Brighton Jazz Fest powers up at Palace Pier with Keyon Harold, Binker Golding, Chelsea Carmichael and many more

Back at full strength over four days and sold-out nights at Horatio’s Bar at the end of the pier, the Brighton Jazz Festival kicked off with an All-Stars band of local veterans under the command of pianist Terry Seabrook settling us in with a fine set of tunes including by Miles, Trane, Rollins and Kern just crying out for a smoky club in the witching hour.

The late 1950s vibe carried into Thursday evening with Tony Kofi conducting a National Youth Jazz Orchestra 10-piece in their recreation of the legendary Thelonious Monk Orchestra show at Town Hall. No bloodless reproduction of the classic live album, it sizzles with brio where pianist Matt Jacobs tips his titfer to Monk’s quizzical blots and squiggles, most faithfully on ‘Crepuscule With Nellie’, and elaborates with flourishes aplenty in his own expansive hand. Tenorist Emma Rawicz riproars through her solo on ‘Friday the 13th’ but it’s the ensemble sound that’s the star, maestro Kofi only picking up his own favoured tenor to blaze away on the show-closing ‘Straight No Chaser’.

Broken by a night’s sleep, Loose Tubes and Brotherhood Of Breath prodigy turned Brit-jazz sax institution Julian Nicholas played two sets, first fronting his own band, which is all about his interplay with Norma Winstone vocalese disciple Imogen Ryall, a delightful courtship display of billing, cooing and tail-fanning chaperoned by pianist Mark Edwards. ‘Lucky Star’ sounds distantly descended from early electric Miles before spectacularly ringing through changes to alight on sunlit uplands, while Carla Bley’s ‘Lawns’ showcased not just Imogen’s beautiful voice but lyrics too; a wistful end to the evening with a lasting musical fragrance.

Julian was back the following afternoon fronting The Changyng Same’s debut gig. An electric sextet of Brightonians including on congas, one of Jazzwise’s founding team, Jon Newey, they have a powerhouse drive reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s pioneering Hot Rats, Joe Henderson, Kenny Garrett and Jeff Coffin supply most material, but ‘Brother Yusef’ is a terrific original composition, a sinuous snake-charm building in percussive intensity. Watch this space.

A supple, emotive voice singing in the space triangulated by nu-soul, jazz and the Greenwich Village coffee house folk-soul tradition of Terry Callier and Richie Havens, GiwHa makes intimate, late night music somewhat marooned mid-afternoon at the end of a pier with a chilly downpour brewing. Accompanied by Herbie on acoustic guitar, he’s an unassumingly confident performer lamenting life’s struggle; about his godson, ‘Mr Billy’ is an affecting account of growing up with everything against you.

Starting late that Friday thanks to ferocious headwinds as a storm lashed the seafront, London rising trumpet star and bandleader Ife Ogunjobi sounded inspired by those elemental forces. Anchored by J Moko’s super heavy electric bass, the quintet including occasional talking drum hits the pit of the stomach, hips and feet before connecting to the brain’s pattern recognition circuitry, evoking the unsettling romance of the neon city by night in all its adrenaline of excitement that could go wrong in a heartbeat – party music with an anxious swagger. Energised by a set morphing from jazz to Afrobeat, the youngest crowd so far rammed the dance floor; as ever, jazz’s renewing lifeblood flows from the soles up.

How to follow that? Pyjaen met the challenge playing the 20th Century Fox fanfare, the first in a stream of gags and references inventively embracing anime soundtrack and recalling Danny Elfman’s cartoon compositions for The Simpsons. Combining an art school mentality with music school chops, the Londoners rejoice in their mercurial cleverness but know too that a solid gold idea is worth working up, as in ‘By Your Side’ built on Benjamin Crane’s stately bass pulse and sung beautifully by keyboardist Sofia Grant. Their default setting is the thrilling blaze of Daniel Gray’s trumpet and Ben Vize’s tenor, the still packed dancefloor cutting crazy shapes in response. 

