Sarah Tandy: Infection In The Sentence

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Femi Koleoso (d)
Sarah Tandy (ky, v)
Sheila Maurice-Grey (t)
Binker Golding (ts)
Mutale Chashi (b)

Label:

Jazz re:freshed

April/2019

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

JRF0017

RecordDate:

date not stated

Opener ‘Bradbury Street’ is named for the address of Dalston’s Servant Jazz Quarters, where Sarah Tandy had her epiphany. A BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist raised amid classical music, she first sought solace from her waning love for the field by immersion in jazz piano greats. But it was bonding with the likes of Binker Golding and Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso in Dalston which showed her the jazz present. This debut doesn’t, though, shake off Tandy’s devotion to Hancock and co. Instead, it encourages the London scene’s own engrained hard-bop schooling. Sheila Maurice-Grey therefore seizes the opportunity for hot trumpet solos, and Koleoso too settles into a more conventional rhythm section than Ezra’s Afro-beat assaults. Tandy’s touch remains freshly personal, prancing behind the ska of ‘Snake In the Grass’, and slipping from pillowy romance to spiritual-like swing on ‘Nursery Rhyme’. It’s on Fender Rhodes, where she was also outstanding on SEED Collective’s debut, that Tandy truly draws you in. She floats and feints on ‘Timelord’ till the track hangs hushed and suspended, seeming set to unfold forever.

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