Cheltenham Jazz Fest (4) – Birmingham Conservatoire International Student Project – London Jazz News

Birmingham Royal Conservatoire with students from Siena and Hamburg at Parabola Arts Centre, 4 May.

Review by Peter Slavid.

One of the highlights of the Cheltenham program is this project, where Birmingham Conservatoire students are joined by students from overseas. This year, those students came from Siena and Hamburg.

Several of the participants in this project over the years have gone on to great things. The overseas contribution was down a bit from previous years, but I’m sure we saw some stars in the making.

The students were formed into three quintets and, rather than band names, were given numbers in the order in which they appeared. All students had the opportunity to solo and all did so with faith.

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Group 1 was my favorite of the three, featuring a delightful interplay between trombone and alto sax. It’s a bit of an unusual combination, but it worked really well. The compositions were not credited, but I found them particularly interesting in this group.

Parable Quintet 1

Trombone: Will Pethick (Hamburg)
Sax: Nathan Evans
Double bass: Francesco Bordignon (Siena)
Drums: Yiu Lam
Piano: Julianne Deil

Group 2 gave us a more conventional bebop performance, although there were some interesting effects from the guitarist, whose solo was one of the highlights. There was also an unusual love song by the bass player who vocalized along with the bass.

Parabola Quintet 2

Trumpet: Christian Kiely-Charalambous
Trombone: Henry Hansen
Bass/vocals: Lennart Meyer (Hamburg)
Guitar: Edoardo Ferri (Siena)
Drums: Wilfred McKenzie

Group 3 focused on songs from, among others, Joe Henderson and Lee Morgan. This was a classy and professional band full of fine musicians.

Parabola Quintet 3

Vocal: Giuditta Franco (Siena)
Sax: Reuben-James Gilbert
Bass: Macy Wright
Drums: Dominic Johnson
Guitar: Oliver Canham

The overall impression of these three bands was one of high quality musicianship. If I have one criticism, it’s just that the music was a bit conventional, with very few risks, although I understand the complexity of putting these projects together across national borders. However, I suspect that many of these musicians are going out and playing in afrobeat or improv bands, and it would be great to see just a little bit of that in the years to come.

Birmingham Conservatoire and Cheltenham Jazz deserve huge congratulations for their continued support of this excellent project and the large and enthusiastic audience would strongly support this.