ALISON KERR finds much to enjoy in a trimmed back programme at Nairn

IT MAY have been a man down and have been a reduced programme in the first place, but the Nairn International Jazz Festival still managed to put on a series of great shows last week.

David Gazarov

Thanks to organiser and director Ken Ramage’s love of piano jazz, he was spoilt for choice when it came to replacements for the veteran American pianist John Bunch, who had to cancel due to illness. Among the pianists who dazzled this year were the Russian David Gazarov, whose explosive style whipped the audience up into a frenzy in his trio set at the Community Centre on Wednesday, and who impressed with his classical repertoire at his solo performance in The Classroom bistro on Tuesday morning.

Rossano Sportiello, now – like Bunch – established as one of Nairn’s favourite ivory-ticklers, was the ideal choice to fill in on Bunch’s scheduled quartet gig with tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton on Thursday afternoon. But further near-disaster struck when Hamilton became stranded in Norway, leaving the organisers with just a few hours to draft in a substitute for him.

It proved to be a lucky break for18-year-old Carl Majeau, the young American saxophonist who had performed at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival earlier in the week, and had been about to spend a little time touring Britain: he answered the call for a replacement for Hamilton, and made a terrific impression with his soulful, often raunchy playing and endearingly gauche announcements.

Majeau’s good fortune didn’t end there, though: he stuck around for the rest of the week and was invited up to join sets by just about every other star of the festival. One of those who graciously included Majeau in his programme was American piano great Dick Hyman, who brought the teenager on for a couple of numbers towards the end of his History of Jazz Piano concert on Friday afternoon.

Hyman’s two-hour guided tour of the jazz hall of fame was an exercise in musical time travel: among the many greats he managed to squeeze into the afternoon’s proceedings were Earl Hines, Erroll Garner, George Shearing and Bill Evans.

Just as an impersonator can drop different voices into a conversation, so Hyman elegantly conjures up the spirits of his piano heroes, most thrillingly such early pioneers as the ragtime composer Scott Joplin, with whose eternally exciting ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ he kicked off the afternoon, and stride giant James P Johnson, whose ‘Keep Off the Grass’ Hyman played at such speed that his hands were a cartoon-like blur.

On Saturday night, he was back for a staggeringly energetic festival finale with fellow octogenarian Bob Wilber on clarinet and saxophones, the highlights of which were the oldest numbers – ‘Running Wild’, ‘Royal Garden Blues’ and ‘CC Rider’.

Wilber had arrived on Friday to play what turned out to be a superb concert with tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, who had finally made it in from northern Norway, more than 24 hours after he had set out. Red Bull energy drinks perhaps deserve some credit for his performance (what Wilber’s secret is remains to be seen – he’d been playing till 4am in France earlier that day), but the wildly enthusiastic response of the audience to the Nairn debut of this particular line-up (with Rossano Sportiello on piano duties, joining resident bassist Andy Cleyndert and drummer Joe Ascione) no doubt helped power both stars.

That concert was undoubtedly one which will linger in the mind, though it was perhaps the International Piano Summit of Thursday night which made the biggest impression on audiences – and no wonder: nothing quite like it had been seen in Nairn before.

This summit meeting involved the afore-mentioned Dick Hyman plus younger pianists Chris Hopkins and Bernd Lhotzky, and the similarly nimble-fingered Rossano Sportiello, playing musical piano stools at two grand pianos.

Of course, it was the fast-paced numbers involving all four pianists which were the most exciting and the most fun to watch, as a certain amount of contorting and Marx Brothers-like horseplay took place as the musicians arranged sheet music so that two pianists could read it at a time, and arranged arms and torsos so that complex duets were feasible.

Among the highlights of the many different line-ups within this quartet was a beautifully delicate duet by Lhotzky and Sportiello on George Shearing’s ‘Children’s Waltz’, Hyman and Hopkin’s hard-swinging ‘Opus 1/2′, and Sportiello’s sublime solo version of the Dave McKenna number ‘Wonder Why’.

The other big talking points of the week – though more for reasons of controversy – were the concerts headlined by guitarist Martin Taylor and singer Roberta Gambarini. Both stars seemed to provoke extreme reactions, with Taylor’s Tuesday night duo gig (with fellow guitarist Sylvain Luc) prompting a minor audience walk-out, and Gambarini’s Monday and Wednesday concerts polarising opinion between those who enjoy scat singing and those who don’t.

What everyone seemed to agree on was the fact that she has a definite gift for storytelling – at least if her gut-wrenching interpretations of ‘Lush Life’ and ‘I’s Your Woman Now’ (from Porgy and Bess) are anything to go by.

© Alison Kerr, 2009

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