Stephen Plews was a new name to me, until I was
offered a selection of Campion label discs for review from the
ASC stable. This is however not the first time that several of
the titles have been seen on MusicWeb-International. Roger Blackburn’s
review
of this CD refers to “a generally somewhat bleak atmosphere”,
which the first track God’s Mates Revisited seems
not to uphold, being an upbeat jazz number in the European virtuoso
tradition. This at least shows that Stephen Plews has seriously
well developed chops when it comes to piano playing, but also
serves up another problem – what’s a jazz CD doing
in the ‘classical’ section of these pages?
Although this programme is something of a chimera,
with jazz and contemporary ‘composed’ music mixed
with cheerful abandon, the energetic creativity of its progenitor
does give the disc a certain consistency of idiom and approach.
Industrial Language is a kind of dance for violin and piano,
but with the violin given some rather cheesy delay to the sound
there is a commercial feel to the work which goes well enough
with the other numbers. I don’t feel the ‘rage and
disappointment’ which the composer feels is expressed in
this piece – it seems rather jaunty and cheerful to my ears.
Theme – Highland Clearance is a dramatic response
to descriptions the composer heard of the Highland Clearances.
The recording is a mix of instrumentalists recorded over a period
of time, but the overall sound is that of sampling technology
and a rather all embracing rich halo of artificial reverb. The
opening ‘orchestral’ section to this piece could do
with a decent recording using real instruments. The second section
is a jazz movement which segues neatly from the introduction,
and fits in with grander jazz projects by the likes of Mike Westbrook
and Kenny Wheeler, with a healthy dose of early Steve Reichian
minimalism thrown in.
Lament for Synesios is another jazz piece,
but with some spooky sampled effects to enrich the imagery and
provide a sense of ancient Greek mystery. Despite the added effects,
this is quite a straightforward ‘standard’ style,
and with King’s Casualties we hear Plews exploring
Lyle Mays soundalike keyboards and more added notes in the bed
of chords which emerges. “An anthem to all those people
killed in war”, it doesn’t overtly shove this aspiration
down our throats, but the sentiment is well put.
With Five Etudes played by pianist David
Jones, we are back in the world of ‘classical’ composition,
with a jazz background. The pieces were worked out on a dummy
keyboard while the composer was on vacation in Salerno, and their
expression of beautiful landscapes no doubt reflects what was
being fed into the composer’s retinas as he mused. Intended
as exercises in subtlety of touch at the keyboard, I can have
little doubt as to their effectiveness. They also form an attractive
clutch of rhapsodic pieces for piano which are far more fun than
Czerny. On the Street where you Died is described as a
straightforward jazz ballad, and a very nice one it is too. When
it comes to good music, I am firmly of the opinion that there
is no such thing as ‘straightforward’, and this is
another one of those haunting pieces which can effortlessly take
your imagination through a dozen rain-soaked movie images, both
in the way it is written, and the way it is played. Mourning
the Death of an Illusion melts jazz and a kind of Charles
Camilleri organ chorale in a beautiful memorial for the composer’s
father.
Interrogation is more ‘non-jazz’
than ‘jazz’ when compared to many of the tracks on
this release. While having an entirely different energy, the piece
strangely shares a kind of ecstatic luminosity with Messiaen’s
‘Quartet for the End of Time’ in the melodic shapes
in the clarinet. March of Disorder/Inner Migration opens
with a hard-hitting groove and some mean bass clarinet playing
from Iain Dixon. As Theme – Highland Clearance goes
from virtual/sampled music to a ‘real’ jazz recording,
the procedure is reversed here, the track entering a rather thin
and phasey sounding ‘symbolic escape from the march’;
nonetheless with some elegant alto-flute playing and an effective
rhythmic drive. This is another section of the album which could
do with a solid and costly big-band arrangement and recording.
The title Echoe’s Bones refers to
poems by Samuel Beckett, but the music claims no direct programmatic
associations. This is one of the few pieces on this album where
I felt little relationship between the grandiloquent piano gestures
and some pleasantly meandering bass clarinet. The absence of this
piece would be no loss to the album as a whole. Evolution on
the other hand is a very interesting jazz piece, with a recurring
electronic/sampled ostinato as a basis, and some well structured
counterpoint, Bill Evans style piano sounds, walking bass and
more elsewhere. If it wasn’t for the rather trebly recorded
sound I could go for it more, but it does have the kind of quality
which makes me go back to people like Jon Hassell and Joe Zawinul
– or should that be Wayne Shorter – for the occasional
fix.
Despite any preconceptions and my first impressions,
I have enjoyed this CD more than I expected to. The only problem
remaining is one of definition. It seems to sit a little strangely
among other releases from Campion’s ‘British Composer
Series’, and I wonder if it wouldn’t have been wiser
for Plews to pin his colours to the mast and release this as a
jazz album with experimental elements, rather than as a composer
who happens to work in a jazz idiom. Track for track this remains
more of a jazz CD than a contemporary music one, so, if you are
reading this on the classical pages of MWI and don’t like
jazz, you have been warned. If you are reading it on the MW jazz
pages, you are more than warmly invited to give it a try.
Dominy Clements
see also
review by Roger Blackburn
Stephen Plews, Stewart
Death, David Jones, Stephen Pruslin (piano); Roberto Bellatalla,
Jeff Clyne, Steve Berry (bass); Bill Eyden, Trevor Tomkins, Peter
Fairclough, Phil Clark (drums); Andrew Long (violin); Roger Heaton
(clarinet); Iain Dixon (bass clarinet); Duncan MacKay (trumpet);
Mike Walker (guitar); Ed Jones (saxophone). 
