Maverick musicians bring feelgood factor to jazz

The Neil Cowley Trio favour tight tunes over loose improvisation.

They play Cork this weekend, says Kieran Bohane

FALLING somewhere between rock, pop and the hard place that is jazz, pianist Neil Cowley could be seen as a maverick. For many traditional jazzers (if there still is such a thing), his penchant for composing tightly written pieces, albeit with an earworm quality, is a little too foot-tappingly predictable. But to write Cowley off as some flash-in-the-pan pianist whose music is a triumph of style over substance would be folly. He is the type of artist who could, no doubt, baffle audiences with his brilliance as he heads off down an improv road to God-knows-where, but chooses instead an energetic approach guaranteed to bring a smile. He is the kind of musician who can generate the all-important feelgood factor and help pull a new generation into the world of jazz music.

Hot on the heels of the release of their latest CD, The Face of Mount Molehill (Naim Jazz), the Neil Cowley Trio will be hoping to spread a little of that feelgood factor when they appear at Triskel Christchurch on Sunday night.

No strangers to Cork, the NCT have appeared at the venue before. But this gig may be something special as Cowley, along with long-time friend and drummer Evan Jenkins and bassist Rex Horan — who late last year replaced Richard Sadler — are joined by the Mount Molehill Strings — a classical string quartet featuring renowned cellist Kate Ellis from Dublin. Coupled with the superb acoustics of that old church, the usual rollercoaster ride with all the thrills and spills delivered by the NCT may reach cloud nine proportions.

While not exactly the old dog for the hard road (he’s only 39), Cowley has papers, and for a musician pedigree is important. After disembarking from the ship that was steadily sailing towards a classically trained future, Cowley changed tack and at 19 was playing in R&B pub bands throughout the UK.

It was a long, long way from performing Shostakovich as a 10-year-old at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in his late teens the prodigy abandoned a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music and took to the road, ending up as a regular in the acid-jazz group Brand New Heavies, and later with Zero 7. He enjoyed some success with Fragile State, a ‘cool-jazz’ outfit he set up with his friend Ben Mynott.

Tired of the unemotional response from a computer chip, as a side project he flirted with fellow jazz travellers Jenkins and Sadler, before ending up at an EST concert. Like many, exposed to the potential and beauty of the Swedish trio’s acoustic-with-bells-on approach, the three amigos drifted from ‘cover versions’ of Errol Garner and Ahmad Jamal to composing their own unique, instantly recognisable blend of unconventional jazz.

The band soon appeared above the jazz radar, after the release of Displaced (Hide Inside Records) in 2006, and, serving up plenty jalapeno with their brand of contemporary jazz, they soon enjoyed a degree of commercial (for jazz) success. In terms of audience and exposure, this success was taken up a notch or two with the release of their second CD, Loud ... Louder ... Stop! (Cake Records) (the title was prompted by a negative article in the Observer newspaper questioning the validity of presenting the trio with a BBC Jazz Award). The album helped cast their net a little wider and drew in a broader demographic, with Mojo magazine including it on their top 50 albums of 2008.

On Radio Silence, their third release (Naim Jazz), the band took a more conventional approach. Although Cowley didn’t stray too far from the trio’s tried-and-tested sherbet-fizz approach, amongst the usual stop/start repetitive melodies there seemed to be a little more time for individual expression and improvisation. While it appealed to jazz-heads, this looser format lost out to what for Cowley is a back-to-basics approach on their latest CD, The Face of Mount Molehill. Anyone fortunate enough to have experienced the Neil Cowley Trio live will know these guys in the flesh are a different kettle of fish and with the trio’s catchy counterpoint and throbbing thump it’s impossible not to tap your feet, delighting in the band’s joie de vivre and — dare I say it — entertainment value.

It’s a tribute to the team at Triskel that they secured the band’s only Irish date and just a few weeks later, the American trio with a rock-heavy rep, the Bad Plus, perform at the same venue.

Along with EST, led by the late Esbjorn Svensson, the Bad Plus (Reid Anderson, bass; Dave King, drums; Ethan Everson, piano) would have influenced Cowley, and as well as their own compositions they have rearranged Black Sabbath’s Iron Man and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, along with other iconic rock classics, including work from Bacharach to Bowie and Blondie.

There can be few better venues than the wonderful Christchurch to perform On Sacred Ground, their interpretation of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.

* For tickets, visit www.triskelart.com or 021-4272022.