Tales From the Jacquard (Whirlwind Records)

Tales From the Jacquard (Whirlwind Records)

Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra

Released June 25, 2021

Jazzwise Top 20 Releases of 2021

YouTube:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lWYCqKVNUxwZhY9I0GKXoo2QVBP4EyFdU

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0k3z7hCTc4jtED9TwARHM4?si=5-Zj6Ec7QsCTeOakS10VYw

About:

Saxophonist and composer Julian Siegel is back for his fourth release on Whirlwind. Tales from the Jacquard is his most ambitious musical feat to date, assembling the stellar forces of the Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra. Following the acclaimed Julian Siegel Quartet release Vista and the influential co-led Partisans album Nit de Nit, Siegel solidifies his reputation as one of Europe’s most celebrated artists working across jazz and improvised musics.
Siegel has appeared as a member of some of the great large ensembles – he lists Hermeto Pascoal, Mike Gibbs, Kenny Wheeler, Django Bates and NDR Bigband amongst extensive performing credits. Now, the instrumentalist turns leader: Tales from the Jacquard is Siegel’s first record at the helm of a large ensemble. The album is a long time in the making – Siegel pairs ‘Jacquard’, a Derby Jazz commission from 2017, with a selection of charts originally written for small band arranged for the specially formed Jazz Orchestra.
On the half-hour ‘Tales from the Jacquard’, history fuses with technique. The piece is rooted in the East Midlands, where Siegel’s parents owned a lace-making business. “I have clear memories of trips to the lace factory with my Dad in the 1970’s and hearing the sound of the machines – he wanted to conduct them! My Dad always had a great love for music and after work at home in Nottingham, Ellington, Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Lockjaw Davis, Paul Gonsalves and Ben Webster would be on the turntable as well as a lot of classical music. It seemed like a natural thing to try and explore the lace making process and use this research to inspire new music.”
Experimentation with Jacquard cards played a key role in his compositional process.“I was sent a single card by Cluny Lace, a long established Leavers Lace factory in the East Midlands. At the factory I saw the Jacquard machines with their sheets of punched cards transmitting the pattern to the lace machines. With more research, I was delighted to find musical possibilities within that card. The fact that each card contains numbers as well as rhythms gave me lots of musical ideas.” Having originally translated its card language into lace, the Jacquard now informs musical construction, creating melodies, rhythms, orchestrations and harmonic structures.
It’s a juggling act though, balancing the maths of the cards and allowing the band the freedom to have fun with the piece too. “I wrote for the improvisers in the band and tried not to prescribe the music too much and let the band play.” This translates into a hands-off approach to compositions, with ample room for exploration built into the forms.
This exploration continues with ‘Blues’, grounded by a heavy bass line over which Jason Yarde and Trevor Mires dazzle. ‘Song’ and ‘The Goose’ appeared on Siegel’s quartet album Vista and both get a full expansion here, opening up the structures for solo adventures from Mark Nightingale, Percy Pursglove and Stan Sulzmann. Sandwiched between them is ‘The Missing Link’, emerging from a dark opening into an energetic boppy swinger that features trumpeter Claus Stötter, invited over from the NDR Big Band Hamburg. ‘Fantasy in D’, the Cedar Walton standard, concludes the set energetically with a pared back arrangement – in this case, less really is more.

Track Listing:

1. Tales From The Jacquard (part 1) 07:02 video             

2. Tales From The Jacquard (part 2) 06:30             

3. Tales from The Jacquard (part 3) 17:46              

4. Blues 07:50            

5. Song 08:47             

6. The Missing Link 10:03             

7. The Goose 10:21

8. Fantasy in D 06:41

Personnel:

Julian Siegel: tenor & soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, composition, arrangements
Nick Smart: conductor
Tom Walsh, Percy Pursglove, Henry Lowther & Claus Stotter: trumpets
Mark Nightingale, Trevor Mires & Harry Brown: trombones
Richard Henry: bass trombone, tuba
Mike Chillingworth: alto saxophone
Jason Yarde: alto & soprano saxophones
Stan Sulzmann: tenor saxophone
Tori Freestone: tenor saxophone, flute
Gemma Moore: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Mike Outram: guitar
Liam Noble: piano
Oli Hayhurst: double bass
Gene Calderazzo: drums

Tales from the Jacquard was commissioned by Derby Jazz. The band’s debut tour was produced by Derby Jazz and Right Tempo with grateful assistance and support from Arts Council England ‘Grants for the Arts’ and EMJAZZ.

