Appearing at the Scarborough Jazz Festival in September the week after the release of Great News where pianist Barry Green will be playing with saxophonist Chris Cheek and drummer Gerald Cleaver – his high-flying playing partners from the new album – the festival is billing the group as Barry Green’s New York trio.
The trip to the North Yorkshire coast follows two nights at London’s Vortex (24-25 September), Devon (22 September), Ronnie Scott’s (21 Sept) and Bristol (20 Sept) after a Barcelona date to kicks things off the night before in the Catalonian capital in the city’s chief jazz club hub, Jamboree.
The Big Apple moniker makes sense as their first album together was indeed recorded in New York last year.
Last reviewed live in these pages back in London a few weeks after his Stateside foray playing on that occasion at the bohemian Jazz Nursery held in a dank experimental theatre under a railway arch in Southwark, trains thundering audibly overhead Green that night launched into ‘Great News’ the title track of the new Moletone Records release.
His local trio that night at the Nursery also tore into Thelonious Monk’s ‘Off Minor’ but also a surprise was a very subtle interpretation of the great folk singer John Martyn’s ‘May You Never’ from 1973 classic album Solid Air.
Again the Monk and Martyn make it on to the new album, sax taking the bittersweet solo line of ‘May You Never’ on a walk initially. The new album has no bass at all not that you’d notice hand on heart such is the power of the clever arrangements, Green’s left hand gently explorative style honed the hard way via years of accompanying a wide range of singers and instrumentalists to tease out just the right effect given the extra work load.
Other prominent tracks featured on Great News include a version of Paul Motian’s ‘The Owl of Cranston’, Green’s own tune ‘Stubblerash’ and tributes to both Cedar Walton and Mulgrew Miller.
Green, also known for his recent work on Emilia Mårtensson’s lovely album Ana and The MJQ Celebration is a former student of Guildhall School of Music and Drama graduating from there some 13 years ago. Since then he has built up a lot of heavyweight sideman credits and toured widely, his sound conveying the subtlety of say Kenny Drew, striking certainly when he played with Charles McPherson (For Sure!) at the Cork Jazz Festival five years ago.
Barry Green, above