The now-veteran sticksman Clark Tracey brings his sterling quintet to Hull’s Albemarle Music Centre

Drummer Clark Tracey's extensive tour reunited him with trusty old players that he's been gigging with for decades. Tracey nevertheless keeps matters fresh, often adding his own originals to the set-list. It’s also not clear how often Clark does this nowadays, but in Hull he also included several compositions by his revered pop, pianist and master composer Stan Tracey. Clark has lately been working hard to make his father’s work available on Bandcamp.

The local Hull Jazz promoter has lately began collaborating with the Albemarle and its tutors/students, their tiered medium-sized auditorium being a fine location for a gig of this scale. Stan’s ‘Rainbow At The Five Mile Road’ hailed from 1969, still sounding lively, Steele soloing up to the rafters, head tilted back, trumpet upright. The quintet’s sound is brash and wide open, Cleyndert revealing a robust bass sound when soloing, loud and tough. Another Tracey senior tune followed, ‘Euphony’, from the 1950s, Themen soloing with only a walking bass for company, expressing a multiphonic yearning with his high flurries, Clark junior offering a subtly off-kilter skimming of a solo. As he’s the band leader, there were to be ample drum spotlights during the two sets.

The hornmen each get to select a ballad to bring them centre-stage, so Themen goes for ‘In A Sentimental Mood’, exuding sensitive softness. Clark brings out ‘Bit A Bittadose’, using this Bobby Watson tune (for Art Blakey) to bring things forward a few decades. Bullish bass initiates a funk drive, and then the band swings hard.

Stan rears up once again in the second set, with ‘A Funky Day In Tiger Bay’, a soulful swinger that he used to play with the Hexad outfit. Steele’s ballad choice is ‘I’m Through With Love’, less obvious than Themen’s suggestion. Legs are braced, horn aloft again, as Steele’s solos are bookended by divine bass and piano work inbetween. As the night nears its climax (Clark is keen to hit the hotel bar before closing time) ‘St. Thomas’ incorporates some spirited hand-drumming on the skins, Clark totally alone for this section, his colleagues eventually hopping back in. Surprisingly, there’s a short encore of ‘Cuddly’, a bluesy contribution from the Stan songbook, a racer with a shooting tenor outburst.

As Hull Jazz managed to fill the venue quite nicely, this is a sign that some bigger-name artists could draw a larger audience out in this sometimes difficult city…