Jazz oasis
Album artwork: Eden Fainberg
The recent Wellington Jazz Festival created a fine mid-winter buzz, over 100 gigs pulling good houses to 35 venues ranging from small bars to the Opera House. Amongst the eclectic line-up an album release concert for Sanctuary by saxophonist/composers Jasmine Lovell-Smith and Jake Baxendale offered a mellow late-afternoon oasis at City Art Gallery.
Arthur Street Loft Orchestra is an 11-piece ensemble which includes the two composers, formed during a three-year live performance residency. The players on the new album are a sharp group of talented, experienced Wellington jazz musicians working comfortably together and the material on display combines solo improvisations and small group jazz with occasional "big band" concerted moments, all played with skill and flair.
Lovell-Smith was Baxendale’s saxophone teacher in 2007 when he came to Wellington aged 17 and they joined forces again when she returned after several years in the US and Mexico. The album demonstrates their great musical rapport – both have solos in the other’s compositions – but also differences in creative approach. Lovell-Smith is relaxed about extended subtle improvisatory passages, Baxendale more inclined to drive forward with pace and drama.
Jake Baxendale and Jasmine Lovell-Smith: a satisfying collaboration
Photo credits: Aidan Wayrhofer & Peter Gannushkin
Lovell-Smith’s Sanctuary suite provides the album title and reveals a composer well in control of her material, playing with contrasts between meandering improvisation and forward momentum. After the opening Optimism’s silky, laid-back lines, Strangely Familiar shows her preference for arhythmic improvisation, the "muddied waters" of the album’s media release. Energetic, gritty brass pick up the pace before the music flits through whimsical fragments into the strongly pulsed Inevitable.
Album artwork: Eden Fainberg
Walt Whitman’s poems provide title and movement names for Baxendale's suite Leaves of Grass. In Opening, fine ensemble cohesion and individual performances impress immediately, Lovell-Smith's lovely soprano sax solo underpinned by Anita Schwabe’s responsive piano. A chant of pains and joys features the acidic melancholy of Baxendale's alto sax. When the pace picks up the music remains reflective with sophisticated cross-rhythmic textures. Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa’s inventive drum solo links to rich chords in I sing the body electric where Aleister James Campbell explores guitar timbres in another beguiling solo.
Lovell-Smith’s atmospheric Noche Oscura and the dream world of Baxendale’s Sleep (A Glimpse of Plimpse) complete their satisfying collaboration.
Sanctuary Compositions by Jake Baxendale and Jasmine Lovell-Smith, Arthur Street Loft Orchestra (Paintbox Records - available now on Bandcamp, full digital release in August.)
This review was first published in the NZ Listener in the 24 July 2021 issue.