Newton Conference Centre, Nairn, Thursday 7 August 2003

Eric Reed

ERIC REED first came to attention as a member of Wynton Marsalis’s bands, and the pianist shares his ex-leader’s devotion to a wide-range of canonical jazz styles, from early jazz, gospel and blues through to more modern bop and modal developments.

His lunchtime concert was a solo recital, and featured many facets of his style. Intriguingly, he chose two pieces, Benny Golson’s lovely ‘Whisper Not’ and Thelonious Monk’s ‘Blue Monk’, which Junior Mance had also played the previous night.

His treatments of both were instructively different, and just to emphasise the centrality of both individual interpretation and context to the mindset of the jazz improviser, he took another quite distinct approach to a version of ‘Blue Monk’ with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon in the evening concert.

Reed’s relaxed but highly inventive interpretations of music by Fats Waller, more Monk, Duke Ellington and Ray Bryant chimed perfectly with the lazy summer afternoon feel of the day. He played a medley of three church melodies from his Baptist upbringing in fairly straight fashion by comparison with his elaborations on the jazz material, and constructed an ingenious and intricate combination of ‘Just You, Just Me’ and two tunes by Monk, ‘Evidence’ and ‘Thelonious’.

Reed appears again on the final night of the festival (Saturday 9 August) with his own trio, and that goes down as a must-see event.

The Nairn Jazz Festival 2003 continues until Saturday 9 August.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2003