This is another of
Cala’s enjoyable series of discs devoted
to London ensembles. The first
volume of The London Trumpet Sound
brought us a light-hearted mix of virtuosity,
languorous rhythm and bold panache and
so does this one. A look at the personnel
will provoke nods of brassy admiration
– Maurice Murphy, Patrick White, Mike
Lovatt, Rod Franks and John Wallace
(playing Trumpet 12 in I Heard It Through
The Grapevine – luxury casting). For
the jazzier-minded we find in the august
and serried ranks Henry Lowther (who
used to play with Mike Westbrook) and
Guy Barker with rhythm sections boasting
bassists Roy Babbington (much missed
in the Stan Tracey bands) and Malcolm
Creese, currently with John Dankworth.
Rising percussion star Colin Currie
is here as well – and happily so.
With this collection
of instrumentalists few things could
go wrong technically so it just remains
to examine the repertoire. I’ve assumed
that the opening Mambo is by Arturo
Sandoval because documentation specifics
are rather hazy but it certainly gets
us off to an evocative start. Mysterious
percussion leads into the spry and springy
rhythms familiar from the first volume
– White on trumpet and Lowther on Flügelhorn
take the joint honours, the tonal differences
between the brighter trumpet and the
more mellow flügel working well.
There’s fine-laid back rhythm in Dos
Gardenias and similar front-line soloists,
Babbington’s bass anchoring things splendidly
(and flexibly). There’s a funky workout
on I Heard It Through The Grapevine
and plenty of antiphonal fun on the
Superman theme – though it’s notably
articulate and not a mere rabble-rouser.
This old heart sank as Amazing Grace
began but actually Daryl Runswick’s
arrangement is peculiarly intimate and
not cloying at all. The Arban, a trumpet/cornet
standby, gets a vivacious and also wistful
workout courtesy of Messrs Wallace and
Roger Webster and of the three movements
from Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks
the second is the best – there’s a slight
lugubriousness about the opening Ouverture.
Tony Rickard’s Copland arrangement gives
us a suitably raucous envoi. Good to
have the band breakdowns for each selection
and pocket biographies too. Short timing
– but maybe this reflects the difficulty
of getting these London-based brass
blowers into one location to record
them. Good fun.
Jonathan Woolf
The London Trumpet Sound/Geoffrey Simon 