Jazz breaking news: Jaimeo Brown Transendence and Beats & Pieces rock Jazzahead!
Monday, April 29, 2013
The extraordinary new spiritual soundscapes of fast rising New York drummer Jaimeo Brown and the bombastic brilliance of Manchester’s Beats & Pieces Big Band (pictured below), were among the most talked about performances that helped make the 2013 Jazzahead! the most successful event yet in its eight year history.
Running from 25-28 April in the Exhibition Center, Bremen, Germany, the jazz trade fair, showcase festival and conference was a full-on three day extravaganza that brought together jazz record labels, festival organisers, clubs, concert halls, jazz media, national jazz organisations and, most importantly, many agenda-setting new groups and solo musicians, for a riot of networking, meetings, deals, conference panels, and over 80 performances at numerous venues, including the exhibition hall stages, the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof and 19 clubs dotted around Bremen.
Yup, the statistics kept stacking up for this exhaustive event with over 590 exhibitors from 33 countries and a record attendance of professional participants making it an essential date on the jazz calendar. Jazzahead! also broke new boundaries this year with representatives from Argentina, Poland and Lithuania coming for the first time and Israel as the partner country, including performances from some of the country’s leading players such as Avishai Cohen, Omer Klein Trio, Daniel Zamir and Ilana Eliya. From the UK Django Bates’ Beloved and the Zoe Rahman Quartet drew packed, enthusiastic houses in addition to Beats & Pieces’ barnstorming big band show. New European names that impressed included the film music inspired mix of trumpet, cello and accordion of Oliver’s Cinema from the Netherlands, Germany’s Eric Schaefer & The Shredsz and the Zodiak Trio and the Kokko Quartet from Finland. 
But it was the year that America bit back with an increased presence of indie record labels, PRs and agents that will no doubt double in size next year. Catching this wave with immaculate timing were the Harlem-based Motéma label, home to Geri Allen, Gregory Porter, Randy Weston and Charnet Moffett among others, who celebrated its 10th birthday by bringing new signings Marc Carey and Jaimeo Brown to town for an afternoon jam party. Along with Moffett on acoustic bass, who earlier delivered a solo performance of stunning virtuosity and imagination, and JD Allen on tenor sax they piled on the pressure in an intense, fiery jam that cut seamlessly back and forth between modal, Afro-Cuban and hard bop with the kind of soulful, hard-swinging New York panache not often witnessed at Jazzahead! However the name on the lips of those in the know was Jaimeo Brown (pictured above). His trio crashed the Schlachtoft on Friday night and quickly had the audience gasping for breath with its highly innovative amalgam of modal and spiritual jazz, blues, South Indian Carnatic music, samples and electronics as heard on his forthcoming Motéma debut album, Transcendence. Featuring JD Allen on tenor sax, Chris Sholar on guitar and electronic soundscapes and Brown’s intense Elvin Jones’ like polyrhythmic inventiveness they rapidly proved why this forthcoming release is going to take a lot of people by surprise when it drops in mid-June.
– Jon Newey (story and photos)