Bristol musicians join forces for an emotional celebration of Keith Tippett’s life and music

The sad loss to jazz and contemporary music when Keith Tippett passed away in June, 2020, was keenly felt in Bristol, his birthplace, where he had always given so much as performer, composer and educator. Covid lockdowns, however, meant that only now could Keith’s friends organise this heartfelt tribute featuring ten bands involving 38 players almost all sometime collaborators with the great pioneer.

Friday night saw a recreation of the Rare Music Club, triple bill events of classical, folk/roots and improvised music that Keith regularly arranged in Bristol and beyond. The emotional climate was established by young violin virtuoso (and Tippett protegé) Theo Mays who translated his feelings into impassioned folk-classical improvisations with his Odd Unit: the unutterable sadness of his closing slow number leaving indelible reverberations. More restrained (but no less committed) performance followed from David le Page and Phillip Sheppard, whose classical techniques were extended through elements of spontaneity and rhythmic deconstruction before master songwriter Chris Woods brought an earthier folk dimension. His righteous anger, echoing through the smart internal rhymes of ‘None The Wiser’, found a foil in Odd Unit’s bass clarinettist Gustavo Clayton-Marucci in an impromptu collaboration that would have delighted Keith.

The evening rounded off, as always, with improvisation from former Mujician mainstays Paul Dunmall and Paul Rogers with guitarist Philip Gibbs and drummer Tony Orrell. The music ebbed and flowed satisfyingly as Rogers’ nimble bass played rhythmic games with Gibbs’ lap-tapped guitar, urged on by Dunmall’s declamatory alto sax and Orrell’s affirmative drums. The empty piano stool behind them, however, was a poignant reminder of the musician we were all missing.

The Saturday programme’s six performances reflected different aspects of Keith’s musical explorations. Thus Matthew Bourne and Glen Leach’s dual piano improvisations throbbed with intense circularity leavened by meditative passages that culminating in an elegiac tune worthy of Esbjorn Svensson. Saxophonist Kevin Figes co-ordinated a sparkling revival of the 2011 From Granite to Wind septet, a distinctively Tippettian composition that pitted rich South African brass harmonies with frenzied solo freedom, deftly shifting moods over its 45-minute duration. The 10-piece Double Dreamtime, a royal selection of the quintet’s various memberships, came together powerfully for Keith’s Billy Goes To Town, sumptuous big band swing launching dazzling sax and trombone solos. Dunmall and Rogers reappeared for another quartet with Mark Sanders drumming and Liam Noble on piano and Rogers (who had come over from France) wrenched every last drop from the opportunity, the bass driving and pounding at the heart of an exuberant set. And then there was Kevin Figes’ Celebration Orchestra – 17 players doing lively justice to the finale of ‘Septober Energy’ with impromptu vocals from Julie Tippetts and their daughter Inca.

Among the programme’s noisy wildness, however, the earlier vocal pairing of Julie Tippetts and Maggie Nicols (above) had been a quiet triumph, their empathic capacity to conjure vocal ideas spine-tingling in its free creativity. They babbled and bickered, shifted from shamanistic mystery to street-corner gossip, then faded out to simple breath, leaving us with a grateful sense of beautiful fun. It was a vital strand in the weekend’s celebratory tapestry of Keith Tippett’s irrepressible life and legacy.