Review: Jazz trio powered by friendship and fun left Lichfield audience with a welcome glow on a freezing night
Many bands offer a musically creative experience, but the jazz trio Threeway also offers another dimension - a genuinely friendly rapport with the audience.
A Threeway concert presents plenty of stimulating music, and it is combined with the feeling of a night out with your pals, writes John Watson.
This is thanks to both the good-humoured personality of leader and bass player Ben Crosland, and the fact that he and his companions - trumpeter Steve Waterman and pianist Steve Lodder - are clearly enjoying themselves hugely.
Threeway are celebrating their 20th anniversary with an extensive tour of the UK, and on Wednesday it brought them all the way from a gig in St Ives in Cornwall the previous night to the Cathedral Hotel, thanks to the Lichfield Jazz branch of the organisation Lichfield Arts.
They have released a new album, Harken!, to coincide with the tour, and the recording also features another stupendous player, John Etheridge of the group Soft Machine.
The concert revolved around the elements from the group’s new work the Hark Suite, a tribute to Crosland’s school, Sedbergh on the Cumbria-Yorkshire border, an establishment which celebrates its 500th anniversary next year.
The suite is based on the declared values of the school: Humility, Ambition, Resilience (and boy do you need that in the jazz business), and Kindness.
The Lichfield concert opened with the flowing medium-fast swing piece Ambition, followed movingly by an absolutely gorgeous ballad by Waterman, Lonely Streets.
Another fine ballad was Crosland’s composition Billie’s Blessing, in honour of one of his two beloved cats - Billie and Lester, which are named after jazz legends, singer Billie Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young.
There were many other highlights, including guitarist Etheridge’s tune AB4BC - which stands for Altered Blues For Ben Crosland - Lazy Susan, (a funky piece by Lodder) and the latin-tinged Resilience from the Hark Suite. One tune not composed in the band was another standout, Black Crow by the inspirational American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.
On a freezing night, and with the venue’s heating system on the blink, all the music left us with a welcome glow.
