Adrian Riley
Some might say that jazz has a problem – it doesn’t know what to do next. It’s a genre of music that has always explored new ideas, often moving faster than some of its audience would like, sometimes resulting in a backlash favouring tradition or seeking to define for once and for all what jazz is. For a music focused on improvisation and a search for the new there’s the irony that it might easily become a heritage industry.
Scarborough Jazz Festival challenges this preconception with some contrasting programming this year: over the weekend musicians very much in the mainstream jazz tradition share the same stage as young groups inspired by contemporary electronica, the headline act is even a classical musician placed with a jazz group.
This makes the festival the ideal place to mull over what makes something ‘jazz’? The line, if there is one, is most blurred with vocalists where the repertoire of cabaret, light entertainment and jazz singers can often be identical and where improvisation might not be an obvious element.
If being in touch with the heritage of jazz music is an essential ingredient, then Sarah Moule’s set drips with authenticity. Many of the songs today feature lyrics by beat poet & lyricist Fran Landesman all set to music by Moule’s husband, Simon Wallace, whose trio provides the backing. And what a trio – piano, bass and drums each eminently listenable in their own right but also generous in giving each other space. The backdrop they provide for Sarah’s singing is always just enough, never threatening to swamp her vocals and yet endlessly fascinating, not least drummer Paul Robinson who is constantly inventive and rarely plays the obvious. Together the three musicians blend a sophisticated and fresh soundscape that ebbs and flows according to the needs of the songs.
Of the standards an unannounced ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ really demonstrates what a jazz singer can bring to a song. Sung slow and drifting, at times haunted, it seems to freeze time in the venue. But the stand out number is a Landesman-Wallace original: ‘Men Who Love Mermaids’ – an observation on men who chase unobtainable women – which links smart and sensitive lyrics with a sublime melody, sung in such a way that the song and performance seem inseparable.