Wellington Jazz Festival
25th – 29th October 2023
Wellington, New Zealand.
Reviewed by Tim Gruar. Photography by Nick George.
Come post-election and the Capital was ready to have a proper party. With government-elect in radio silence while they ‘negotiate’ the future, the endless media squawking has finally calmed down, giving us headspace for to focus something else for a change – something to nourish the soul and spirit. Ah, yes, Welly’s annual Jazz Festival has finally kicked off.
It’s a long weekend (Wednesday-Sunday), offering over 100 gigs around local bars, venues and concert halls. This is a chance for pros and amateurs to all get out and have a blast, strut the stage and flog their latest album releases.
That includes a line-up of some of the best from overseas, alongside projects from Aotearoa. I was able to pull off his election earmuffs and headed out into the night to check out a range of offerings from the festival. Below is my diary of the gigs I managed to catch.
Go Go Penguin
Wednesday 25 October, Michael Fowler Centre
Mercury Prize-nominated cinematic break-beat jazz trio Go Go Penguin (UK) are this year’s festival openers. Festival Director, Marnie Karmelita has been courting them for over two years. So, to finally have them here, she tells us in her intro, is a ‘dream come true’ moment.
The Manchester trio have developed a huge overseas cult following thanks to their electrifying live sets which channels electronica and club anthems mixed with minimalism, academic tinged-jazz, classic rock and even some classical. If Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, Brian Eno and Philip Glass had a baby then this would be it. Well, that’s the claim.
Music from tonight’s show mostly came from their most recent release ‘Everything Is Going to Be OK’`, their 6th studio album. It’s a bit of a departure from previous work, more cinematic, and a leaning more towards Jean Luc Ponty and St. Germain, to these ears, at least.
Previous efforts featured evocative titles and vaguely futuristic album covers – yet this new album looks more like a greeting card. And I wonder if that’s a deliberate attempt to pervert the genre once again. Their previous release the e.p. ‘Between Two Waves’ saw a change in the line-up, when drummer Jon Scott took up residence on the drum stool. The sounds are there as is the trademark concept – their own version of an ever-evolving jazz-not-jazz-not-techno amalgam.
Scott blisters the ear drums with a series of punchy, snappy grooves that are more organic than a simple static drum machine – but like a good Ibiza DJ he reads the room for the tone and mood and speed, varying it so subtly but never leaving focus.
I love the way Chris Illingworth plays his piano, switching effortlessly between a rave-chill thing and conventional jazz vamps – a sound he’s subtly created using a reverb pedal and some kind of semi-muffling on the strings. At times he leans over to twiddle something splayed over the strings of the MFC’s Grand. It looks like a long piece of gaffa-tape but it must be something more as it distorts the piano’s sound through the digi-amp and pedals he has to his side, creating these twisted hybrids of the usual black and white key tones. You wonder if this could have been achieved with samples or a synth. But how would you even start?
They began with ‘An Unbroken Thread of Awareness’, a looping track that is led by the staccato d’n’b drum kit and thumping bass. The theme remains, with the quirky threads of ‘We May Not Stay’ and then an older piece called ‘Bardo’. The latter is like a prototype of the former and is nice but not memorable. Others continue in a similar vein, and they all pull together like a jigsaw with only ‘Saturnine’ and ‘Hopopno’ really standing out.
Go Go Penguin’s music is predominantly based around loops and variations, a spinning of a mesmerising aural web, if you will. It’s very much music of the moment.
The title track from the new album is actually a little bit darker and ominous than the earlier ones. ‘Everything Is Going To Be OK’ might want to be dreamy but feels more cautionary, too. Bassist, Nick Blaka, who does all the talking noticed that despite the title, the world news does not make this an optimistic outlook.
Blacka pluck, bashes and thumbs his bass for effects, but mainly drives his underlying beats with a relaxed two-fingered approach. Occasionally he’ll use a bow to make some overarching resonant shades for the highlighting cinematic peaks.
When in full flight, Illingworth’s solos are divine, if a bit too short. You could lose yourself in the earworm rabbit holes if only they were a just a little bit longer.
Scott’s drumming remains constant, variations of D’n’B with Jazz overtones. If anything, I got a little bored with that towards the end. I wanted more variation, breaks and colour, and there were no traditional solos. A drum machine, well programmed could have almost stepped in while Scott was off making the tea.
One stand-out was ‘Protest’, from 2016’s ‘Man Mad Object’, a thumping, heavier number. More Glasto than Ibiza but demanding attention. They finish their encore with the bittersweet floating of ‘You’re Stronger Than You Think’ from the new album and the audience leap to their feet in celebration. Go Go Penguin aren’t really the candidates for the usual jazz crowds, but like Tortoise and Ghost-Note before them, they are the innovators of music, twisting and pushing the genre into lesser-charted territories – and we are grateful for that.
