Sam Eastmond achieves lift off with Zorn’s Bagatelles at Cafe OTO

Given the undampened youthful energy of his various musical outputs it’s hard to fathom that maverick musician John Zorn was actually 70 this year. Longtime collaborator Sam Eastmond dedicated this performance of a selection from Zorn’s 300 Bagatelles to celebrate that birthday. Eastmond was the first UK artist to have been entrusted with Bagatelles - there have already been fifteen albums, each from different groups or artists - and the first to interpret them for large ensemble. The twelve musicians assembled for the recording (and for this debut live gig) combined rising young stars with regular members of Eastmond’s Spike Orchestra, each seemingly chosen for both technical skill and improvisational imagination.

As a result what they made was a wonderful, innovative music - something that could at any time evoke the power of Mingus’ big band, the swoon of Ellingtonian orchestration, the witty non-sequiturs of Sun Ra, the cartoonish irreverence of Spike Jones or the urgent thrash of Zorn’s Simulacrum. Each composition offered disparate blocks of sound and style interwoven by Eastmond as conductor while extended virtuoso individual soloing rode shifting textures that could range from minimal bass pulsing to chaotic polyrhythmic ensemble walls of sound.

Several individual voices emerged with clarity yet always within the context of the whole - however mutable or contradictory that whole might be. Asha Parkinson contributed impassioned tenor sax solos, George Garford’s more methodical tenor expositions contrasted with the sheer exuberance of Chris Williams’ alto outings. Trumpeter Charlotte Keefe’s digital gymnastics scrabbled disputations from her instrument, guitarist Moss Freed provided wry commentary throughout. The versatility and discipline of Olly Chalk’s piano and Alasdair Pennington’s drumming were essential structural elements in all aspects of the music.  

But, crucially, it was the deployment of all these excellent resources across Eastmond’s arrangements and conducting that made it work so thrillingly. There were times where he was furiously active, fingers fluttering and arms waving in coded signals while at others he simply leaned forward in his seat, listening to things unfolding and rightly trusting the musicians to make their own judgements. And rightly trusting his own, too: this could not have been a better encapsulation of John Zorn’s musical principles or a stronger exposition of the composer’s genius.

Astonishingly, given the coherence of the music and the assurance of the performances, this was the ensemble’s first outing since recording the pieces in 2022 - the album is promised as part of a soon-to-be-released CD boxed set. It’s true, as Eastmond wryly observed, that “Large ensemble atonal music is not the money spinner you’d think it was” but it would be a shameful waste if this awesome project does not top bills across next year’s festival season and beyond.