Daniel Casimir: the big band in balance

Big band energy with bespoke London edge. Orchestral string arrangements vying and blending with bebop, soul, grime and R&B. The upright bass, this composer’s instrument of choice, addressing both harmony and rhythm, supporting and interacting while determining direction, grounding then elevating the music.

A cinematic soundscape that celebrates the diversity of the UK jazz scene while taking it to exciting new places, this is Balance - the second album by the award-winning Daniel Casimir.

“I wanted to pay homage to the traditions of big band composition and its historical significance, but I also wanted it to have a contemporary vibe,” says Casimir, 34, of an album featuring some 26 musicians and released on the Jazz re:freshed label. “I personally find [the category] ‘UK jazz’ really liberating – because it’s so broad. It can mean whatever you want it to mean.

“I wanted to try it out in a big band context,” he continues. “The big band becomes the new element in this so-called scene, the next phase in its evolution.”

It’s a logical step: the ‘young British jazz scene’ of the mid- 2010s was internationally lauded for changing the face of jazz by exploiting jazz’s sponge-like ability to absorb other genres – here, grime, drum ’n’ bass and the music of the Caribbean and West Africa – refreshing itself, maintaining its longevity, in the process. The Jazz re:freshed platform got this from the off, agrees Casimir, who released his 2017 EP Escapee, the socially conscious These Days (a 2019 album with singer/co-writer Tess Hirst) and his 2021 debut Boxed In on their label, and is a regular at their weekly residencies.

“They always leave me to my own devices, which is a beautiful thing especially as there’s a level of trust,” he says. “Not every record is guaranteed, of course, but they loved this. They can see where I am trying to go in terms of my career path.”

London has had big bands for almost a century, breaking the rules observed by classical orchestration, variously leaving room for improvisation in solos, bringing in influences including ragtime, swing and blues. The 1930s orchestra helmed by Caribbean immigrant jazz musician Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson lifted spirits dampened by war, encouraging dancing, blowing audiences’ hair back with the energy and verve of a large group of humans making a big sound.

Notoriously expensive to maintain, big bands have gone in and out of favour. The post-pandemic years have, however, seen a new breed of big band winning over jazz fans. New Regency Orchestra is an 18-piece outfit taking its cues from New York’s big band melding of jazz and Latin music from the 1950s onwards.

Balimaya Project is a multi-generational all-male collective that bridges folkloric West African music with jazz and the sounds of black London. Both acts incorporate bold arrangements of the sort Casimir flexed on Boxed In, which included a string quartet and woodwind and brass alongside a quintet of fellow luminaries Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, Al MacSween and James Copus.

Long a respected sideman for the likes of saxophonists Garcia, Binker Golding and Cassie Kinoshi (all of whom feature on Balance), Casimir has led his own configurations ever since graduating in 2012 from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - where, having played bass steel drums as a kid (“Just me in the middle of six oil drums”) he made the crucial decision to switch from bass guitar to upright bass, and went on to work with saxophonist Chris Potter and the iconic bassist Dave Holland, a mentor.

Impressed by orchestral-jazz crossover albums such as Brad Meldhau’s Highway Rider, Casimir had tried writing for a big band in a 2010 assignment while studying.

“Outside of that, I’ve had to create my own opportunities. All these accolades are wonderful” - he has featured on many Best Of lists, and won Jazz FM’s 2021 Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year - “but I still have to struggle a bit.

“I’d also like to get to the point where a black musician leading a big band of multiracial musicians isn’t a big thing, in the same way that bands led by female instrumentalists such as Nubya Garcia, Camilla George and Sarah Tandy, all of whom I’ve played with, has become normal, at least in the UK.”

Having met many of the scene’s key players through his loose involvement with jazz training ground Tomorrow’s Warriors and a parallel Masters degree at Trinity Laban, Casimir had travelled to Dubai to play a gig with Welsh drummer/producer Ollie Howells when a chance encounter with American multihyphenate Quincy Jones planted the seeds of what would become Boxed In and now, Balance. The venue was Q’s Bar, the live music lounge owned by Jones.

“We were playing Ollie’s original music, and I was on electric bass because the venue’s double bass was broken. Back then it really wasn’t ideal to be playing your secondary instrument in front of Quincy Jones,” he says good-naturedly. “Anyway, afterwards we sat down with Quincy, who spoke about his history of big band writing and orchestration, about the importance of counterpoint and learning how to control the instruments in a very traditional pen-and-paper way. I left thinking, ‘I need to go away and do this for myself.’”