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Thursday 26 October, Michael Fowler Centre
Festival headliner, USA Jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant is a stunner. Her voice is distinctive, with “perfect intonation, elastic rhythm and an operatic range” (The New Yorker). Her range and repertoire reach far beyond the usual bland standards. Like Cassandra Wilson, she pushes form and function in every direction. For instance, on her album, ‘Ghost Song’ a song like ‘Wuthering Heights’ is elevated to an aching, beautiful gospel a capella, enhanced only the longing notes of an equally emotive double bass. But she’s also capable of turning even everyday standards and show tunes into incredibly refreshing variants that give a new perspective and appreciation.
Born to a Haitian American doctor and French mother Salvant brings a special cultural understanding to her music. She was the winner of the first prize in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, which she tells us tonight was an intense experience – having to perform for the likes of judges like Dee Dee Bridgewater and Herbie Hancock. She also tells us her first album, ‘Cécile’ nearly disappeared from view, if it wasn’t for her mum who ‘shopped’ it around the globe, finally finding favour in Japan of all places. It was where she did her first tour, as well. But her second album, ‘WomanChild’ (2013) was the one to draw proper attention, receiving a 2014 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album and winning four categories in the 2014 DownBeat Critics Poll. Her third album, ‘For One to Love’ (2015) also nabbed a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2016.
Salvant returns to the festival, last here in 2018, with her 3-piece band – Sullivan Fortner (piano), Yasushi Yakamura (double bass) and Carl Allen (drums). As a unit they are so comfortable and convincing. A constant on her own set lists, the light and fluffy ‘Nothing Like You Has Ever Been Seen Before’. Close your eyes and you’d swear Ella Fitzgerald had snuck on to the stage. Salvant is incredibly strong, confident and easily slips around the notes as she tackles whimsical songs from musicals such as ‘Funny Girl’, like ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ and ‘If A Girl Isn’t Pretty’, which she gives a twist of feminist irony, or a sarcastic version of ‘Stepsisters’ from ‘Cinderella’. My favourite, though, an exceptionally dramatic ‘jazzed up’ version of ‘Pirate Jenny’, from Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, involving a sliding between at least three octaves, and a final note held for a minute and ten seconds (I counted).
To help us recover from the vindictive undertone of the Weill number, the mood is lightened up with ‘I’ve Got An Island’ and a Sarah Vaughan classic ‘Obsession’, which she dedicates to her mum who was responsible for all the support that got her where she is today as a singer. She even made the shirt Salvant was wearing tonight. And it was her birthday today, too.
Staying with the stage, she tells us about the origins of the Black and White Minstrels, of how the origins were in British vaudeville, carried to the states and how white performers donned ‘black face’ to perform derogatory songs belittling slaves and servants. Ironically, she noted that black performers like Burt Williams also blackened their faces, to be accepted on the wider stage circuit. That eventually informed the music of the Jazz-era and beyond. All this was the precursor to a brilliant renditions of William’s trademark classic ‘Nobody’, which Salvant totally owns and portrays with all the anguish and sighing resolution of a worn-out cotton picker from the Jim Crow South. Using irony again she makes a stunning, memorable and poignant civil rights statement.
We are also treated to a song called ‘Dividing Day’ from the little-known musical “The Light In The Piazza’ and she closes with the only song from her recent album, ‘Mélusine’, called ‘Doudou’ (Sweetheart), sung in her inherited Caribbean French. That was, to me the only disappointment, as I’d like to have heard more from this album and her previous one, ‘Ghost Songs’.
However, nothing prepared me for the finally, encoring with an absolute blinding a capella version of Doc Watson’s old time murder ballad ‘Omie Wise’. Voice alone, so powerful and full of character and conviction. It’s hard to describe the goose bumps and chills it brought on. What a performance!
Brotherman Project – Crossover Thoughts’: Roger Fox Big Band ft King Kapisi
Friday 27 October, Michael Fowler Centre
“Welly Up!”, shouts out Bill Rangi Urale MNZM (aka King Kapisi) in one of many jovial attempts to get tonight’s mixed audience of grey haired and shy youth to liven up. It’s the first time the MFC has seen the likes of ‘Brotherman Project’ – a fusion of the big band and Aotearoa-New Zealand hip-hop in celebration of 50 years of the genre. It will take a while for this crowd, obviously more used to 40-piece orchestras and violin soloists to properly warm up and get down.
But you’ve got to hand it to Roger Fox, stalwart of Aotearoa’s jazz scene – raconteur, teacher and musician, he is well at home on the stage leading his 19 strong crew. This is not their first rodeo, with the ‘Brotherman Project’ already chalking up gigs up and down the motu. Christchurch being the most recent.
