RILEY! (not old mother but young brother)

On Friday next week (February 5th), Ubuntu records releases the QOW TRIO debut album.

It was superbly recorded by Ben Lamdin at Fish Market Studios in Harlesden under very relaxed and sympathetic conditions. Ben has the hippest idea of how jazz instruments including drums should sound and, to cap in all, the owner of the studio (himself a drummer) had put a picture of Philly Joe Jones on the wall………………….

If you want to pre-order a copy (shameless plug), go to https://qowtrio.bandcamp.com/

This release is a nice little shot in the arm (not quite as good as a vaccination in my case!) for the members of the band – RILEY STONE-LONERGAN (tenor saxophone) EDDIE MYER (bass) and myself on drums, since we are unable like everybody else to do any live gigs at the moment.

There’s been some good advance publicity – airplays on Jazz FM and Spotify Jazz X-press plus an interview with Riley and Eddie in London Jazz News.

QOW (pronounced “cow”) is the name of a little-known Dewey Redman composition from the 1970s which is the title track of our album. But the repertoire is very wide-ranging. From Redman and Joe Henderson to Charlie Parker and Lester Young to standards.

I’ve been spoiled in recent years playing top quality hard-bop with the likes of Simon Spillett and Art Themen. Meeting Riley has taken me forward to the avant-garde and back to the swing era at the same time! His musical tastes are as eclectic as mine and one of the first things we discovered was our common love of Lester Young. One of the tracks on the CD “Pound for Prez” is Riley’s reverential, measured tribute to Lester’s old solo with the pre-war Basie band on “Pound cake”. In the next breath, we are playing free jazz!

In between come the standards, like the lively “It’s all right with me”which you can hear now on my music page.

So much for the CD which, with due modesty, I think deserves to do well. I’d also like to say a bit about RILEY himself.

Irish born, as the name suggests, he has been based in England since he attended Leeds College of Music. In the last ten years, his career has really blossomed. Apart from making his mark in London, Riley has made three extended trips to the States and played all over Europe. He is currently involved in co-leading various projects:

· Tarel/Lonergan quartet with French pianist Fabrice Tarel

· Family Band, which involves his wife – free trumpet, tenor and spoken word

· And now QOW

He has a commanding technical mastery of his instrument, a huge sound and a perfect sense of time. All this however is secondary to his passionate interest in improvisation by himself and others which he regards as the highest and most important level of artistic expression.

In a general sense, that is obviously true of any jazz, as opposed to classical, musician. But in Riley’s case it is a particular pre-occupation which I reckon is what enables him to graze the field of jazz history and feed off Lester Young, Bird and Rollins as well as Dewey, Ornette, Coltrane and their successors.

He’s a big-framed and big-hearted guy with big enthusiasm for the music (all of it). I hope I have the opportunity to play with him for a long time to come.