NEIL MAYA QUARTET

No Expectations

Sometimes you go to see a live performance and the excitement is immense and you come away disappointed. At other times you go with no expectations at all. Saturday night was definitely the latter. But jazz in Sheepscombe!...yes jazz in Sheepscombe! As a regular at both Cheltenham and Brecon Jazz Festivals - and I know many other villagers also support both - I have to support it. Of course Cheltenham Jazz Festival now always clashes with the Sheepscombe Festival Weekend and so means that often I do not support the Village Events. Despite the advert’s tantalising ‘modern jazz’ tag it was much more from duty than expectation that we arrived at the hall on Saturday night…all I knew, or at least hoped, was that it wasn’t ‘trad jazz’ thank goodness.

The band…

The Neil Maya Quartet who have played together for five years consist of Neil on reeds (alto, tenor and curvy soprano saxes and clarinet), Tom Unwin on the new village piano (choosing to play that ahead of his electric piano), Marcus Vergette on bass and Gary Evans on drums. They come from South Devon and to quote from their website they “aim is to find new and exciting sounds within the wide scope of jazz whilst staying accessible to the public at large…playing innovative re-workings of …material by other composers…[and] their own compositions.”
Last year they enjoyed playing six gigs for Devon’s ‘Villages in Action’ so this year have ventured into the similar schemes in Cornwall, Dorset, Wiltshire and of course our own AIR in G. For those that care, like me, AIR in G is one of those false acronyms as ‘Arts In Rural Gloucestershire’ is clear but ‘Arts In Rural in Gloucestershire’ is just annoying…so don’t mention the MCC cricket club…

The music…

Having played at Bishops Cleeve (ed: should there be an apostrophe in there?...and if so how many clergy are there?) the night before and rehearsed much of Saturday afternoon the group were now a tight unit and launched into two of Tom’s creations, good composition and performance meaning that the tunes seemed instantly familiar and so received a warm welcome from the audience and removed much of my anxiety about the evening. They next featured a tribute to John Coltrane by merging Greensleeves and My Favourite Things and surprisingly they pulled it off and I couldn’t see the join, this could be a good evening. Next came two of Neil’s excellent compositions Faxosone and Ethan (which finished the first half) sandwiching Joe Henderson’s Recorda-me which, for me, was the highlight of the first half.

I talked to the band during the interval and they were very complimentary about the hall, the piano and the acoustics which is always encouraging.
 
The second half opened with Dave Brubeck’s (sorry Paul Desmond’s) Take Five which was familiar to all and so a good way to get everybody’s attention, following the usual high standard of simple food. Neil’s Ode to a Great Shed was then followed by Tom’s Slinky and then a tune written only the day before, with only a working title, which was again a credit to their compositional and performance skills as it sounded and looked like they had been playing it for years. Another medley of two more standards in the blues vein then preceded the finale - Chick Corea’s La Fiesta - one of his most covered compositions and one of my favourites. I first came across it in the early seventies on the original Return to Forever album on ECM and also on Stan Getz’s Captain Marvel which featured Chick as a sideman and so is a part of my musical background. It was great to hear it again and live too…and a compliment to the band that they, by a long way, exceeded my expectations and it seemed the rest of the audience loved it too - applauding all the solos. Tom’s Big Sur as the encore completed a very enjoyable evening.

And if you are interested, their debut album “Out of the Woodshed" was released in December 2006 which a better reviewer than me described as “imaginative, original playing...bringing to mind Bill Evans and Wayne Shorter."

It’s Sunday morning as I write this and I’m on second playing of it and it really is quite good. So please go to www.neilmayaquartet.co.uk and buy a copy, make them famous and then my signed copy will help make my children and my wife believe that my collection is not a complete waste of money.