The Waiting Room is a venue I have heard a lot about but only now I have finally found an excuse to visit. That excuse consists of a group of my recent BA Live Events Management students from ICMP – Luke Bourne, Amelia Hooper-Jennings, Melissa Peers-Smith and Flo Turnbull – staging an ambitious live event there for their final project centrepiece.
The emergence of so much Jazz-infused and Jazz-based talent in the UK over the past decade, possibly partly buoyed by the Brainfeeder label’s exports from the USA including Kamasi Washington and Thundercat, has been a joy to behold. From the envelope-pushing works of Shabaka, Arun Ghosh etc. through the sophisticated genre-hybrids of Tom Misch, Yussef Dayes and Porij to the jazz and blues inflected soulfulness of Poppy Ajudha and Yazmin Lacey, there is so much exciting new music around with the likes of BBC 6 Music and an expanding online media enthusiastically endorsing it.
I am reminded of a workshop myself [as composer] and pianist-dancer Marilyn Wyers conducted at Goldsmiths, University of London back in about 2011 for an audience of trainee music teachers and a local big band of school age musicians. I remember being pleasantly surprised that the teenagers in the band, without exception, all named Jazz as the genre they most clearly related to and saw themselves playing in the future.
14 years on, I find myself in the lowlit intimate atmosphere of The Waiting Room listening to two young jazz-inspired artists whose careers are clearly going well. First up is Cathal Murphy who, as his name strongly suggests, is of Irish descent, a point he refers to in moments during his set. Cathal plays guitar and sings with a trio completed by Bass Guitar and Drums. The fact that they make this minimal line-up work so well playing such sophisticated music is a measure of their musicianship. Helped by the pristine sound in the venue, they cook up a funky, edgy and, at times, gritty grooving mix of Jazz, Funk, Soul and Pop flavours. At times there are echoes of classic 90s Acid Jazz a la Corduroy and Galliano. There is an impressive extended Bass Guitar solo early in the set.
Cathal’s warm personality helps him to connect with the crowd and his voice is rich and expressive. My Girl (his own track, not a Motown cover!) is a highlight and he performs an astonishing solo rendition of Amy Winehouse’s emotional powerhouse Love Is A Losing Game. The set ends with some beefy funk undercurrents and again they make an impressive noise with just three instruments.
Cathal Murphy @ The Waiting Room
The students have done well to book Tom Ford. Tom cut his teeth by working, as a songwriter and instrumentalist, alongside the aforementioned Poppy Ajudha, Col3trane, Reuben James and others. Tonight he has a last minute stand-in drummer Wilf who has toured with him in the past and a quintet comprising guitar, bass, trumpet, drums and two vocals, his and those of Chase. They kick off with an instrumental track, guitar picking against an ascending bassline and busy drums. The trumpet solo that follows sets the scene for what is to come. What follows is a set built around songs that mix a pop-influenced rapid delivery style and contrasts between Tom’s more mellow tones and Chase’s earthy soulful style. Tom’s chordplay is agile, Latinesque at times, but often shifting into virtuosic jazz fusion. If you can, imagine Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes in a jam with Mike Stern and Jean-Luc Ponty (albeit minus the violin and synth!) while Ezra Collective bring chops although that is possibly slightly misleading!
The Bass Guitarist has a fluid, funky and inventive style and her boundless energy is impressive. The trumpeter is a confident improviser but he also uses the instrument and an effects unit to create ambient sounds and breathy long notes. The chemistry between the musicians is perfect for Tom’s long form compositions and, when he lets loose on the guitar, his solo play is breathtaking. At one point, during a trippy dub jazz interlude, Chase bursts into a passionate rap, bringing another facet to the band’s sound.
There is a mix of released and unreleased material including a maiden performance of one track with the working title of Radio. My BB is a recent single that begins in a poppier vein before suddenly switching into a free-flowing fusion fantasia. Love You is the first song Tom recorded and its use of 7th chords with flattened 10ths and 9ths complements a hooky chorus sung in unison by Tom and Chase preceding some mellow trumpet improv. All in all, this has been a sparkling set of versatile Jazz-infused songs and extended instrumental workouts, rounding off an excellent and superbly curated evening of new music. Well done to all.
