Jazz breaking news: TrioVD Crank It Up At The Courtyard
Friday, January 28, 2011
TrioVD celebrated five years of The Jazz Club in Birmingham with typical ferocity and verve at the Rainbow Courtyard, ably supported by trumpeter Sam Wooster’s new Husk quartet playing their first live gig.
The Leeds-based trio of Chris Sharkey on guitar, Christophe de Bezenac on saxophone and Chris Bussey on drums powered through material old and new, with guitarist Sharkey revealing the band had been recording in the studio for the past month, therefore having “a lot of energy” live.
This drily delivered comment came after a blistering new tune, ‘Brick’, nearly took the roof off the Courtyard. In its 10-odd minutes it tossed around a multitude of ideas, from the infectious chant of “brick by brick” near the beginning to de Bezenac’s scattergun sax riffing in the mid-section.
The other new material, while not as jaw-dropping as ‘Brick’ showed the band experimenting and making their pastoral passages more pleasing. Of the songs from Fill It Up With Ghosts, their acclaimed 2009 release, there was a sturdy rendition of the title track to open, a blitzing ‘Returns’ and a truncated ‘Sixes and Sevens’ with more tension than its studio counterpart.
This was preceded by an ambitious yet impressive debut set from Husk, with Wooster joined by Jimmy Brewer on guitar, Ashley Trigg on bass and Jim Bashford on drums. Their metal influence and penchant for rock time signatures was clearly evident, but in a non-stop 45 minute melange they felt equally at home exploring more sonic textures with Wooster often resting above the music, adding heat and colour while straddling the line between the composed and improvisatory.
– James Bourne