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... workshops; at festivals with his nine piece Biggish Band; and
at club nights such as Messin' Around, the Saturday night special
at London's Jazz Café...
Seeing the dancers and musicians in action there last weekend was
a revelation. Louis's body is nearly always in motion, spinning,
wriggling, twisting and gyrating in a way that implies the several
levels of feel implicit in the grooves: a medium four, a brisk eight,
a blurred 16, every limb moving like crazy. His fellow dancers -
four at the Jazz Café gig - follow his example, but each
has a distinct style within the ensemble. They're more like a sax
section, with Louis as a lead alto, wailing over two tough, elegant
tenors and a gruff baritone. The choice of tunes is interesting,
incorporating cult non-originals such as Chair Dance ( by Rob Abergeek)
and the perilously intricate North Station (Cesar Mariano) plus
standards such as Juan Tizol's Caravan and Coltrane's Giant Steps.
The album is fleshed out by O'Higgins' custom built charts: the
funky Sludgepump; the brisk On Your Marks. Get It Yourself has a
touch of the Crusaders (apparently still going, having changed their
name back to the Jazz Crusaders) while the hooky vamp of Ecclesbourne
Stomp owes something to The Sidewinder, Lee morgan's epochal number
from the 1960's Blue note.
Morgan's hit was allegedly the beginning of the end of that famous
label as an independent company, but i don't see that fate befalling
Alan Bates's Candid, slowly becoming a cornerstone label for an
entertaining segment of the jazz scene. Other artists include: Monica
Vasconcelos, Alex Wilson and Cullum.
O'Higgins is indeed "selling records by the dozen" - last
Saturday they sold nine copies at the venue - but he won't need
to hock his sax to make more. I bet they keep selling longer than
Hear' Say CDs.
An achievement of O'Higgins' band, which includes pianist Tom Cawley
and versatile guitarist Mike Outram, is to have devised a new take
on jazz neo-classicism. Instead of preserving the music in a formal,
academic way, they have given it a new purpose within a dance idiom,
finding a rapprochement between hard bop, soul jazz, jazz rock and
even genuine bebop.
The album kicks off with a 100mph version of Dizzy Gillespie's Bebop.
Gillespie was the arch-theorist of bop, a movement that detached
jazz from its roots as functional dance music.
With Fast Foot shuffle, Louis and O'Higgins are joining some of
the dots in jazz and jazz dance history, providing an accessible
platform on which their arts can thrive. Between them, the jazz
man and the dancer have all the star quality they need.
John L Walters
The Guardian
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