Age has not wearied Sonny Rollins, but it has reduced his gait to a slow, cautious waddle. Draped in a generous red silk shirt, crowned with a halo of grey frizz that recalled Arthur Rubenstein, Sonny Rollins emerged from behind a black curtain and swayed his way slowly to the front of the stage and the Barbican Theatre gave the man and his band a warm, heartfelt welcome.

Here, in front of us, stood a true mythic figure of music, one of the last men left standing from that famous generation of American musicians who defined modern jazz.  And this guy was going to play. For us. The expectation in the room was almost overwhelming.

Sonny Rollins – North Sea Jazz Festival, July 2010 – Evert-Jan (Creative Commons)

Despite the rapturous ovation that greeted the band, the gig started slowly. The quintet, slightly adrift on the wide Barbican stage, searched in vain for its mojo.  The opening tune, an 8-bar two chord vamp, had all the charm of a raucous soundcheck, and it took fully three songs, (half an hour), for the engineers to find a proper balance, allowing Bob Cranshaw’s bass and Russell Malone’s guitar to finally emerge from the murk.

Riding over the top of the band was Mr Rollin’s enormous, vocalised tenor saxophone. Sonny Rollins may no longer be able to outrun an advancing wall of lava, but his sound is still volcanic: broad, rough-hewn, scratchy as scoria.

His solos reminded me of a saxophone-playing friend of mine, who once commented to me “The best thing about Sonny Rollins is he doesn’t have any licks you can copy.” Even if the first third of the concert lacked inspiration, you got the impression that Rollins and his collaborators never gave up searching, grasping for the moment when everything would come together.

The “click” finally happened on the fourth tune: an unnamed funk groove, Russell Malone laying out an unexpected line worthy of a James Brown rhythm section. Watkin and Cranshaw obliged by accelerating the tempo ever-so-slightly, and finally the taper was lit.

Rollins waddled along the line of footlights, pouring out notes, quoting show-tunes and Pop Goes the Weasel, stopping in front of audience members to dedicate a phrase or two to each, before moving on, his saxophone swaying like a cradle in the storm, waiting for the bough to break. The gig was on.

Sonny Rollins – New York, September 2010 – Mr Mystery (Creative Commons)

As the evening progressed, the man’s purpose become clear – he was here to play music, and to play as much music as he could.  Only a musician of Rollins’ stature could flick off a rendition of Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood without ever bothering to play the melody. The climax came on the penultimate tune: a swinging version of Why Was I Born? where Rollins paced the width of the stage while engineering a solo of uncommon beauty.

There were some unusual choices of settings for his sidemen to take the spotlight: a slow, early-set ballad was the moment for Mr Rollins to trade fours with Sammy Figueroa’s congas, while the 3/4 tempo of Some Day I’ll Find You provided the frame for Kobie Watkins to let loose on drums. Russell Malone’s guitar was consistently tasteful, and occasionally audacious – he even permitted himself an extended reconstruction of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme on a middle chorus.

The gig closed with a few words of wisdom from the man himself, who recalled with humility his younger days gigging in London with Ronnie Scott and friends.  The band stretched out for a rollicking calypso finale on Don’t Stop the Carnival, and the groove bounced in our heads all the way home along the Northern Line and through the foggy streets of Islington.

This was a gig that, if only momentarily transcendant, was all the more special for those rare, precious minutes when Sonny Rollins – stately, majestic and deliberate in his ninth decade – made the stage positively glow.

Image: Evert-Jan (Creative Commons)

EDIT: 22/11/2010 Corrected name of guitarist (Russell Malone) and spelling of Sammy Figueroa

One way to keep the costs of touring Europe to a minimum is to ensure that half your band is the support act. The show resembled a showcase for the Pacific Northwest’s indie-folk scene, opening with short solo sets by Nelson (of Old Believers) and Eric Anderson (Cataldo) before they both joined Laura and Keeley Boyle (also of Old Believers) onstage as a quartet for the main event.

To my ears, Nelson’s solo songs lacked lustre and gazed largely shoe-wards. But Eric’s set picked up the pace a bit with some well structured songs and clever melodies: his band recording Signal Flare is well worth checking out.

Laura’s set rolled out in an atmosphere of relaxed bonhomie, without ever quite catching alight. It seems a challenge for anglophone artists to really cut through to French audiences, although the audience sure liked the music, and even taught Laura (6 months pregnant with her first child) how to say “Je suis enceinte.”

The set-list understandably centred on material from the new album July Flame (see my earlier post). Carol Kaye was an unexpected choice of opener, but it worked well.  And the immediate follow-up with The Sun is King and Where Are You Driving (two of my personal favourites of this new crop of songs) kept this particular audient happy.

The quartet provided a remarkably rich sound, with all four musicians rotating between bass, guitars, banjos, percussion and keyboards – and when an extra layer was required (for example on To the Country), the crowd was split in two to sing the backing vocals. The Paris audience played along with the game, although they preferred clapping along when Laura and Keeley stretched out on hoedown based around Cluck Old Hen.

Songs from earlier in Laura’s career were spread out through the set, including a solemn version of Spelunking, with its disturbing and slightly desperate plea (If I took you darling/to the caverns of my heart/would you light the lamp dear/and see fish without eyes/and bats with their heads hanging down towards the ground/would you still come around?).

Although she didn’t play Parisian Dream (from 2005′s Year of Meteors), there were a few nods to French culture: Rapture, which references Monet and his gardens at Giverny, as well as Sleeper in the Valley, a new song inspired by Rimbaud‘s Le dormeur du val. The gesture was appreciated, but I think the audience would have equally liked another hoedown instead.

I may be getting old, but there’s one feature of gigs in Paris I really appreciate: they start early, and finish early – I was home by 10.30pm, in time for a good night’s sleep before orchestra rehearsal. An evening with Laura Veirs is an evening well-spent, and there are few things on stage more beautiful than a pregnant woman with banjo.

Paul Simon – short, and blurry.

The past weekend was spent at Lord Rotherwick’s rather lovely deer park at Cornbury in west Oxfordshire, getting wet in a tent, catching up with friends and watching a few bands play. The Cornbury Festival is a relaxed family affair, with most of the crowd travelling from the local Oxfordshire area.

It was funny to (literally) bump into Conservative Party Leader David Cameron (the local MP for West Oxfordshire) in the VIP loos. He said “sorry”- but whether that was for bumping into me or for being an Old Etonian, I wasn’t sure.

A rueful David Cameron at Cornbury, shortly after apologising to the author
(Photo: BBC Oxford)

Music at Cornbury is generally oriented towards happy artists with established pedigrees (10cc, The Bangles, Toots and the Maytals…). The only indie kids to be seen were those tagging along with Mummy and Daddy in their Range Rovers. So Paul Simon fitted the bill perfectly.

The question to ask at a Paul Simon gig is “Which songs is he NOT going to play?” Because, like Dylan or the Beatles, Paul Simon has written so many great songs that it’s not possible to include them all in a single concert.

Graceland, At the Cornbury Festival 2008 – Filmed by BruceBoogie

When you’re Paul Simon you can flick off a perfunctory Mrs Robinson as the third song in the set, not even play Still Crazy, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover or Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the crowd will still return happy to their tents.

His new songs sounded good too, and I got some funny looks singing along with How Can You Live in the Northeast, a personal favourite off the 2006 album Surprise.

Overall, it was a good gig, but Paul Simon didn’t really acknowledge the crowd that much – you got the impression that he was going through the motions. Everyone was elated with the stomping version of You Can Call Me Al that closed the set, but if the band had really put some effort in, it would have been a very memorable evening indeed.