John Fordham 

Ryan Quigley Quintet review – hard bop recharged with sparkling vivacity

The rapport between the Derry-born jazz trumpeter and his international crew helped to make a half-century-old jazz style sound fresh
  
  

Ryan Quigley Quintet at Pizza Express Jazz Club, London
Live jazz playing at its best … Ryan Quigley, Michael Janisch and Paul Booth at Pizza Express Jazz Club, London. Photograph: Andy Sheppard/Redferns

Vivaciously recharging a time-honoured jazz style as if it were born yesterday is a trick usually reserved for the music’s most skilful players, and it works even better if they’re on each other’s wavelengths personally as well as technically. Ryan Quigley, the fiery Derry-born jazz trumpeter, likes the bluesy but devious 1960s jazz style known as hard bop – but if his international quintet were reworking a half-century-old formula at their album launch this week, their rapport and evident pleasure in each other’s company brought a sparkling vivacity to the process.

The quintessentially hard boppish opener Doctor Stage joined an ingeniously prolix melody to New York drummer Clarence Penn’s casually insistent pulse – sparking a typically ebullient Quigley trumpet break, rhythmic twists and cascading invention from American pianist Geoffrey Keezer, and a thrilling contrapuntal payoff. Green Light opened with a dreamy trumpet theme and evolved a soft groove on which tenor saxophonist Paul Booth unwound a succession of resonant phrases – opening each one with a fresh motif – and the ensuing mid-tempo funk feature drew Booth (a jazz player with a pop musician’s ear for an anthemic climax) into an ecstatic multi-chorus tenor solo, spurred on by Penn’s vehemence, Michael Janisch’s basslines, and rising encouragement from the shouting crowd. Quigley’s sleek solo on The Long Journey Home was a masterclass in imaginative double-tempo improv and Keezer threw in a clamour of salsa piano licks for good measure. Maybe it was a show that trod familiar paths, but it was live jazz playing at its best.

• At Swansea Jazzland, on 7 September. Box office: 07802 912789; Bonington theatre, High Street, Arnold, Nottingham, on 8 September. Box office: 0115-901 3640. Touring until 13 September.

 

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