A return, at last, to live jazz and all that comes with it. The frenetic improvisation of top-drawer players spurred on by an enraptured crowd, the electric charge that ripples around the room as a wicked chord change throws you, a blue note cuts through, and the band brings it all together to rise to a crescendo.
Onstage in Camden Town’s newly socially distanced Jazz Cafe, the relief from the artists is almost palpable. They’re back to doing what they love, and playing with a renewed passion and zest - you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Launching his album Seven Japanese Tales after what must have been an agonising and uncertain wait, Joe Downard wields his upright bass with downright intensity, steering his band adroitly through seven lush and long pieces. Leading the attack, Alex Hitchcock and James Copus’s respective saxophone and trumpet play off each other magnificently, intertwining with invention and restlessly sparring.
The rhythm players come into their own on songs like ‘Terror’, where a driving and busy opening gives way to a more pensive and meandering middle section. Later in the set, the tense chords at the start of ‘The Thief’ are even more awesomely jarring in person than they are on the record. There, they are exquisitely dissonant. Here, they almost strike fear in the best way possible.
James Copus starts his set with new material, a languid groove that lays the foundation for the set and showcases the trumpeter’s evident chops. Copus’s material from his album ‘Dusk’ has a more electronic feel for the live set, with an electric bass and Fender Rhodes sound changing up the musical soundscape. The keys playing enters more synthy territory at times, getting very glitchy and outside, spiraling chaotically before coming back in line. All in all, it’s both a triumphant return to live music and a chance for Ubuntu Music to show off some of the exquisite talent they’ve got on the roster. “We’re taking over London,” co-founder Martin Hummel tells me between sets, “come with us!” Gladly.
