Jazz: Brian Molley goes back to the future with new album Modern Traditions

The title of the third album from the Brian Molley Quartet, Modern Traditions, may sound wilfully oxymoronic – and saxophonist Molley agrees it may smack of a contradiction in terms, but he points to the album’s emphasis, which sheds some of the world music influences of previous projects to generate purposeful, straight ahead jazz as well as some tender ballads.

The 45-year-old, Glasgow-based reedsman’s clear yet warm-toned tenor and soprano sax (he also doubles on clarinet, bass clarinet and flute) sounds out in the seasoned company of pianist Tom Gibbs, bassist Brodie Jarvie and drummer Stuart Brown. “In this instance,” says Molley, “I think we’ve gone further back to focus more, not on traditional jazz, but contemporary but with an eye on the old school stuff I grew up on.

“People have commented in the past on my playing being … not so much old-school as someone who spent a lot of time studying the classic jazz records. That’s really where the ‘Modern Traditions’ come from.”

Listen no further than the track Nimble Royal’s (no, it’s just an anagram of his name), a lithely bounding homage to bebop pioneers Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, who were such a formative influence on Molley’s playing. “It was written to also incorporate a few more contemporary ideas – although it seems odd, even after 80 or so years, to consider these musicians as anything other than contemporary.”

The opening Magic Ten is another no-nonsense number with pianist Gibbs ranging gleefully alongside tenor sax. It was the last track written for the album, says Molley. Composed during the second lockdown, it certainly has a feel of heady release – a counterblast to those dismal times that kept musicians confined.

There are also some exquisite ballad moments: A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, for instance, from Disney’s Cinderella, a tender-toned Lullaby-Bye and a wonderfully languorous approach to The Trolley Song from the 1944 musical Meet me in St Louis – no clang-clang-clang here but a velvety glide escorted by multi-tracked bass clarinet and flute.

“I went back to watch the Judy Garland version [in the film]. It’s so bright it’s almost radio-active,” Molley laughs. “So my version is the opposite, but it’s such a brilliant melody and the shape of it meant I could move the harmonies around and get it into that languid state.”

There’s also a wonderfully dolorous take on a renaissance dance form, Sinkapace for Mary and Philip, described by Molley as “a rather morbid waltz”. This reedily stately cinquepace, however, wouldn’t sound out of place as an Inspector Poirot soundtrack.

Molley says he strives to achieve an “organic” feel for the band and the album certainly exudes a sense of happy balance through familiarity with each other’s playing (he and Brown have been gigging together since their teens). He talks in terms of ebb and flow: “I’ve always thought that when [the quartet] works at its best, it’s the four parts contributing to make the one thing, rather than just a leader who goes in and says, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

The habitually far-travelling quartet is tentatively resuming live gigs and he hopes, among other things, to tour in jazz-rich Belgium – a commitment postponed from the spring of last year. One of Molley’s frequent destinations, with or without the band, is India, where collaborators include the Chennai-based percussionist Krishna Kishor, with whom the quartet has remotely recorded an album, due out next spring.

Molley sees such eclectic encounters, along with maintaining the quartet for the past decade, as a vital part of his musical development. “We’ve got the collaboration with Kishor coming up, and before that we toured with players from Rajasthan. It would be weird if you didn’t go through an experience like that and come out the other end not having grown a bit as a musician. I definitely think that I have.”

Modern Traditions is released on BGMM Records on 3 December, see www.brianmolley.co.uk

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