September in the Rain’ (the Shearing Hour’s theme song), and of course ‘Lullaby of Birdland’, which Turville played quite beautifully. Earlier the audience, who would swell to fill the club to hear jazz singer Clare Teal deliver a fine performance later in the evening with her piano trio, warmed to some original 1947-1952 Shearing gems played over the club’s house sound system. SG
John Turville pictured at the Shearing Hour. Photo: Aimua Eghobamien