Cheltenham Jazz Festival, review: Top class Gershwin tributes in the Cotswolds

Even in jazz, sometimes the simplest pleasures are best

Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2015 (Press handout)

Rain pounds the Big Tent as the Gershwins end this annual week of top-class jazz in the Cotswolds. George and Ira’s magical confluence of jazz, classical music and Tin Pan Alley songcraft, Brooklyn Jewish and black American culture is a 20th century wonder.

Though this one-off gig by the BBC Concert Orchestra, Gregory Porter, Laura Mvula and Eska is titled Gershwin Rediscovered, it’s more respectful than revelatory. It’s still good to hear Mvula, the most jazz-literate of current pop singers, confidently navigate Ira’s lyrics. Porter, meanwhile, a barrel-chested giant amongst today’s jazz singers, is relaxed and conversational on “Embraceable You”.

Van Morrison was among Cheltenham’s early headliners, five days before a Bank Holiday weekend climax with two decidedly non-jazz highlights. When Wilko Johnson sings “I bet you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” the lyrics’ poignancy is now postponed, after his stunning all-clear from a fatal cancer diagnosis. The flood of sentiment at his 2013 farewell shows has been replaced by giddily renewed vigour. Bassist Norman Watt-Roy and drummer Dylan Howe are plainly the best rock’n’roll rhythm section around. A tense, taut Howe solo shows his jazz roots, while Johnson’s guitar makes quizzical, exploratory runs. All can’t really be well, of course, after the massive, life-saving operation which left Johnson an instant diabetic. “If I collapse,” he explains to the crowd, “it won’t be from emotion.” A restorative orange juice heads off any such drama for this wholly miraculous band.

“Is the Mods out of business?” Martha Reeves enquires. Though sometimes vocally shaky, the 73-year-old’s earthy, quick Detroit wit carries an intimate history lesson in masterful pop. “Watch Your Back”, a recent song about her working-class father, is as worthwhile as the off-the-scale delight of “Dancing In The Street”.

Lee Konitz, the 87-year-old veteran of Miles Davis’s 1949 Birth of the Cool sessions, is someone whose soft, clean alto sax tone on ballads is always a privilege to hear. His new quintet with fiery trumpeter Dave Douglas sees the latter holding himself back and still treading on his new partner’s toes.

There’s something of the Chicago Jewish Buddha about Konitz these days, beatific even when he gently wisecracks, a human treat even when his band doesn’t fit. Elsewhere, Eighties Miles guitarist John Scofield finds more common ground with Germany’s Pablo Held Trio, especially their pianist leader’s light, fleet touch. Archie Shepp, the Sixties sax firebrand who supported John Coltrane’s divisive free jazz quest, is much mellower now. But he becomes a testifying poet-preacher on “Revolution”, a reminder of jazz’s old Afrocentric fury.

British jazz’s diversely confident present most obviously belongs to Mercury nominees GoGo Penguin, newly signed to Blue Note. They are a jazz piano trio pushed through the rave looking-glass, with jittery, double-bass beats which easily connect with a young, after-hours crowd. But then, there’s young Shetland saxophonist Rachael Cohen, who offers the straightahead satisfaction of lucidly played, strong melodies. Even in jazz, sometimes the simplest pleasures are best.