Artist: Mark Bassey

Date of Release:

Catalogue no: BASSEY 001

Label: None

Price: £10

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Track Listing

The flamboyant trombone of Mark Bassey leads this dynamic jazz quartet playing original music full of strong thematic imagery. The band features the magnificent talents of Dave Frankel on piano, Simon Thorpe on bass and Sean Randle on drums.

"Mark Bassey's compositions combine storytelling, visual imagery and offbeat humour. Varied and evocative writing, the band prove their ability both individually and as an ensemble. Hats off to the Mark Bassey Quartet." Hugh Gledhill, Jazzwise

Reviews

10/12/2007 Robert Shore, Jazzwise

"It’s taken educator/arranger/trombonist Bassey a long time to get this collection of characterful compositions out into the public domain. Telling Stories began life in 1995 as a live project and consists of a series of varied, valiant and very English attempts to combine music and narration. The words are variously sung, spoken and shouted: a cry of ‘Oi, you!’ punctuates the lurching, inventive quartet interplay of ‘Road Rage’; ‘Crazy Town’ is a poem flatly intoned over a simple drum accompaniment; while ‘People Watching People’ offers a distinctly dreamy sung contrast. The main sequence, the wordless ‘An Underwater Adventure’, is properly programme music – and very well played. There’s the occasional misfire: ‘The Wrong Hat’ is probably fun live, with the musicians able to don suitable headgear, but it doesn’t have the verbal humour or musical invention to merit inclusion here. But the terrifically cool, Miles-ish ‘Visions’ is good enough to silence any doubters about the value of trombone-led quartets."

Check out 'The Wrong Hat' for yourself; you might find it actually fits rather well - MB