Alexander Hawkins & Marco Colonna, Wakefield Jazz, 4 October 2024
Alexander Hawkins (left), Marco
Colonna
Wakefield Jazz have been hosting
top quality gigs for over 30 years at their Wakefield Sports Club home, and
Friday night’s event was no exception. Following a successful performance at
The Vortex on Wednesday, Alexander Hawkins and Marco Colonna
brought their celebration of the great Eric Dolphy - who died 60 years
ago – to the club and put on an exceptional show, full of drama and a fitting
tribute to one of the masters of the bass clarinet.
The evening featured a selection
of Dolphy’s compositions, many from his 1964 classic album Out To Lunch,
interspersed with a number of Marco Colonna’s own tunes. Opening with a driving
rendition of Miss Ann, Hawkins’ pounding left hand providing a
foundation for Colonna’s soaring and spluttering bass clarinet. Out To Lunch
was soulful and nourishing, as one would expect, and the first set
continued in this vein, one tune segueing into another before Colonna’s tune Frame
brought an end to the sequence. Colonna then finished the first set with an
extraordinary solo rendition of God Bless the Child.
Alexander Hawkins
The second set opened with Something
Sweet, Something Tender, Hawkins’ hands dancing up and down the keyboard
before the bass clarinet introduced the melody and the intensity slowly gathered
before ebbing away as the tune gave way to Colonna’s composition Fishbone,
the title of which leaves little to the imagination; very spiky, with Hawkins
delving into the piano’s internal workings, damping and plucking the strings to
great effect.
Marco Colonna
More from Out To Lunch followed,
with fine a performance of Straight Up and Down followed by Colonna’s Indelebile
and a quirky, humorous take on Gazzelloni. Mariposa followed and
the evening was brought to a close with a slow, bluesy version of 245.
This was an assured and
remarkable performance with both artists at the top of their game. Marco
Colonna is one of the few bass clarinettists performing today who can
adequately do justice to Dolphy’s compositions and Alexander Hawkins is the
ideal foil, his consummate skill as a performer injecting new life into Dolphy’s
extraordinary repertoire.
Miss Ann
Out To Lunch
Un Filo (Colonna)
Phalena (Colonna)
God Bless The Child
Something Sweet, Something Tender
Fishbone (Colonna)
Straight Up and Down
Indelebile (Colonna)
Gazzelloni
Mariposa
245
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