Jazz at the Fringe: Singing the praises of Fringe’s best acts

By JIM GILCHRIST
Published on 19/07/2012 02:20

AS the Fringe approaches, our columnist recommends some of the best folk and jazz gigs to be found in Edinburgh in August

I DON’T think I’ve played for audiences anything like that before,” muses Louis Durra, the Los Angeles-based jazz pianist who returns to lead a trio at Edinburgh’s Jazz Bar this Fringe for a 22-day run. Dura is set to keep afternoon audiences delighted with his eclectic repertoire – anything from jazz standards to lyrical hijackings of material by such unlikely sounding sources as KT Tunstall or Tears for Fears.

Durra’s observation on Fringe audiences is meant as a compliment. “With this huge festival, the public in Edinburgh is really accustomed to music and theatre and, as a result, I found audiences so perceptive, so enthusiastic and so aware of the music. I love being able to perform and then walk down the street and see the Philip Glass Ensemble, or comedy, or theatre.”

Last year was the 51-year-old pianist’s first time at the Fringe as a band leader. He arrived with little reputation on this side of the Atlantic but produced what I was moved to report as “possibly the best £4 worth you’ll find on the Fringe” and collecting enthusiastic reviews.

It wasn’t just mundane value-for-money that impressed, however; here was a thoroughly adept musician combining a lyrical touch with a penchant for intriguing repertoire – Belle and Sebastian numbers, for example, Tears for Fears’ old hit Mad World, or a captivating take on Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue.

Durra, whose side men for the residency are two stalwarts of the Scottish scene, bassist Brian Shiels and drummer Doug Hough, has strong views about the repertoire open to the jazz pianist. “It’s a big world out there,” he says, “and if jazz is really such creative music, I think it is vitalised by investigating different music forms, different harmonic settings, different phrasings…”

His latest recording, Rocket Science, includes his version of KT Tunstall’s hit Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, as well as some Mexican corridos which he describes as “an interesting challenge to play from a jazz perspective”. Not that he’s forsaken the standards: “I like a broad palette … I’d miss all these great songs if I stayed away from them too long.”

If Durra wants to mix his love of music with comedy during his Edinburgh visit, he could do a lot worse than take in a hilarious trio who combine real folk musicianship with inspired, anarchic humour, the New Rope Sting Band – in this case making their first visit to that unruly and protean entity that is the Fringe.

“We’d talked about doing the Fringe a couple of times before,” says the band’s Wales-based fiddler-singer Jock Tyldesley, “but it’s so expensive getting a venue that we always bottled out at the last minute.”

They’ve finally taken the plunge, with a week at the Famous Spiegeltent in George Street. Currently functioning as a trio due to the maternity commitments of fourth member Vera van Heeringen, the New Ropers have been described as “cherishably insane”, while the American roots music hero Tim O’Brien claims they “made me laugh until I cried”.

Yet they emerged in their present form out of tragedy. They formed in 1988 as the Old Rope String Band, but in 2005 founder member Joe Scurfield was killed by a hit-and-run driver. It was agreed, however, that the best way to honour his memory was to maintain the band’s anarchic and surreal spirit.

Today the remaining founder member, fiddler and banjoist Peter Challoner, performs alongside Tyldesley and accordionist, Glasgow School of Art alumni and ill-fitting kilt-wearer Tim Dalling. Their gags have caused eruptions of hilarity as far apart as Virginia and Sarawak, making unorthodox use of instruments, explosives, plastic tubing and interactive film screens, and with perceptible traces of silent-movie slapstick and, I suspect, Denny Willis. The gags, says, Tyldesley, emerged from “silly little stunts” they used to pull off between dances in their earlier incarnation as a ceilidh band.

“The music becomes a sort of backdrop for stuff to go wrong,” chuckles Dalling. “It can just suddenly go off on some surreal trip that might have cropped up in rehearsals.”

Other acts hosted by the Famous Spiegeltent, which is this year on George Street, (Venue 87: www.arfringe.com) include techno-ceilidh pioneers Shooglenifty, The Boy in the Bunnet (a folk counterpart of Peter and the Wolf) and Ricardo Garcia’s Flamenco Hip-Hop 2012.

Meanwhile the adjacent Assembly Rooms (Venue 20: www.arfringe.com) hosts some notable folk acts, including Gaelic star Karen Matheson, Breabach and a grouping of Mike McGoldrick, John McCusker and the John Doyle Trio, as well as traditional performers Arthur Johnstone and Sheena Wellington. They also present sultry French-Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan, taking time off from The Rape of Lucrece in the “official” Festival.

Apart from Durra’s residency, the Jazz Bar (Venue 57: www.thejazzbar.co.uk) has its customarily bulging Fringe programme of jazz, blues and other music, featuring homegrown and visiting stars such as New York drummer Ari Hoenig’s trio, here featuring Scots pianist Tom Gibbs and bassist Euan Burton – who also leads his own Round Midnight Quartet at the venue. Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev returns for his seasonal blast, as do pianist Brian Kellock with his trio and in duet with trumpeter Colin Steele, and US-based Edinburgh pianist Paul Kirby.

Other Jazz Bar names range from singer-harpist Magdalena Reising and slide-guitarist John Hunt to Head2Head – a partial reincarnation of Eighties jazz-rockers Head, featuring original members drummer Bill Kyle and bassist Graham Robb, along with a funky brass section.

For wall-to-wall folk and related music, head for the Acoustic Music Centre @ St Bride’s (Venue 123: www.acousticmusiccentre.co.uk), with its Fringe-long programme offering such well-known names as Dick Gaughan, Gaelic singer and harpist Maggie MacInnes, Orkney’s Wrigley sisters, singer-songwriter David Heavenor, guitarist extraordinaire Preston reed, the Outside Track and jazz singer-songwriter Sophie Bancroft, as well as many other emerging acts, including the fine-voiced young traditional singer Chloe Matharu.

Indubitably the Fringe’s cosiest venue, the Royal Oak (Venue 309: www.royal-oak-folk.com) runs its nightly festival programme, offering such weel-kent names as Christine Kydd, Gavin Marwick, Aaron Jones, Ian Bruce and Jim Malcolm. The somewhat more spacious Queen’s Hall (Venue 72: www.thequeenshall.net) once again presents a classy roster of folk and other names, including the superb singer Barb Jungr, legendary guitarist-songwriter Richard Thompson, Fife’s own King Creosote, Irish diva Mary Coughlan and the energetically inventive Treacherous Orchestra, while all-woman folk band the Poozies celebrate their 25th anniversary with help from Icelandic percussionist Signy Jakobsdottir and McFall’s Chamber cellist Su-a Lee.

Elsewhere, singer-songwriter Kim Edgar plays St Marks artSpace (Venue 125: www.edinburgh-unitarians.org.uk/), which also sees the return of Richard Michael’s droll History of Jazz Piano, you’ll find clarinettist Dick Lee in peerless partnership with accordionist David Vernon in the gastronomic inner sanctum of Valvona & Crolla (Venue 67: www.valvonacrolla.com) and the further-flung Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh hosts further instrumental delights from Blazin’ Fiddles and the Halton Quartet (Venue 191: www.bruntontheatre.co.uk).

That’s a far from comprehensive sample. There is, of course, much, much more awaiting unearthing from that intimidating looking Fringe programme.