Tag: Kit Downes

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz

Rochford and Downes on ECM (CD Review)

Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes

A Short Diary

ECM Records 

 

“This short diary (of loss), offered as a sonic memory,

  created with love, out of need for comfort.”

-Sebastian Rochford

 

When Sebastian Rochford’s father, the Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford (1932-2019) passed away, the drummer decided to create a recording in his memory. He composed most of the music after his father’s death, and enlisted pianist Kit Downes as a collaborator. Downes is actually a musical switch-hitter; he is also an accomplished organist. “This Tune Your Ears Will Never Hear” opens the album mid-tempo with thick chords and snare in rhythmic unison, only to give way to a slower rendering of the tune, juxtaposed with enigmatic harmonies. “Communal Decisions” has a wayward, modal melody that becomes an overlapping duo, finally filled out with Debussyian harmonies. “Night of Quiet”  consists of slow-paced chords in intricate changes, parallel planing, and filigree phrase endings. “Ten of Us” has an ambling melody and chromatic chord progressions that recall Rimsky-Korsakov. Considerable development follows, with a floating texture that arpeggiates some of the preceding material and shares new melodic variations. The last section includes a chordal ostinato reinforced by Rochford that slows into an emphatic minor key cadence.

 

“Love You Grampa” is one of the most fetching of the collaborations here, with Rochford creating a lullaby rhythm behind the drum kit and Downes playing the composition’s winsome melody with delicacy and poignant phrasing. In a shuffling rhythm and with a pentatonic melody, “Silver Light” recalls folk music. “Rochford’s playing is often economical, even restrained. Yet the textures and punctuations he provides always enhance the proceedings. 

 

The last piece on the recording, “Even Now I Think of Her,” is in a sense co-composed by Sebastian and his father, who sang the melody to his son, suggesting it for a piece. The drummer in turn shared the melody with Downes via cell phone. It is quite an intricate tune, rendered as a folk-like ballad with warmly voiced harmonies and gentle drum fills. Bringing the project full circle to Gerard Rochford is a fitting and touching conclusion to a compelling and inspired project.

 

-Christian Carey 


by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Vermillion: Kit Downes on ECM (CD Review)

Kit Downes

Vermillion

Kit Downes, piano; Petter Eldh, double bass; James Maddren, drums

ECM Records

 

After listening to Obsidian, Kit Downes’s debut as a leader for ECM, one might justifiably think from his considerable prowess as an organist that it was his sole specialty. Not so, as is eminently demonstrated on Vermillion, a piano trio album in a modern jazz idiom for ECM. On a set of originals by Downes and bassist Petter Eldh, along with a rendition of  “Castles of Sand” by Jimi Hendrix, these two musicians along with drummer James Maddren demonstrate a simpatico collaboration, filled with rich harmonic progressions and a well-coordinated sense of swing. 

 

“Minus Monks” is an homage to Thelonious Monk, with slender voicings and an angular melody adorning a circuitous set of changes. Downes plays with a silvery, legato touch, frequently locking in on polychords with Eldh playing rock solid roots. Maddren is resourceful, using the entire kit yet never overwhelming the proceedings. “Sister, Sister” has an intro that could be translated from a Debussy Prelude, and the impressionist timbres continue once he is joined by Eldh and Maddren, the bassist playing fleet countermelodies and the drummer shading the tune with cymbals shimmering. “Seceda” is a loosely articulated ballad with post-bop filigrees followed by a pastoral progression inflected with blue notes. 

 

Eldh’s composition “Plus Puls” begins with a brief solo that sets a buoyant groove. The melody is frequently doubled in octaves by Eldh and Downes. The bassist’s tune “Sandiland” sets a walking line against syncopated piano chords and a wandering keyboard solo. “Math Amager ” is a showcase for Eldh’s fleet soloing. Maddren’s drums are featured on “Class Fails,” and the change in ensemble relationship provides welcome contrast. 

 

The most intriguing piece on Vermillion is Downes’s “Rolling Thunder,’ in which dissonant arpeggios put the trio outside the pocket. Eldh fills in some of the chromatic verticals which Maddren again punctuates with cymbals and gentle syncopated fills. “Bobbi’s Song” also focuses on intricate chord progressions thickly voiced with a tenor register countermelody from Eldh. “Castles Made of Sand” closes the album with Hendrix’s song given bitonal treatment with parallel voicings and harp-like arpeggiations. 

 

Whichever instrument Downes choses to play, piano or organ, he is a formidable and imaginative musician. One hopes he keeps the trio assembled here together: they collaborate with considerable skill and sensitivity.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Improv, jazz, Organ

Kip Downes: Obsidian on ECM (Review)

Kit Downes - Obsidian

Obsidian
Kit Downes, organ and composer; Tom Challenger, tenor saxophone
ECM Records

Prior to this recording, Kit Downes was primarily known as a pianist in jazz settings, notably leading his own trio and quintet. Obsidian is his debut CD as a leader for ECM Records; he previously appeared on the label as part of the Time is a Blind Guide release in 2015. However, Downes has a substantial background as an organist as well. The program on this recording consists primarily of his own works for organ, but there is also a noteworthy folk arrangement and engaging duet with tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger.

The organs employed on Obsidian are all in England, two in Suffolk at the Snape Church of John the Baptist and Bromeswell St Edmund Church, and Union Chapel Church in Islington, London. Instruments from different eras and in very different spaces, they inspire Downes to explore a host of imaginative timbres and approaches. Over an undulating ostinato, skittering solo passages impart a buoyant character to the album opener “Kings.” An evocative arrangement of the folk song “Black is the Colour” pits piccolo piping against ancient sounding harmonies in the flutes and bagpipe-flavored mixtures. “Rings of Saturn” is perhaps the most unorthodox of Downes’s pieces, filled with altissimo sustained notes and rife with airblown glissandos, an effect that is not found in conventional organ repertoire. The piece is well-titled, as it has an otherworldly ambience. Pitch bends populate “The Bone Gambler” as well, while vibrato and frolicsome filigrees animate “Flying Foxes.” “Seeing Things” is a joyous effusion of burbling arpeggios and the more usual fingered glissandos, demonstrating an almost bebop sensibility. Suitably titled, on “The Last Leviathan” Downes brings to bear considerable sonic power – with hints of whale song in some of the textures – and fluent musical grandeur.

Although some of the release seems inimitable, closely linked to Downes’s improvisatory and textural explorations, other pieces cry out for transcription; one could see other organists giving them a wider currency. “Modern Gods” is an exercise in modally tinged dissonant counterpoint, while “Ruth’s Song for the Sea” and the folk-inflected “The Gift” possess the stately quality of preludes.

The duet with Challenger is a tour de force, in which each adroitly anticipates and responds to the other’s gestures and even notes, as the fantastic simultaneities that occur at structural points in the piece attest. Once again, there is a supple jazz influence at work. While Downes provides room for Challenger’s solos, he also challenges him with formidable passages of his own. Obsidian contains much textural subtlety and fleet-footed music, but it is also gratifying to hear Downes and Challenger celebrating the power of their respective instruments. Heartily recommended.

by Christian Carey