Boxed In saw Casimir fold his early love for Motown (particularly, the work of prolific bassist James Jamerson) into tracks with velvety backbeats, bluesy patterns and occasional sweet soul vocals (by Ria Moran, who features on Balance), rerouting too-easy listening with tension that built themes that spoke to the barriers black musicians and composers face in today’s music industry. A three-part composition, a suite within a suite, ‘Safe’ featured the writings of Derek Owusu on the black British male experience, alongside an ensemble variously integrating lush textures, hip hop grooves and staccato drum’n’bass. ‘Safe 3’ pulled the disparate strands together in ways satisfying and clever.

“I love [composing] endings,” says Casimir. “I enjoy the planning aspect within composition, the fact you can write the ending of a tune before you come up with the intro. There’s a track on Balance called ‘I’ll Take My Chances’ (a glorious slow burn featuring vocalist Ria Moran) that has an ending I’m super proud of. Attention spans have become so short that people end up skipping tracks instead of absorbing and exploring what is going to happen".

He smiles: “My endings are like rewards for listening right through.”

The opening track on Balance, ‘Music Not Numbers’ is an epic, pedal-to-the-metal excursion that sets out Casimir’s musical stall, titled as a reminder to focus on what matters - the music itself. Not the whirl of distractions surrounding its creating, composing, releasing.

“Today there’s a constant need to post on social media, on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all of it. To check streaming numbers on Spotify. People lose sight of what they are doing in the first place,” he continues. “For me, it was writing for a big band. Let’s totally focus on that. It didn’t have to be a full thinking activity but me being who I am, that is what it became. I was very grateful that when I reached out to the London Contemporary Orchestra [the respected orchestral group that has collaborated with names including Radiohead, Makaya McCraven and Steve Reich], and they said yes.”

Conducted by Uéle Lamore, funded by Arts Council England and Featured Artists Coalition, the LCO string section graces all seven tracks on Balance. Self-produced by Casimir (“If I wasn’t good at post-production before, I’m very good at it now”), Balance takes its cue from Wayne Shorter’s opus Emanon - a three disc album with its four-part suite and old and new tunes recorded with a stellar quintet and the conductorless Orpheus Chamber orchestra.

“Wayne Shorter was a huge influence on my writing,” Casimir told Jazzwise’s Nick Hasted back in 2019. “Juju is one of my favourite albums, I like its rebellion and emotiveness. But in order for me not to sound like an American musician I have to then take that and bring in my London influence.”

Balance finds grime, garage and all-stops-out groove jostling and blending with orchestration that nods to the impact that Rachmaninov and the writing of Debussy and Ravel had on the younger Casimir. Following the classically-skewed Boxed In, which, he says, “offered an enormous learning curve,” the current album also features a veritable who’s who of UK jazz, from trumpet players Sheila Maurice Gray and Jay Phelps to drummer Jamie Murray and pianist James Beckwith.

“Balance is definitely a continuation but also a development. The level of prep required was much greater for that than anything I’d done before,” he says of a project recorded in distinct sections in November 2022 in Livingstone Studios in London. Piano, bass and drums were recorded together first, followed by horns and strings, then vocal sessions with Moran and Marcelle.

“I utilised my experience of being on the scene and having played with everybody a lot over the years. It was comforting knowing that I could hand each person a piece of music and they would immediately understand what I meant and we would get the album done and recorded".

Asked about the main differences between leading a big band and leading a quartet or quintet, Casimir pauses for a beat.

“Leading a big band means less on-the-spot decisions than when leading a quartet or quintet, and composing the mood a lot more,” he says. “There’s still an element of seeing where the music goes but there’s more responsibility of trying to send it in a particular direction. I guess the organic feeling happens pre-emptively rather than in the moment.”

Orchestrated using a small MIDI keyboard and an iPad while Casimir was on tour, the album’s powerful title track begins with a driving bass riff, over which strings and the big band instrumentation eventually glide and weave.

“This track really represents the album, I think, because it retains the idea of what people see as UK jazz plus it has the big band and the strings.” Another smile. “It’s the perfect balance of those three elements on a practical level.”

The notion of balance extends to other areas of Casimir’s life. Raised in the Catholic church, and having played music in Pentecostal churches, he intended the album to resonate on a spiritual level as well. The track ‘Belief’, which has vocals by Marcelle, eventually strips down to bass-and-voice as it encourages the discovery of a faith-based inner joy neither saccharine nor extreme. “I am just opening up the question, ‘Do you believe in God?’ For me music is a spiritual thing, and I try to find a middle ground, an inner quality.”

There will be live gigs, he says: “The plan is to tour with a rhythm section and maybe work with different orchestras in different cities to again push the level of collaboration in the music but also explore the music within the settings of a quartet.

“To me it’s two different disciplines. There’s a reason to see us live and also to buy the album.”

Both sides, then?

“Yes,” says Casimir. “A good balance.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Whether you want to enjoy Jazzwise online, explore our Reviews Database or our huge archive of issues, or simply receive the magazine through your door every month, we've got the perfect subscription for you. Find out more at magsubscriptions.com