Love Supreme Jazz Festival makes triumphant return

Just a week after Glastonbury, as gorged on by your couchbound reviewer thanks to the BBC, once more an English idyll hosts not just an eclectic, joyous music festival but an alternative clan gathering and celebration of long-deferred togetherness in an even greater blaze of sunshine.

Staged in the grounds of the beautiful Tudor manor Glynde Place in the rolling South Downs near Lewes in East Sussex, the Love Supreme Jazz Festival has been a fixture in the calendar for lovers of jazz and the jazz-adjacent since 2013. This year, after two Covid-postponed summers, a sold-out crowd of all ages and backgrounds enthusiastically embraced not just the favourite artists they came to see but unfamiliar names in a heartening display of open ears and open minds.

Jazzwise’s Nick Hasted will be supplying his measured assessment in the print edition, so here for now are by no means exhaustive personal highlights of an exhausting three-day weekend ranging from the sublime to the riotous to the downright strange.

Hors d’oeuvre Friday whetted the appetite from the start with a quick afternoon public warm-up by Lady Blackbird a deux with her pianist a few hours before taking the big stage with her full band for an absolutely scorching set. Though a new name with last year’s debut album Black Acid Soul, LA’s Marley Munroe had been singing for two decades before reinventing herself with a new persona and presentational package vamping it up in tailed leotard and platinum dandelion wig. Yet this eye-catching diva is the real deal musically, her voice a colossus begging comparison with Nina Simone as well as Melanie De Biasio, Abbey Lincoln and even Piaf, her band expert within that happy crossover of jazz and rhythm and blues, and her repertoire bold and eclectic, her final number, David Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’ not just a tour de force of unchained passion but a sensational coup de théâtre.

Ending the evening by stoking and tapping crowd energy looking for an outlet, Ezra Collective riffed through their many influences from reggae and dub to the church, salsa and Afrobeat, dedicating ‘No Confusion’ to the late “Uncle” Tony Allen, with drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso only losing the crowd for a moment when his between-song philosophising referenced his support for Arsenal, a faux pas he deflected with winning good humour.

Mentioned in dispatches, local boy saxophonist and bandleader Jackson Mathod, also of the Nimbus Sextet, was on fire in front of a home crowd, Ebi Soda looped electronically processed trombone into a dub-style sonic spectacular, and Oli Howe’s fusioneers ended their set with a tune called ‘Cobham’ in tribute to both Billy and the M25’s best service station.

Saturday’s entrée saw the opening of the main stage headlined by a rare visit by Erykah Badu, the bold and highly creative mixologist of rhythm and blues, jazz and hip hop whose set was equal parts thrilling, baffling, frustrating and not long enough. Part of the problem, according to my backstage Deep Throat, was her videographer testing Covid-positive two hours before, so throwing a spanner in the works of a show which would already struggle to square the demands of tightly co-ordinating her powerfully funky band, backing singers, DJ, lighting and back projection with her own inclination to go off-script when the mood took her. Like Bob Dylan, you have to buy into her genius (I do) to go with her flow and appreciate eccentricities intolerable in a lesser artist.

No less a law unto himself was Charles Lloyd, whose band The Marvels feature a pedal steel guitarist, and who for the entire duration of the set uttered not a word, relying on us to recognise the message implicit in his take on the melody of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters Of War’. Though playing well within himself, the 84-year-old tenor man never ceases to blow beautifully, including on the flute, and ended the set triumphantly with ‘La Llorona’.

Though more predictable than these two giants, veteran funkateers The Fatback Band overflowed their tent of dancing revellers with such guaranteed bangers as ‘Bus Stop’ and ‘Wicky Wacky’, the latter evergreen proof that sometimes all you need to throw a party is a killer funk bass line.

Just as solidly professional in a very different register, singer, guitarist and bandleader Lianna La Havas is an artist of delicacy and nuance, qualities not always easily communicated on a big festival stage in blazing sunshine but she managed it delightfully.

Earlier on, singer pianist Jon Cleary steps into the vacancy left by the beloved Dr John with exuberance and joy, his New Orleans gumbo summoning the spirits of not just the late Mac Rebennack but also James Booker, Professor Longhair and, upstream the Mississippi, Mose Allison. With his set veering from ‘Tipitina’ to Sly And The Family Stone’s ‘Loose Booty’, he brought The Big Easy and Da Fonk to the Sussex Saturday sunshine, an irresistible combination.

Your reviewer must apologise for being exceptional on the day in not finding Emma-Jean Thackray nearly as compelling live as everyone else did nor as interesting as her records, feeling that there were too many chops on show but not enough music. I hope on another day she and I might find ourselves on the same wavelength.

On the other hand, Matthew Halsall sublimely surpassed my expectations, with trumpet, flute, harp, saxophone, keyboard, congas, drums and string bass interweaving lines and textures to immersive effect. The Mancunian’s records are good but his live show is utterly enthralling.

Sunday’s dessert couldn’t have started more delightfully than with Cuban pianist Harold Lopéz-Nessa. He plays as in ‘play’ – fun, frolics and boundless enjoyment instil every note as he riffles around such native styles as son and mambo through to American ragtime, with infectious grins of delight all round as he clearly loves what he does every second he does it. A humorous, generous showman, the personal and musical banter with his drummer brother Ruy and French bassist is a pleasure within a pleasure.

Mentioned in dispatches, Rudresh Mahanthappa and his hard-blowing post bop Hero Trio celebrated Bird’s centenary and chased the ‘Trane into the ‘Animal Crossing’ video game theme, while singer Georgia Cécile delivered an assured, enjoyable set, her self-penned song 'Come Summertime' being a highlight.

The summer holiday mood peaked on the main stage with 1970s disco survivors Sister Sledge of the Chic stable as originally masterminded to global stardom by the songwriting, production and instrumental duo Nile Rodgers and the late Bernard Edwards. Their touring band includes excellent simulacra of the virtuoso guitarist and bassist, and the singing sorority still party like it’s 1979. The massive crowd needed no second invitation to do the same, that jazz-inflected flywheel funk guitar driving us all to jump and jitterbug, and to sing along with the sisters in communal joy.

For a later, hip hop generation, the R&B vocal duo TLC kept the party going, though your reviewer found the harshness of their soundscape and less compelling tunes somewhat slackened the vibe; judging by the ecstatic crowd, I suspect hardly anyone there would agree.

Sunday headliner Gregory Porter clearly has one of the best voices in the business but your reviewer would argue that his band, especially the drummer, rather busily get in the way too much, the frame distracting from the picture. A more intimate venue and band would have told a very different story.

By then, however, your reviewer had had his ears and mind blown by the immediately preceding big tent summit encounter between Nubya Garcia and the farewell-touring Sons Of Kemet. Powered by two thunderous drummers, the no less overwhelming sax attack of Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia solved Descartes’ mind-body problem in as thrilling a performance as I’ve ever seen, and that includes The Who in their Keith Moon prime. Both grizzled jazz veterans and beautiful young things in the skimpiest attire whooping, hollering and dancing their rumps off packed the tent for this event, and if ever these musicians reconvene, cancel everything to see them.