Some of the longest and loudest cheering of the Cheltenham jazz weekend was for an expanded version of Django Bates's Delightful Precipice, which made its first public appearance in well over a year on Sunday. It was heartening acclaim for a music that follows few familiar rules - of jazz big-band organisation, narrative shape or even ensemble discipline.
It is Bates's turn to direct the prestigious European Youth Jazz Orchestra this year, and various Euro-concept materials have been commissioned from him, perhaps hampering his instinct to follow his own reliable whimsies. In Sunday's show, a long and rather unsteady convergence of Ode to Joy and Europe's national anthems struggled to find the momentum promised by its title, Right to Smile. But Bates's invaluably disruptive magic came through in the jubilant, rhythmically jarring burner that brought an unscheduled alto-sax barrage from New York guest Tim Berne and the closing You Can't Have Everything. Bates and the band shambolically singing the lyrics of the latter ("You can't have your cake and eat it too", etc) over squirty, rumbling improv underpinnings was priceless.
Gareth Williams, a skilful young UK postbop jazz pianist on a Bill Evans-to-McCoy Tyner axis, played an attractive if conventional trio set, and the versatile leader's Barney Kessel-like foray into uptempo bop guitar was an agreeable surprise. But a more contemporary and idiomatically mixed guitar approach came from American John Abercrombie's virtuoso group, which featured the gifted violin improviser Mark Feldman. The quartet shifted seamlessly through Gypsy-cafe music, visits to India (showcasing Feldman's uncanny mimicry of a sitar's microtonalisms), and some flat-out guitar funk over Joey Baron's explosive drumming. It all showed that Abercrombie hasn't forgotten his old fusion days with the likes of Billy Cobham.
Then came the Dave Holland group, one of the most popular contemporary jazz groups on the planet despite its avoidance of on-the-nose grooves, easily assimilable tunes or hot-licks soloing. Trombonist Robin Eubanks's seamless linking of the coolly lyrical countermelodies, the alacrity and fertility of thought of saxophonist Chris Potter, and the studious creativity of vibraharpist Steve Nelson all sound inventive enough for this long-running ensemble to have plenty more years of life. Bass master Holland's loping fast walk on the swing sections of Lost and Found still induce head-shaking in wonderment, decades after his gifts hit the jazz world.
