Folk, jazz etc: Saxman Bryden gets on his bike for a homecoming gig

DEVOTEES of the surreal Irish novelist and columnist Flann O’Brien, aka Myles na gCopaleen, will be well acquainted with his intriguing theories about molecular transference between bicycles and their riders, as espoused in The Third Policeman and The Dalkey Archive. The result, he would have us believe, is that bicycles develop human traits, while their riders have to prop themselves against a convenient wall when not in motion, otherwise they’ll fall over. So far as I know, O’Brien didn’t speculate on any such alarming molecular interchange between musicians and their instruments, but one does wonder.

Such idle thoughts are prompted by the return to Scotland of the young New York-based, Dumfries-raised tenor sax player Ben Bryden who is bringing his Bright Noise collaboration with Belgian tenorist Steve Delannoye. Bryden will also perform his jazz suite 1957 Flying Scot, inspired by a classic Scottish-built racing bike of the 1950s.

Bryden, who is 25 and graduated from the Manhattan School of Music’s jazz programme earlier this year, hasn’t read Flann O’Brien, but he does reckon that musicians, if not quite morphing into their instruments, do become influenced by them. “Certainly the way you hear things is related to the instrument you play,” he says, speaking from New York, “and just the other night I was talking to two bass players and one of them pointed out the differences in our hands. You almost have a different social approach because of your role in the group – subtle things that only a musician would notice.”

Bryden’s current band role is co-tenor sax player with Delannoye in Bright Noise, along with guitarist Tim Besom, Des White on bass and Dustin Kaufman on drums. This is the first UK tour by the band’s original line-up, although Bryden and Delannoye visited last November with two other players. Bryden regards the band’s twin-tenor sound as “very tight, warm and solid … all the compositions have strong melodies, which are something everyone can relate to, but there are also some rock influences and some odd time signatures.”

He and the band will play Edinburgh’s Jazz Bar and the Lockerbie Jazz Festival (where other guests include US saxophone legend Houston Person, UK sax star Alan Barnes, trad daddy Acker Bilk and the R&B band Red Stripe), but what got us on to pedal power is the group’s appearance at the Wigtown Book Festival. Here, they will play Bryden’s suite 1957 Flying Scot to launch a book produced by his father, the Dumfries woodcut artist and publisher Hugh Bryden. Incorporating what in the makar’s trade is known as a “sonnet redoublé” written in celebration of the legendary bicycle by the poet Rab Wilson, the hand-crafted book comes complete with two CDs, one of Bryden Junior’s music, the other of Wilson reciting his verse.

Bryden confesses he didn’t know anything about the famous cycles, which were manufactured in Glasgow by David Rattray and Co until the early 1980s. When Wilson approached him with the poem, he found its “crown sonnet” sequence, where the last line of one sonnet is repeated by the first line of the next, easy to latch into musically. “It gave me a ready-made framework on which to start composing.”

Bryden, who emerged from the Dumfries Youth Jazz group and was a finalist in last year’s BBC Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year awards, reckons he’s played in virtually every Lockerbie Jazz Festival since the event started six years ago. “With it being so close to Dumfries, it’s very much a homecoming thing, and the festival has been an important part of my growth as a musician.” You might even say his appearances there are cyclical.

l Bright Noise play Wigtown Book Festival, 27 September, the Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, 28 September, and Lockerbie Jazz Festival on the 30th. They will also play a Glasgow show on 29 September. Venue tbc, see www.benbryden.com for details. For more information on the Lockerbie Jazz Festival, visit www.lockerbiejazz.com.