Gareth Lockrane Quintet
(Ladbroke Hall. 12 April 2024. Review by Jake Werth)

Who dares say yes to playing in Gareth Lockrane’s band? Just to be asked is probably one of the biggest compliments that a musician can receive in British jazz. Only our very best can physically reproduce Lockrane’s monstrous repertoire live, and thankfully, on Friday night at Ladbroke Hall, Nadim Teimoori (tenor sax), Jim Watson (piano), Freddie Jensen (bass) and Steve Brown (drums) had accepted this fearsome challenge.

At first, the flautist’s compositional offerings appear to be paradoxically accessible yet musically dense, melodically and harmonically blistering hard-bop roasts, soulful blues grooves that could leave anyone with a neck injury, and aching, cinematic ballads that sit in their own category of compositional brilliance. And yet there is so much more to his tunes, musically speaking, than these glib summaries can convey. There’s a driving, restless, forward-motion living in each passage of every piece, including those at slower tempos. This reflects Gareth the man – he’s renowned for his round-the-clock, boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm for the music. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is static. His compositions mirror his improvisations – they’re direct, concise, punchy statements of fact rather than opinion. There’s absolutely nothing equivocating or insecure about them, and yet they are in no way closed-minded or burdened with hackneyed cliché – use of convention is judicious, serving an overall sense of originality, rather than undermining it. Every hook, every elegant, subterraneous countermelody, every menacing vamp, supports the telling of a clear and convincing story, about which Lockrane, as composer, seems certain.

This prominent sense of plot is fitting, given Lockrane’s background in film composition, but perhaps the extent to which it underpins the breadth of his compositional appeal is understated. He draws in his audience with something only the finest composers can create and sustain throughout a piece – narrative. The long-form ballad ‘We’ll Never Meet Again’ conveys conflicting heartbreak, yearning, bliss, hope and loss, through an incredibly rich harmonic palette that makes meaningful use of contrasts between dark, melodic-minor-derived tonal centres, and satisfying sus chords that yield to bright, euphoric lydian resolutions.

But as theoretically admirable as his work is, that’s clearly not what it’s about. There is honesty, humility and dedication written all over a gritty, bluesy waltz like ‘Put The Cat Out’. Equally, tonight’s world premiere of ‘Propulsion’, a blindingly fast, complex and definitely-terrifying-to-perform up-tempo swinger, sums up Gareth’s formidable, incessant musicianship. He admits he has tweaked the new tune’s contents on the morning of the gig. That’s him – always editing, never fully satisfied, perfecting decades-old tunes, whilst regularly producing fresh material. One of Lockrane’s long-time collaborators and peers, the inimitable jazz guitarist Phil Robson, once expressed to me his admiration for the ‘attack’ Gareth achieves on the shape of the flute note. It’s pointed, angular, piercing, it can cut through noise or give the listener a jolt. The same is true of his straight-talking, no-nonsense compositions, which are not just refreshing, their clarity is what these deeply uncertain times need.

Not yet a subscriber of our Wednesday Breakfast Headlines?
Join the mailing list for a weekly roundup of Jazz News.