On Saturday night, bassist, bandleader, co-founder of Tomorrow’s Warriors and mentor to a generation, Gary Crosby, celebrated Charles Mingus’s centenary with a performance of the great man’s Mingus Moves of 1973, seldom counted among his best albums but a personal favourite. Though not hallowed ground it has hallowed sounds, principally the sorrowful spiritual ‘Canon’ opening the set. The obverse of Sunday morning, Saturday night was even more fertile turf for one of music’s great bon viveurs, and tonight’s sextet get properly stuck in. On the Sy Oliver tune ‘Wee’, David Kayode has all the gutsiness Mingus required of his tenor players, taking it to the bar, banquet and boudoir, while Aleksandra Topczewska’s alto, Mark Kavuma’s trumpet and Alex Ho’s take nimble turns on ‘Flowers For A Lady’’s sprung dance floor. Alto and piano duet on Mingus’s 1974 tribute ‘Duke Ellington's Sound of Love’ with great feeling and delicacy of expression, a reflection too of Gary Crosby, a sweet and humble yet humorous veteran.

By contrast Keyon Harrold hit the stage stony-faced behind dark glasses, over which he takes a sneaky peak at a crowd agog for what the Grammy-winner from Ferguson, Missouri, had in store. From the very first trumpet peals of ‘Foreverland’ we knew we were in for a special night with a special talent. The importance of Jahari Stampley’s lushly romantic piano to Harrold’s music cannot be overstated, as crucial, perhaps, as McCoy Tyner was to Coltrane. These beautiful compositions are richly emotive and torrentially propulsive yet lonesome at heart, the trumpet in the midst of it all the outsider longing to belong, to connect. Props also to drummer Charles Haynes, guitarist Andrew Renfroe and electric bassist Daniel Winshall, eloquent players in the cause.

Our rapturous reception and a temporary PA gremlin cracked a smile, and from behind that initial icy cloud Harrold’s sunnier side flooded the room, drolly but feelingly reflecting on life and its musical expression. Lee Morgan’s ‘Stop Start’ paid fulsome tribute to one of his heroes, the gorgeously plangent ballad ‘Stay This Way’ built to an epic dimension reminiscent of David Bowie’s final recordings, and ‘Her Beauty Through My Eyes’ not only quoted ‘My Favorite Things’ but, after a sumptuous, thrilling piano passage, Keyon unveiled his yearning singing voice. On no account miss this major artist upon his return.

Courtesy New Generation Jazz and lead by guitarist Luke Purbrick, the LP Quartet are a very young combo who keep it hip and very Jim Hall. Extremely deft in this early stage of their evolution as they find their own voice within the legacy they’re learning and one to watch, including stand-in tenorist George Mooney; hats off for their lovely version of the Cocteau Twins’ ‘Sea Swallow Me’ plus bonus points for naming a composition ‘Strongbow by Moonlight’.

Brutally buzzcut like a US marine on leave and stern with tension, Binker Golding (pictured above) based his Sunday night set on the excellent new album Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy, the sunny flipside to his futuristic hellscape with Moses Boyd, Feeding The Machine. ‘(Take Me To) The Wide Open Lows’ kicks off, Billy Adamson’s lonesome bottleneck slide guitar channelling Blind Willie Johnson via Ry Cooder before drummer Sam Jones, bassist Max Luthert, pianist Elliot Galvin and Golding himself steam in, a happy marriage of swinging Sonny Rollins-style post-bop and the ear-friendly Americana/jazz fusion Pat Metheny pioneered with Michael Brecker on the 80/81 album. Yesteryear’s Mike Post TV cop show themes are only a 911 away.

This is a band which also rock out, with Binker unbending and gurning with pleasure along to a sizzling guitar solo and vibing to a beautifully limpid piano passage as it trips along to a calypso rhythm, his own tenor solo no less lyrical and lovely before the band accelerates to a turbocharged hoedown climax. Like Rollins, his relentless muscularity is energising rather than exhausting; in full spate I doubt there’s a more exhilarating tenor around.

The second half of this young British tenor double-header Chelsea Carmichael (above) is tonight hot on the tail of The Comet Is Coming. Her foil is Nikos Ziarkas on electric guitar with a full array of pedal effects a la Robert Fripp creating a cavernous yet metallic cosmic sound alongside the ferocious tenor roar, the pair booming through tunnels and off stalactites, both spiritually transcendent and straight out of a CGI multiverse. The scene set, enter gut punch drums and double bass pulse, the whole band building a colossal head of steam.

Yet the most powerful stretch of the set is when they dial down the solar storm and Chelsea takes a deep breath and wails. She has a huge sound and knows how to pile on the pressure with phrase upon phrase. All the elements combine in ‘Myriad’, both spacey and spacious enough to give Chelsea elbow room to stretch. In a festival replete with highlights, this is no anti-climax and the full house is enraptured before we’re sent packing to dance on air back home along the pier with the starlit seafront stretched out before us. An absolutely magical four days.