Narrador
Narrador
Hassell
/ Whitehead / Berry
Steve Berry – double bass
Dave Hassell – drum kit,
percussion
Tim Whitehead – tenor saxophone
'He,
[ Whitehead], is a prodigious tenor player whose graceful compositions always
rise above the mere technicalities of the conservatoire... amid the crowd of
anonymous, garrulous and hard-edged tenor saxophonists, Tim Whitehead's music
is marked by a sense of grace and economy.’
Clive Davis - The
Times
The combined playing CVs of this
trio covers a staggeringly wide base, stretching back over 40 years (more,
probably). Pretty much anything imaginable is in there, with all those many and
diverse strands spiralling inward towards uniting all three of them around the
core activity of improvisation and handmade, homemade music. Jazz is the
touchstone of course, but expect to hear many other interesting and challenging
influences going into this heady brew.
Tim Whitehead and Steve Berry first played together in 1981, at a time when Whitehead
had already established his personal and powerfully communicative
saxophone-playing voice in Ian Carr's Nucleus, Graham Collier Music and his own
band (s). Berry was just starting out at that point and luckily for him, Whitehead
was already in the Art Blakey-esque habit of both checking out, and giving
opportunity to, new arrivals on the scene. Many gigs and several years later
this eventually led to them both working alongside each other in the highly
revered big band, Loose Tubes.
Moving to the North West at the end of 1988, Steve Berry met and worked
alongside Dave Hassell in many ventures, most frequently in accompanying trios
for touring US soloists, with Hassell contributing his legendary drumming
skills. They also worked together in Jazz Summer Schools at Glamorgan and
Burnley. They have been on a long promise to one day collaborate together on a
musical project away from their 'sideman' roles, something that has
finally arrived in the form of this trio with Tim Whitehead. Such a project
allows more scope for Hassell’s incredible breadth of hand percussion skills to
be subtly worked in alongside his kit work, something he is uniquely gifted to
do.
'Whitehead glides ethereally into his phrases like a jazzier
Jan Garbarek at times, although the playing is often stronger.'
John Fordham - The Guardian
‘W
hen he was involved with
Loose Tubes and running groups of his own in London in the late 1980s, bassist
Steve Berry distinguished himself as an original composer and a strong ensemble
player. And his light still shines, Berry's long-lined, patiently-developed and
intricately zigzagging melodies often recall his (and Django Bates's) early
pieces for Loose Tubes…’
John Fordham – The Guardian