It should come as no surprise, blending Pacific rhythms with Hip-Hop and Brass because all over the Pacific you’ll find post-colonial brass bands. There was even a recent movie called ‘Red, White and Brass’. And regulars to WOMAD will be familiar with collabs between groups like members of Fat Freddy’s and The New Orleans Brass Funk groups or even German Techno-brass outfit Meute – who play club bangers with Souza and trumpets.
The night is dedicated to the memory of the late John Trimmer, who was not only a founding member of the New Zealand Ballet but also a patron and advocate for the jazz scene, too. “He was one hep-cat,” claims Fox in his introduction, before also dedicating the opener, an appropriately brassy blaster from Electro Deluxe track called ‘California’.
Following that Kapisi saunters on in a T-Shirt and Basketball shorts. He’s a big unit and towers over everyone. But he’s gentle and respectful, perhaps a little bit nervous that he might fall over the drum kit if he jumps around this crowded stage too much. The band are equally restrictive, cowering behind their music stands and moving stiffly and awkwardly as they play the assaulting funk of ‘U Can’t Resist Us’. Rap over brass is definitely a first for most here tonight – “Put your hands up, if you’ve heard Rap before”, Kapisi chides us, and giggles away. He can’t believe that a boy from Island Bay is playing this refined venue. “Anyone Go to Rongatai, Island Bay, Newtown Schools?” He’s doing everything to make a connection. He has to go slowly. After all this isn’t his usual gig space. This is new territory for this community.
A phenomenal effort comes with ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’ and ‘Elimination Process’ and finally the stiffs either side of me start to loosen up and the move involuntarily in time with the funk.
Special guest and regular with Fox, vocalist Erna Ferry, apologises for sitting down through all of this – “I was skateboarding to the gig, when I slipped and fell over my earrings.” She’s clearly in pain from a recent ‘event’ but as the consummate performer, she smiles through, providing backing for Kapisi and a solo on a slinky version of Tom Waits’ classic ‘A New Coat Of Paint’.
We finally leave the starters block when the band plays the strains of ‘Screams From Da Old Plantation’, shouting back the now iconic Samoan chorus lines ‘Fai Fai pea, fai fai pea’.
Ferry also starts off a rather pedestrian version of the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’, which only becomes more interesting when Kapisi starts to freestyle over it and is joined by Roger Fox grabbing the mic and scatting with impunity.
Finally, we’re cooking with gas. People are up from their seats, a few at a time, grooving to ‘Elemental Forces’. The starch-stiff brass section has finally ditched their collars and are smiling and bopping away.
There’s a shout out to Youth Town, which was a huge inspiration to a young Bill when he lived in Auckland. The centre offers heaps of sports and recreational activities to the city’s challenged youth and Kapisi is a big advocate for its work.
Fox also prompts us to go buy their CD, 8 track recording of tonight’s set list, recorded a few weeks ago over two days up at Victoria University School of Music, where Fox teaches in his ‘spare time’.
“Welly Up!”, Kapisi calls again. He holds up 3 fingers in the shape of a ‘W’. “I’m gonna trade mark that. You heard it here first!” And at long last, we’re all up and grooving to the finale, ‘Raise Up’, shouting back ‘It Goes On and On’ like nobody’s watching.
It was always going to be a challenge to get this audience to loosen up, but Kapisi’s mission finally got the cut through he wanted and I think the experiment paid off to a degree. What might have worked just a little better was a mix of rock and pop musicians in amongst the brass to lighten the mood and funk it up. You can’t fault the solos and the band a practically pitch perfect. It’s just the soul was missing in action for the best part of the performance, despite Kapisi’s attempts to find it for us. That was partly on us, as a crowd. We should’ve had a few more after work tipples or something like that before we got here. Maybe that would have removed the carrot from the proverbial orifice.
Kirsten Te Rito: MĀREIKURA
Sunday 29 October, Meow
Multi award-winning vocalist and songwriter Kirsten Te Rito (Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a bit of a legend around the Capital. She’s often supporting others as BV’s or as a teacher and mentor, friend or co-collaborator. But this time she was headlining her own show with a selection of new funk-busters from her upcoming album, ‘Collisions’ and an especially commissioned piece for the the Wellington Jazz Festival called Māreikura.
The piece is rooted in Māori cosmology and drawing inspiration from the stories of four wāhine Māori atua (Māori goddesses): Hine-tītama (Pregnancy, Birth), Hine Raukatauri (atua of the pūtōrino, a taonga pūoro (musical instrument) whose form comes from the Raukatauri moth), Mahuika (a fire diety) and Hine-Nui-Te-Pō (goddess of death and the underworld. These are her perspectives on their relationships and feelings. She claims.
For this new piece we were taken on a beautiful psychedelic 25-minute journey with the help of her band: co-composer James Illingworth (piano, synths, samples), long-time friend (doing BV’s ) Lisa Tomlins, poet Ruby Solly (taongo pūoro), Tyna Keelan (guitar, backing vocals), Darren Mathaissen (drums, samples), Cory Champion (percussion, vibraphone), Johnny Lawrence (electric, upright and synth Moog bass).
