I’m sitting in Ronnie Scott’s. Ronnie Scott’s is a place where world-class Jazz coincides with a dress code that considers t-shirts, jeans and trainers to be acceptable, and you can gain access to it between the hours of 6pm and 3am for only £20. It has somehow struck a perfect balance: it caters for both students and caviar-eaters; it is unquestionably stylish and yet it is relaxed and inclusive, without the slightest hint of stuffiness. My friend remarks after careful deliberation that it’s the ‘coolest place ever’ – I can’t disagree. An excellent support band have recently left an intimate stage under a low, black ceiling met by candlelit tables; the walls are covered with pictures of every Jazz musician who has ever been anything.
Wayne Krantz’s band has just been introduced and drummer Nate Wood walks onto the stage. Looking relaxed he drops into an ice-cool groove. He is joined by bassist Tim Lefebvre, whose collaborations with Wayne span decades. Then Wayne Krantz. When his setup is just as he wants it, he starts to scat into the microphone.
Is it scat? Well it’s improvised, and it isn’t words, so what else can I call it? But it also isn’t, it’s so novel, and rhythmically so many echelons more delicious than anything I’ve ever heard improvised into a microphone. This thought is immediately overridden as all three enter the music at once. The sound created by the unbelievable chemistry between the players manages to be so relaxed and yet instilled with such energy and direction. Is it even Jazz? There is no genre I can cite to articulate it.
Krantz often makes a point of his improvisational philosophy, and just how strongly he adheres to it is clear in his playing. He never sounds as if he slips into preconceived or practised patterns, even recurring riffs and ideas within songs sound as if he has found them all over again on his instrument each time he plays them. Nate and Tim are just as impressive – although Wayne leads, they nonetheless contribute to the direction of a sound ranging from quirky to chaotic, delicious to seemingly non-tonal, but always undeniably original.
They alternate between songs from Wayne’s new album ‘Howie 61’ and instrumental numbers, with the no less awesome exception of a version of ‘Can’t Touch This’ in the second half. At its peaks, the climactic guitar lines cause your breath to catch inside your throat, and the rhythm solidifies in a way which makes you feel you could actually grab a hold of it out of the atmosphere and bite a chunk off.
I’ve heard some incredible trios, but this blows them all out of the water. The immediacy with which they pull this perfectly chilled energy out of their heads and onto their instruments is not only demonstrative of utterly outstanding musicianship, but is infectious in a way that I have never come close to experiencing before. It is a show which makes you wonder how you could ever have aspired to play an instrument in any other way.
One of the many reasons I love Jazz is that it has such potential to set sound free. Nothing I have ever heard better embodies that potential. Both rhythmically and harmonically it would be a struggle to conceive of anything more complex and more distant from how we ordinarily understand music, but it works on an undeniably basic level. This isn’t complexity for complexity’s sake, but an uncompromising commitment to originality, and to a musical understanding built as free from limitation as conceivably possible. And I’d quite like to go again, please.
