The latest co-promotion by JazzLeeds and Opera North’s Howard Assembly Rooms brought together a visiting American and a top-notch British trio. Concluding their European tour, Tom Ollendorff and Aaron Parks sprang something of a surprise. Parks is the major star, the visiting American – to the extent that the introduction referred to him as being “accompanied” by Ollendorff’s Trio – yet it was clearly a concert of Ollendorff’s music, with Parks a silent figure at the piano.
Tom Ollendorff is one of this country’s most in-demand guitarists and he assembled an outstanding trio for this tour: Conor Chaplin, with a fine resonant sound on bass and the ability to hold the attention with his melodic solos, and James Maddren, an explosive drummer with a taste for the Brazilian rhythms of “Carnival” and the exotic drive of “Istanbul”. This was one of two “favourite places” that Ollendorff based his compositions on and provided an exciting wind-up to the concert. The other, Atlantic Angels, based around Sligo, sounded like a handsome piece of film music.
Ollendorff is a persuasive soloist, building his ideas with an impressive fluency and finding the beauty in two ballads, I’ll be seeing you and Body and Soul, the latter featuring Parks in a questing series of broken chords before Ollendorff took up the melody. Parks throughout played with exquisite taste, but seemed, oddly enough, somewhat self-effacing. No matter: their team work honed over the time on tour, the quartet offered a perfectly balanced 75 minute set, Parks and Ollendorff exchanging the lead seamlessly.
Before that an attractive 30-minute set from the duo of trumpeter Olivia Cuttell and pianist Tom Harris set the mood of civilised music-making. Playing mostly their own pleasingly melodic tunes, Cuttell and Harris tended to take them fairly straight, Cuttell’s impeccably held long notes building imperceptibly over Harris’ decorative piano. A burst of stride piano on an uptempo swing number came as something of a surprise!
Despite the unusual time of the concert (4.15 on Sunday afternoon) the large and enthusiastic audience suggests further collaborations in the future.
Reviewed on 10th March 2024
