Jazz review: Michael Nyman Band

Published on Tuesday 27 January 2009 19:04

**** GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

MICHAEL NYMAN has a habit of turning up in unexpected places. The last time I heard him perform was in the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and now here he was comfortably embedded in the omnivorous Celtic Connections programme.

A serious but simultaneously popular contemporary composer (a rare combination), Nyman took the stage with his 11-piece band, bowed decorously, and launched into the music which began his rise to fame and secured the success of his relationship with film-maker Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman's Contract.

He then jumped forward to music from their final collaboration, Prospero's Books (the relationship soured after that one).

He made no introductions throughout, a pity given that there was no programme either. The band – a string quartet, electric guitar, three saxophones and three brass – were predictably fine, and if Nyman's pianism is limited, it is entirely suited to his music. The dynamic levels never strayed far from forte, but he worked in plenty of clever manipulation of instrumental texture, setting soprano saxophones and even piccolo against baritone saxophone, trombone and horn in their basement registers.

A solo piano interlude from Jane Campion's The Piano led to an energised sequence from Drowning By Numbers. They closed with the "Memorial" from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, thereby touching base on all the major Greenaway collaborations. Two encores followed, the second another piano solo.

Caithness-born pianist James Ross opened the show with the first performance outside the Highlands of his Blas Festival commission Chasing The Sun, for piano, string quartet (Mr McFall's Chamber) and Fraser Fifield's soprano saxophone, whistle and pipes. It was a little anodyne in places, but skilfully put together and well played, if a little underweight in this large hall.