Field of Blue
Still
Black Box
BBJ2017
Crotchet
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Ain't necessarily so
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Tell me who you are
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Fruit tree
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Day after day
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Feather
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Change your mind
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The blues don't really care
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Journey to your heart
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Every dog must have his day
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Free falling
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Still not ready
Jacqueline Dankworth - Voice
Harvey Brough - Voice, Piano, Psaltery and Guitar
Mark Johns - Guitars
Anthony Kerr - Vibes and Marimba
Julian Siegal - Double Bass and Saxes
Roy Dodds - Drums and Percussion
Also on tracks 5,8,9, and 10
John Miller - Keyboard
Mike Bradley - Drums
Roger Carey - Bass
On track 10
Gerard Presencer - Flugelhorn
This album contains one standard (track 1) and the remainder are compositions
of the group. Jacqueline Dankworth seems to be the main contributor, although
many are joint works with other members.
This is a very professional group and their original compositions are all
interesting and variable in texture and sound. You cannot categorise this
music, it has overtones of jazz, rock, pop, latin and it is all the better
for that. The musicians are all exceptional, I particularly liked the Vibes
playing of Anthony Kerr, both his solos and his contribution to the ensembles
are outstanding. Mark John's Guitar playing adjusts brilliantly to the mood
of the melody and Julian Siegal makes a very significant contribution on
Alto Sax. The overall balance and the 'feel' of the group is very good, every
number has obviously been given great attention to detail in order to produce
a very polished product.
Jacqueline Dankworth has a beautiful voice, which has a superb evenness
throughout its enormous range, her intonation is perfect. Could it be that
she is denied some of the recognition she richly deserves, because her repertoire
covers such a range of musical genre? If this is true it's a great pity;
this is a very good album, by a very good group.
For anyone like me who did not know what a psaltery is, it is a subtype of
the zither family, consisting of a set of strings, one for each note, stretched
over a horizontal sound board. It was popular in Europe during the Middle
Ages.
Don Mather
Don Mather is a tenor sax player and bandleader in Coventry UK
I see that Jacqui Dankworth has decided to revert to Jacqueline.
I heard her live at the Stables (the Dankworth home) and as a result bought
another album of hers simply called Field of Blue (Hubba HUBCD001) with its
haunting opening track "All Life Long". As Don has noted the songs show great
variety but are recognizably unified and I think they all stem from that
same tour and the two albums therefore complement perfectly and are quite
different from First Cry (EFZ1010) and New Perspectives (the Houseman
album [Spotlight SPJ-CD 559])
LM
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