Rob Adams Journalist

The Meeting of Friends, the first recording by a new harp partnership, is released on Tuesday 7th October.

 

Leading Scottish harper Karen Marshalsay met Cheshire-based composer/harpist Lauren Scott through online harp ceilidhs during lockdown designed to keep harp players from across the world in touch with each other and playing together to rase their spirits in a difficult time. What started as a means for harpists to meet online and play during Lockdown quickly became a way to support each other during Covid times through the joy of shared music. 

 

Their friendship has continued and they recorded together for the first time a few weeks ago. 

 

Composed by Lauren during the summer of 2024, The Meeting of Friends features Karen playing the wire-strung clarsach from the Gaelic tradition and the distinctive-toned bray harp of the lowlands together with Lauren playing the modern lever harp, creating an intriguing blend of sounds and musical styles.

 

It was recorded by Rob Buckland in Cheshire just before both players released new solo CDs, with Lauren’s Night Lotus coming out on 29th August and Karen’s Eadarainn a’ Chruit : Between Us the Harp following on 5th September.

 

“We had a great time recording the music,” says Karen. “It’s had some early radio plays. The response has been really encouraging and we’re hoping to work together again soon when our respective schedules allow.”

Saxophonist Phil Bancroft releases the first album by his Standards Trio, No Need For Silence, on his Myriad Streams platform on Friday 24th October.

 

A celebration of music from the Black American jazz tradition, the album reflects the inspiration Bancroft felt setting out as a teenaged musician on hearing his primary influences, saxophonists John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and Wayne Shorter.

 

Here were players who communicated with an overwhelming beauty and intoxicating power. More than this, however, they had a uniqueness of expression. It wasn’t just saxophonists who moved the young Bancroft. Pianists Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, bassists Charles Mingus and Jimmy Garrison and vocalists Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as characters who shaped jazz from Louis Armstrong through Charlie Parker and on to David Murray and beyond, drove Bancroft’s desire also to find his own voice.

 

“As a white European from a privileged background, I had no idea of the life experiences that fed into those who nurtured and sustained the Black American jazz tradition,” says Bancroft.  “I listened to these musicians with a sense of awe but I also took inspiration from European jazz, Celtic music, Indian classical music, African traditions, Western classical music and a host of other sources across musicology, science, philosophy and literature.”

 

For years, although he continued to listen to it, Bancroft studiously avoided playing the repertoire that had triggered his interest in jazz, preferring to concentrate on music shaped by his own experience. Then, a few years ago, he felt ready. Gathering together long-time partners, bassist Mario Caribe and twin brother, Tom Bancroft, he formed a trio he felt both comfortable with and suitably challenged by.

 

“It seemed that the time was right to start playing gigs where we celebrated this music,” he says. “It’s not just about the melodies and chord changes. It is about rhythm, it is about feel, about technical and spiritual aspects of improvisation. It’s also about honesty and creating form and meaning in the moment.”

 

The performances on this album aren’t built from a process of imitation or simulation, Bancroft stresses. As a group the trio are trying to honour the process of finding one’s voice, of being a true improviser, allowing meaning to emerge in music that is within a tradition, but which is fresh, vital and authentic.

 

“Others will decide if we have succeeded in this,” he says.

Pianist Paul Harrison releases Encontros, a personal celebration of the music of Brazilian composer Egberto Gismonti’s music, on Friday 5^th September.

 

One of the leading players on the vibrant Scottish jazz scene, Harrison was first attracted to Gismonti’s work after hearing Choro, Gismonti’s homage to the popular, intricate musical style that originated in 19^th century Rio de Janeiro.

 

“The music got under my skin,” says Harrison, who decided to explore Gismonti’s work and found vast resources of diverse musical riches. “I was particularly taken by the fact that Gismonti offered alternatives to samba and bossa nova, much though I like these styles, and that he was showing that Brazil had so much more music and so many rhythms. Each piece presented a challenge but in a good way and I quickly grew to love the diversity involved.”

 

Along with Scottish-based Brazilian bassist Mario Lima Caribe and drummer Stu Brown, Harrison formed Trio Magico specifically to play Gismonti compositions. The group became popular, earning return bookings at festivals but while the trio is at the heart of Encontros, the album is more than a Trio Magico recording.

 

“I wanted to highlight a variety of sounds and textures,” says Harrison. “I was very conscious that I’m not Brazilian and that as a jazz musician I might be expected to present this music in a standard jazz form of melody, solo, melody. But Gismonti’s music isn’t jazz in that sense, so I approached it in a way that – I hope - reflects its interesting structures and its various moods and dramatic qualities.”

 

Each track on Encontros has its own personality. As well as his colleagues from Trio Magico, Harrison invited Paris-based Brazilian percussionist Edmundo Carneiro, a long-time friend of bassist Mario Caribe who has played with major Brazilian artists including Tania Maria, Ivan Lins and Baden Powell, to add his nous and musical colour.

 

Harrison also invited Glasgow-based saxophonist Laura Macdonald, an enthusiastic admirer of Brazilian music in particular and South American music in general whom he has known and worked with for many years, to play on three tracks.

 

“Laura has worked with the Venezuelan pianist Leo Blanco, whose music, like Gismonti’s, has its own idiosyncrasies, and that helped to bring out the richness of the saxophone-piano duo Palhaco and the very delicate Meninas,” says Harrison.

 

Vocalist Rachel Lightbody added her way of negotiating intricate melodies, which Harrison describes as “untouchable”, and cellist Sua-Le brought another dimension, as did Fraser Fifield, whose low D whistle playing features on the ethereal Bianca.

 

As well as shining a light on Gismonti’s genius, Encontros is a showcase for Harrison’s skill and sensitivity across a range of music from the exuberant Karate, on which he adds melodica, to the tender, mysterious closing solo piano piece A Fala Da Paixão, which Harrison captured in the brief period before the other musicians arrived.

 

The album comes with an endorsement from Egberto Gismonti himself, with the Brazilian master noting, "it has humour, has grace, has freedom to play".