Recorded by 7Digital at Lakeside Arts, Nottingham on 15th March 2017 for original broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Jazz Now
Engineer: Jerry Peal
Producer: Lyndon Jones
Remix and Mastering by Chris Lewis
Produced by Chris Lewis and Julian Siegel
Graphic Design: Dave Bush
Jacquard Image by Geoff Wright
Executive Producer: Michael Janisch 

Review:

Julian Siegel has been making difficult things sound natural on most kinds of reed instrument since the mid-1990s, and since led consistently punchy and creative small groups too. But Tales From The Jacquard startlingly lengthens the list of his multiple talents. Following the Derby Jazz organisation’s backing for a 2017 big band tour, and a commission for a new extended work on an East Midlands theme to go with it, Siegel expanded several of his small-group pieces, and wrote the new three-part suite of this fine album’s title, named after the machinery of the region’s famous lacemaking industry. The swelling rhythmic whirr of the machines in action opens the set, before slow exhalations of luminous, Mike Gibbs-reminiscent harmonies give way to Gene Calderazzo’s hustling swing and a tumbling, squealing postbop trumpet break from Claus Stotter. Minimalist ostinatos, brass fanfares and some airborne Tori Freestone flute shape the second section, and the superb third part shifts from an urgent, faintly sinister theme to fast bebop accented by Basie-like riffs. The deliciously dirgey ‘Blues’ recalls Gary Burton’s and Steve Swallow’s ‘Country Roads’, ‘Song’ is a warmly whispering ballad, and Cedar Walton’s ‘Fantasy in D’ (the only cover) features a headlong two-tenor chase between Siegel and Stan Sulzmann. Tales From The Jacquard is a very powerful belated big-band debut for an artist who sounds in fine shape to make an enthralling habit of it.

Jazzwise spoke to Julian Siegel about his new album

Did Derby Jazz put this idea in your mind by asking for a Midlands theme, or had you already envisaged telling this personal family story in music?

I’d long wanted to write for larger ensembles, and expanded some small-band pieces for orchestras including Voice of the North, NYJO, and the Birmingham and Guildhall conservatoire big bands. Then Geoff Wright and Derby Jazz, alongside Anne Rigg at Right Tempo, Arts Council England, and EMJAZZ, got behind an orchestral project for me – and for a 2017 debut tour, Derby asked me to write a piece with an East Midlands theme. I chose the Nottingham lace trade, which my family was involved in for over 50 years.

Including your dad, who was also a music fan, and who told you he’d imagined conducting music to the rhythms of the lace-making machines…

I was very fortunate to visit Cluny Lace, and saw their beautiful J acquard machines in action, with rolls of punch-cards transmitting the patterns to the looms. That great sound of the machines working together brought back many memories of visiting my dad’s factory. He always loved music – he entertained troops in WW2 as a singer-guitarist, and he and my mum would listen to Basie, Ellington, Ella, and much classical music, as my mum still does. Dad was also a fully paid up member of the Count Basie Society!

The LP title refers to the Jacquard punch-cards that ran the looms. How did you make use of them?

Looking at just one Jacquard card in detail turned out to be a really surprising and fun way of generating musical ideas. I used it as a starting point for melodies, rhythms, and some orchestration and harmonic ideas – but I didn’t want to get caught up in all the maths and numerical systems. I wanted to have fun with it, and leave plenty of space for improvising soloists. The album’s booklet explains this process in more detail.

Touring and recording with such a terrific orchestral lineup is a rare privilege. You must have a lot of special memories from it.

A particularly amazing one was hearing the band first play in rehearsal and see and hear what they did with these pieces! And the Nottingham gig – which was recorded for Radio 3’s Jazz Now and used for this album – was especially memorable because my mum, sisters and brother and their families were all there.

This has been a very hard year for music-making. How has it been for you?

During the lockdown, I was really glad to have the big project of mixing this album, working with the designer, and writing the liner notes. My brilliant regular mixing engineer, Chris Lewis, was stuck in Argentina part of the time, so we did some of it online using an incredible audio-streaming app called Audiomovers, which was amazing. But of course I’ve really missed the shared experience of live music. I really look forward to getting back on the road.

John Fordham (Jazzwise)