Sean Khan

IN the early 1990s I spent a night in a caravan with the great bassist double Danny Thompson. He was waiting to go on stage at a festival near Barcelona, gigging with flamenco group Ketama and kora player Toumani Diabaté in support of the album Songhai.

Being Spain, everything ran late. Very late. I expected to pass the time with a boozy evening, but Danny was off the sauce.

“I found myself alongside John [Martyn] fighting the front row at the Glasgow Apollo,” he said. “And it suddenly occurred to me: ‘This isn’t why I got into music.’ So, I quit drinking.”

But Danny was great company even on Coca Cola, talking about his early days playing furious free jazz with John McLaughlin and highly influential folk-jazz with Davey Graham.

I was reminded of that evening listening to a new album called Sean Khan Presents the Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble.

Danny isn’t on it, but his spirit runs through it, featuring as it does two numbers from John Martyn’s back catalogue with Danny and a brace of famous tracks from the folk-jazz supergroup Pentangle, for whom Danny composed and played. There are other spirits here, too (unlike Danny, long departed), notably doomed troubadour Nick Drake and Fairport Convention/Fotheringay’s Sandy Denny. Both the latter have somewhat tragic stories, but this is not, though, a dour album – it is a sprightly delight, celebrating music that has fallen between the cracks somewhat in the recent jazz revival.

Folk and jazz in the 60s and early 70s were always closer bedfellows than one might imagine at this remove. Drake was always filed under folk but listen to Fairport’s guitarist Richard Thomson: “Nick had more of a jazz ear than a folk ear. It seemed to go to places people hadn’t gone before.” And anything with Danny on it can’t help but swing and, of course, he is a master of the tricky time signature common to modern jazz and traditional folk.

Sean Khan, a fine player who has explored the music of John Coltrane before now, plays soprano sax and flute throughout and shows admirable empathy for the material.

The record opens with a bold She Moves Through The Fair, all majestic and swirling like the intro from a vintage Impulse! album before Andy Noble swoops in on piano to lead us to firmer ground, where McCoy Tyner has taken a freehold. Guitarist and singer Rosie Frater-Taylor tackles John Martyn’s Solid Air – a song about Nick Drake – with supreme confidence, not trying to imitate that famous slur but making her own mark, and it finishes with a keening soprano sax coda, capturing the melancholy behind the subject matter.

The two Pentangle tracks feature the preternaturally preserved voice of original vocalist Jacqui McShee, which brings goosebumps to those of us who remember the first outing of Light Flight, with its shifting rhythms of 6/4, 5/4 and 7/4 and intricate scatting.

Young Yorkshire-born singer-songwriter Kindelan brings a modern nu-jazz/neo soul sensibility to Drake’s Parasite, lending it even more of a confessional air. There’s also a deft instrumental version of Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes? with plaintive, yet swinging, piano and swooping soprano to the fore.

The album concludes with Khan’s Ode to Nick Drake, which features a welcome cameo by another bass maestro, Fairport’s Dave Pegg.

These kind of tribute albums should serve a dual purpose – to re-invigorate and re-purpose the music for listeners old enough to know them from the time of their release and to send a new generation back to explore the original versions. It succeeds admirably on the first count and should do so on the second given the right exposure.

Incidentally the album is subtitled Volume 1. So, with a bit of luck we can expect a Volume 2, perhaps delving into less familar areas. Danny Thompson, for example, has a fine, somewhat neglected but wonderful album called Whatever…

• You can hear the material live when Sean Khan’s Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble plays Ronnie Scott’s on July 5. Tickets: https://www.ronniescotts.co.uk/find-a-show/sean-khan

Rosie Frater-Taylor [Baxter PR]

Rosie Frater-Taylor can be seen at the Love Supreme Festival (July 5-7, a perfect post-election tonic), showcasing what a fine guitarist she is (her new album is called Featherweight; she’s anything but when it comes to her playing). There are still tickets for the festival left and although it might seem that vintage R&B, pop and soul dominates, with Chaka Khan, Kool & the Gang and Dionne Warwick high up the bill, there’s serious jazz here two. Catch master sax improvisor James Brandon Lewis and nu-jazz rising stars Oreglo on the Friday, for example.

On Saturday, there is legendary drumming powerhouse Billy Cobham, who has just celebrated his 80th birthday, as well as another master percussionist, Manu Katché (Sting, Jan Garbarek) and supreme songstress Cécile McLorin Salvant. More vocalists on Sunday, with doyens Alice Russell and Jacqui Dankworth, as well as the aforementioned Rosie Frater-Taylor.

Meanwhile, consummate pianist Andrew McCormack steps up to centre stage with his usual boss, Kyle Eastwood, in a supporting role on bass. Plus, across the weekend there is a whole raft of new bands that might not be familiar now, but you’ll be kicking yourself this time next year if you miss them – groups like West London duo Kessoncoda, newly signed to Matthew Halsall’s Gondwana label.

I’ll be catching Brooklyn producer/multi-instrumentalist Cisco Swank for sure. He is a new name to me, but he conjures up a seductive mix of jazz, R&B and hip-hop, offering nicely woozy and trippy soundscapes and elegant, piano-driven grooves riffs decorated with some old-school rap. Think of a musical blender containing elements of Domi and JD Beck, Anderson.Paak, a touch of Stevie and the hip-hop experiments of Roy Hargrove (trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is a guest) and you’ll be close. Listen to his album More Better to see if it is your thing.

• If you can’t get to Glynde in East Sussex for Love Supreme (tickets available at https://lovesupremefestival.com/), catch him live at Brick Lane’s Ninety One Living Room on July 9. For details see: https://91livingroom.com/whats-on/cisco-swank/