Jazz breaking news: Kyle Eastwood brings global grooves to Ronnie’s
Friday, June 7, 2013
In his typically unassuming manner, Kyle Eastwood took to the stage ahead of time, warmly greeted the sellout crowd and promptly proclaimed Ronnie Scott’s “the greatest jazz club in the world.
” Over from his Paris home for a week’s residency with his all-British band at the renowned Soho venue, the forty-something bass player opened with a bold latin number, ‘From Rio to Havana’. Deftly moving from samba to a hot salsa groove, with driving accompaniment from Chris Higginbottom on drums and Andrew McCormack on piano, the tight band were propelled by Eastwood’s, punchy, growling electric bass.
Well and truly warmed up post-interval, they launched straight into a rollicking 6/8 Afrobeat tune, ‘Une nuit au Sénégal’ from his new album, The View From Here, featuring charged dialogue between trumpeter Quentin Collins and saxophonist Graeme Blevins, alternating between tenor and soprano, as well as fluid soloing from Eastwood on electric bass. The band continued to delight with a hauntingly beautiful duet between piano and fretless bass on the main theme from one of his father’s films, Letters From Iwo Jima. Eastwood conveyed his love of world music strongly across both sets but was not always reciprocated by his audience, as some of the evocative Eastern moods, although poignant, lost them in places.
Ending his generous double set with the infectious ‘Café Calypso’, a tune from his 2011 album, Songs from the Chateau, the audience got to their feet in warm applause until Eastwood remerged with his band, gulped down a well deserved beer and launched straight into Horace Silver’s ‘Blowin’ The Blues Away’. He held down a furious tempo on the double bass and let the band loose on more familiar post-bop territory with a visible joie de vivre in both their playing and onstage demeanour.
– John Merritt