CityLife

Main event: Manchester Jazz Festival 2010

Arun Ghosh

July 23 to 31, 2010

Every good festival has its own identity. So it is with Manchester Jazz Festival. The 15th MJF, like the first, back in 1996, is strong on individuality.

The policy of the MJF promoters, Steve Mead and Mick Waterfield, is inclusive enough to embrace Zimbabwean songster Papa Miles (St Ann’s Square, Sunday 25, 1pm) and Goldfrapp-wannabe Rodina (Festival Pavilion, Tuesday 27, 8pm). Traditionalists and mainstreamers might grumble, but the Festival reinstates the definition of jazz as ‘the sound of surprise’. 

As ever, the programme mixes homegrown talents with players of national and international renown.

Gwilym Simcock – playing with UK/US supergroup Simcock/Walker/Swallow/Nussbaum (RNCM, Tuesday 27, 7.30pm) – and Jim Hart, playing with NY trumpeter Ralph Alessi (Festival Pavilion, Friday 23, 7.30pm), met and started playing together when both were students at Chetham’s School of Music (circa ‘94-’96).

“I love Manchester. It’s one of my favourite places,” says Hart, a vibes-player. “I always said I would go back, if things didn’t work out in London, but I seem to have got stuck.”

And Arun Ghosh’s appearance, co-starring with the Asaf Sirkis Trio (Band On The Wall, Thursday 29, 9pm), is a homecoming for the charismatic clarinet-player. Ghosh is currently making waves in London with his unique brand of Mancunian Indo-jazz.

“It needed to be done,” says Ghosh, of his move to London, “to get a fresh outlook. But I learned everything I needed to learn while I was in Manchester.”

Arun’s fervour is communicated not only through his clarinet, but through his body language (sashay and sway as much as swagger). Ghosh has been known to transport a rowdy crowd at Matt and Phred’s to an altogether loftier place.

“Yeah I think Man United had played that night,” says Ghosh, reminded of the occasion. “I feel we can win people over, if I have the right people with me.” 

The right people for the MJF gig are Manchester rhythm team Myke Wilson and Sylvan Richardson, Corey Mwamba – a whirlwind on vibraphone – from Derby, and London saxophonist Idris Rahman.

Ghosh’s erstwhile sparring partner, saxophonist Nat Birchall, shares half the bill (BOTW, Friday 8.30pm) with Marshall Allen, a mainstay of the Sun Ra Arkestra. “I’m honoured to be playing the same night as Marshall Allen,” says Birchall. “He’s one of my all-time favourite players.”

Birchall is one jazz musician who stayed. His music draws on the gentle side of John Coltrane for inspiration. The new album, Guiding Spirit, is rapturously lyrical, and too beautiful not to be spiritual.

The realities of the jazz life haven’t altogether dispelled Birchall’s sense of high purpose. “Once you’re determined to follow a certain route, you’ve got to make the best of it. I always try to put everything into it, and play with soul and feeling.”

Not as overt as the Coltrane influence, Birchall’s first love is ska/reggae. In Birchall, the formative passions of the youthful reggae fan are reconfigured in the mature musician.

“A saxophone player’s sound is largely determined by the sound we have in our heads,” he says. “I’m getting to the stage where I can say the music is ‘pure’, in the sense that it manifests itself through me.”

Other stars include Neil Yates, whose Surroundings (St Ann’s Church, Saturday 31, 7pm), a commission from MJF, is a piece for full orchestra with a starring role for St Ann’s Church itself.

Pianist John Ellis is accompanying Papa Miles. He is also a composer, a producer and a charter member of the Odbod Collective, a top-notch group of Manchester creatives.

Other Odbods include Zoe Chiotis, (St Ann’s Square, Saturday 31, 5pm), the extraordinary Rioghnach Connolly and her band Honeyfeet (Matt and Phred’s, Friday 23, 10pm) or in a new group with Stuart McCallum (Matt and Phred’s, Tuesday 27, 10pm).

Guitarist McCallum can also be seen with improvising trio Baylis/Howard/McCallum (Festival Pavilion, Friday 30, 12.30pm) and, later the same day, in a solo set alongside The Golden Age of Steam and trioVD (Festival Pavilion, 8pm).