If you want something done, ask a busy person – the old adage goes. With three albums released in the last year, a recent concert of works by Gavin Bryars only one week behind them and the premier of a chamber opera (The Okavango Macbeth) scheduled for mid-April, Mr. McFall's Chamber still found time to perform two new commissions in a programme entitled, Mad March Week 2. Each new work was flanked by favourites from the ensemble's regular repertoire, many of them excellent arrangements and transcriptions from the pen of the eponymous Robert McFall.
The group comprises a string quartet (Cyril Garac, Robert McFall, Brian Schiele, Su-a Lee), with double bass/bass guitar (Rick Standley), piano (Paul Harrison) and whichever additional instruments, or voices, the programme requires – in this case Stuart Brown on drums, and Maximiliano Martín on clarinet – the focus of the new commissions.
The first commission was ExtrApollination by Tim Garland – renowned jazz saxophonist/clarinettist/flautist and composer. The title, a conflation of extrapolation and pollination is due to the fact that each of the three movements derives from material exposed in the virtuosic opening solo clarinet passage – wonderfully played by Maximiliano Martín. Changing pulse is at the heart of this work. In the opening movement, To The North London Metropolitan Line, the idea of accelerating wheels upon rails was effectively conveyed by changing metre. The varying pulses of the central movement, To Robert Stevenson (whose Bell Rock Lighthouse celebrates 200 of service year) makes for an edgy nocturne, reminding us that lighthouses represent danger as well as safety. The dynamic finale, To Paco de Lucia, refreshingly free of all flamenco cliché, enjoyed tensions created by differences in length of bar and length of phrase. The playing in this premier was excellent and I couldn't help feeling that the composer, and the various dedicatees, would have been very happy with this.
Martin Kershaw, a regular in the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and leader of many of his own projects, is also a fine sax/clarinet player. His ambiguously entitled Closing In could possibly refer to the fact that the we close in on the only unmistakable statement of the theme as this variation-based work nears its end. Alternatively, it could allude to the way in which moments of variation close in on particular harmonic or melodic aspects of the theme. The piece featured a catchy montuno, whose repetitive nature freed up drummer, Stuart Brown, to enjoy some nifty rhythmic play. In his own programme note, Kershaw expressed the hope that the listener would enjoy “a musical a journey where the process of getting there is as gratifying as arriving.” This is a journey I would like to retake and look forward to another hearing of this engaging work.