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Ian Shaw - Exclusive London Only Band Dates , Dick Pearce Quartet Friday 9th July - Saturday 10th July
Twice winner of the prestigious BBC Jazz Award, Ian Shaw returns to Ronnie Scott’s with a brand new project: the shows tonight feature Ian working with an exciting band of international musicians, and new arrangements of standards as well as contemporary songs will be heard for the first time. Joining Shaw on stage will be the celebrated Dublin-based pianist Phil Ware and powerhouse bassist, Dave Redmond.
Phenomenal young guitarist David Preston (Melody Gardot, Curtis Stigers, the Mondesirs) returns to Shaw’s band for these exclusive dates alongside two special guests from the young international scene, Miguel Gorodi (Spain) on trumpet and flugel and the much vaunted Russian altoist Zhenya Strigalev.The line-up is completed by Ian’s long-standing drummer, Mark Fletcher (Liane Carroll, James Moody, Alison Moyet, Michel Legrand).
Shaw has amassed a number of highly acclaimed albums and is a popular performer both in the UK and the US. An incredibly colourful character, he has been cited, along with Mark Murphy and Kurt Elling, as one of the world's finest male jazz vocalists and has collaborated with the likes of Guy Barker, Abdullah Ibrahim, Ray Brown, Cedar Walton and Quincy Jones.
His acclaimed 2006 album "Drawn to All Things - the songs of Joni Mitchell" saw him "Praised far and wide as the single greatest male jazz vocalist Britain has to offer" by the US magazine Jazz Times. This was followed in 2008 by the autobiographical collection co-penned with guitarist and composer David Preston, Lifejacket, also on Linn Records (see below for what the critics said). In the summer of 2009 Shaw recorded his long-awaited solo album, "Somewhere Towards Love" (Splash Point Records), released in early October.
Shaw's career in performance began unusually for a jazz musician on the Alternative Cabaret Circuit, alongside such performers as Julian Clary, Rory Bremner and Jo Brand. Shaw was spotted by Dave Illic, jazz critic for "City Limits" and was described as "the voice of the decade".
Shaw is a regular on BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4 and his album "Lifejacket" cemented his reputation as a fine song-writer as well as a great jazz singer.
Here’s what the critics said of “Lifejacket”:
“if "Lifejacket" doesn't end up at or very near the top of this year's jazz vocal roster, I'll eat my iPod.” Jazz Times, USA
“a convincing album of originals . . . a reminder of what an important talent he is” **** Observer Music Monthly
“a profoundly sophisticated artist with a broad grasp of music's mechanics, as well as an affecting, emotional and sometimes very funny singer - never has trouble with the hardliners” The Guardian
“this is a gem of a recording, and hopefully not a one-off peek at Shaw the singer-songwriter. More, please.” Jazzwise
Support: Dick Pearce Quartet
Dick Pearce Quartet: Dick Pearce – trumpet, Alex Hutton – piano, Steve Watts – bass, Mark Fletcher - drums
'Look at the Trumpet player with Ronnie Scott tonight, Dick Pearce. Tremendously talented- I called home to a couple of friends of mine about him.’ Oscar Peterson
A trumpet player with a formidable reputation but who has suffered a familiar fate of neglect by record labels is Dick Pearce. More than any other British jazz trumpeter, Pearce probably deserves the mantle of heir to Jimmy Deuchar, offering a style that contains a fractured lyricism reminiscent of his forebear. Pearce began his career as a military band musician and subsequently emerged in the 1970s from one of the earliest editions of that ongoing jazz dynasty, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO). Surrounded by would-be plugged-in Miles Davis clones, and by those musicians who had reached attention through the very different apprenticeship of free music, Pearce was notable for being the kind of straight ahead player who might well have appeared on the London jazz scene twenty years earlier. He has a sophisticated command of harmonic improvising, although, as with his self-confessed (and disparate) trumpet heroes - Chet Baker, Art Farmer and Don Cherry - his playing comes across as anything but contrived. Pearce had a lengthy association with Ronnie Scott which lasted from the 1970s until Scott's health forced him to abandon performing in the mid-1990s, and some of his best recorded work can be found on the CD Never Pat A Burning Dog (Jazz House, 1990), where his solos contrast admirably with Scott's more forthright contributions, and contain a heat and urgency never far beneath the cool surface.
A quartet CD for FMR records in 1994 remains Pearce's only noticeable solo recording effort and, as with virtually all the players mentioned here, his reputation would be ill-founded if one were to base it solely on the quantity of his recorded output. However, Pearce's beautifully integrated mix of hard bop and abstraction influenced a whole generation of British trumpeters including those who followed in his footsteps with NYJO, such as Gerard Presencer and Guy Barker, both of whom have made careers representative of the kind of failsafe adaptability that has long been the way for British trumpeters.
(Simon Spillett)
Details
Dates:
Friday 9th July - Saturday 10th July
Ticket Prices:
£15.00 - £41.50
Doors open time
First House
18:00
Second House
22:30
