Jazz review: Julian Argüelles trio with John Abercrombie

Published on Wednesday 6 May 2009 18:47

SAXOPHONIST Julian Argüelles already has an empathic musical connection with regular collaborators Michael Formanek on bass and the remarkable Tom Rainey on drums, but their special guest, American guitarist John Abercrombie, had fully embedded himself in the band by this mid-point of their week-long tour.

His clean, precise fingering and very personal melodic lines were thoughtful rather than visceral, but always expressive, and never overly cerebral. The saxophonist played exclusively on tenor, creating a rich, lustrous sonority to carry his consistently lucid and inventive improvisations.

Argelles had written several new tunes for the tour, including Wilderness Lane, a graceful, almost elegiac evocation of the school he attended as a child growing up in Birmingham. These days he is resident in East Lothian, and a Scottish influence surfaced not only in the alliterative title of Fife On The Firth of Forth, but also in his solo introduction to a lovely new ballad, A Life Long Moment.

The material assembled was varied and attractive, setting up intriguing juxtapositions, such as the transition from the spacious, almost ethereal sound-world of Abercrombie's Spring Song to the more fractured and asymmetric phrases of Argelles' Ornette Coleman-like tribute to Dewey Redman before the interval; or the shift from his ballad into the intensity of the pulsating Spanish-inflected Bulerias at the end of the show. A lithe account of Cole Porter's Everything I Love was the only departure from original material.