The piece begins a low dawning call, like a karakia, before breaking into a range of 70’s funk grooves. In fact, the 70’s Kiwi funk-groove will be manifesto all through this show. Think Prince Tui Teka and the Māori Volcanics, or Billy TK. Tempos and lyrics alternate between faster and slower, English and te reo Māori as the piece cycles through all four movements. And that was wonderful in its own way. But it was the sprinkling of Ruby Solly’s bone flute, Pūtātara (shell trumpet) and pūtōrino or bugle flute, shaped like the cocoon of the case moth (tūngou ngou), that made this performance extra special. And as for deeper meanings – well, to be honest, I’d need to read a lyric sheet to really understand what was really.
Shout outs to Solly and to Mathiassen (Shapeshifter, Kora) who is an absolute powerhouse throughout the gig, and the one following (Amy Winehouse Tribute). More like a human metronome, able to follow the musical path no matter where it’s going. I was not sure of Tyna Keelan, but his improvised style was just excellent, reminding me of the pass-the-gat traditions of marae and campfire culture. James Illingsworth also gets noticed for his flexible creation, working well with Te Rito’s amazing souring vocals – more spine-tingling moments.
The debuted tunes from ‘Collision’ were more in my wheelhouse. They came first, to warm up the audience. However, being a seated show of mostly older people, again feedback from them was reserved and stiff, yet appreciative.
‘Ko Au’ was a bubbly start, riding on a deep bassy rumble, later bleeding into some heavy psych-funk flavas. Another stand out was ‘Te Manu’, built on loops and another dark groove in the style of Earth, Wind and Fire.
‘Destination Unknown’ was a tender and optimistic tune, written while Kirsten was pregnant with her first, looking towards an uncharted future with her new pēpē – adventures awaiting.
And then there was a solo, just with James on keys, called ‘numb’ about a friend in the music industry self-medicating to cope with their severe mental health challenges.
‘Collisions’ is going to be an awesome album and I can’t wait to see how it pans out later in the year. The commissioned piece was nice, but it was the album work that turned my head.
Celebrating Amy Winehouse: Back To Black
Sunday 29 October, Michael Fowler Centre
It goes without saying that this sold out gig, which officially closed the Jazz Festival was going to be just awesome. With a line-up of local vocal legends Vanessa Stacey and Lisa Tomlins and musicians Johnny Lawrence, Darren Mathiassen, alto saxophonist Thabani Gapara, pianist Daniel Hayles, guitarist Eugene Fuimaono and brass players Chris Buckland and Christian, you knew it was just going to be bloody brilliant.
The ‘Back to Black’ show is a return event, having sold out Wellington Jazz Festival in 2018 and 2019. The gig commemorates Winehouse’s 40th birthday, showcasing the much-loved musical stylings of the five-time Grammy award-winning singer, her rich, expressive vocals, down to earth lyrics and eclectic genre mixings. Tonight’s selection was a hearty mining of the “Frank’ and ‘Back To Black’ albums with special mentions to Gapara and Buckland for their incredible flute and sax solos, respectively. Fuimaono put in some classy work on the guitar and Hayles covered the key with no less than three defect units plus the auditorium’s Steinway – greedy, not.
But the most valuable players awards have to go to Vanessa Stacey and Lisa Tomlins. Both nailed the tunes, Stacey in particular for ‘Back To Black’ and a lonely, rejected version of ‘Take The Box’, which was a true goose bump moment. As was ‘Love is a Losing Game’. Best moments for Lisa had to be ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ (a dedication to Footballer’s WAGs) and ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’, which she shared the mic with Stacey on. In fact, throughout the 1½ hrs the ladies will tag team back and forth between songs at a high-octane level. “Getting my steps in, 12,000 today, all ready,” Lisa claims as she comes on again and again. Her legs must be really tired after hooning down straight after helping Kirsten Te Rito at Meow only 15 minutes earlier.
The energy on stage and the infectious nature of the ladies managed to finally get us all up and bopping along. We sung at the top of our voices to ‘Rehab’ and ‘Valerie’, spirits high and good feelings to stoke us up for the work week ahead.
Ok, so the game in France didn’t go our way this morning. After this weekend of Jazz and Funk and everything in between, who really care? Music is the healing power we need right now and I feel I got a pretty good dose of the good drugs. Bring on next year’s party!
Go Go Penguin
Cecile McLorin Salvant
The Brotherman Project
Were you there in Wellington for this magnificent festival? Or have you been to the Wellington Jazz Festival some other time? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Ambient Light was provided passes to review and photograph this concert. As always, this has not influenced the review in any way and the opinions expressed are those of Ambient Light’s only.
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