The title comes from a recent composition by Fergus McCreadie, though the concert is billed as being by the Manchester Collective. In fact it is a strange, and occasionally wonderful, merging of the talents of McCreadie’s jazz trio and the Manchester Collective, an eminently versatile string quartet,
It seems that the origins of this merger lie in the fact that both Donald Grant of the Manchester Collective (from near Fort William) and McCreadie, from the similarly Highland area of Easter Ross, were composing pieces inspired by their native land, pieces that told a story and drew on the jigs and reels of their homeland. The first acquaintance with these pieces, via his Jazz trio (David Bowden – bass – and Stephen Henderson – drums – betraying their long-standing relationship with McCreadie in their perfect match to his sporadically flamboyant piano), then the slow segue into a piece for quartet, is exhilarating, particularly as the trio rejoins the quartet to produce a reel that builds and builds to a climax.
20-plus minutes in – and after the tempestuous start (with figures that, exciting as they are, start to become repetitive) the players draw breath. It’s at this point that we realise that this is no ordinary concert: the intent of the Manchester Collective is clearly to break down the barriers between classical music and jazz by forcibly juxtaposing the two. So the quartet plays short pieces by Gyorgy Kurtag, Rakhi Singh swapping places with Grant for the rest of the evening. Kurtag’s dramatic dissonances give way unexpectedly to a lovely trio version of The Nearness of You, the delicacy of McCreadie’s piano only spoiled by the over-intrusive brush work of the otherwise excellent drummer, Stephen Henderson.
By the opening of the second half one is ready to accept any abrupt change of gear and traditional airs played by Grant and McCreadie offer a graceful introduction. But what else remains? The quartet (Simone van der Giessen on viola, Christian Elliott on cello) plays a movement of a Haydn quartet beautifully, after a fiddly introduction from who knows where, then segues into another piece – Anne Meredith’s Honeyed Words? Most entertaining of all is an extract from Christian Mason’s Tuvan Songbook, a wild, stop-start frenzy with (sort of) vocals from the quartet!
We end as we begin, with an extended set of pieces (all by McCreadie this time) building to a fervour that ultimately lacks variety. The combination of jazz trio and string quartet undoubtedly has promise. A more studied approach to programming would probably bring dividends, but the heterogeneous yoking together of disparate musics has more to recommend it than one might have thought.
Reviewed on 7th March 2024 – touring until 17th March.
