Review: Alexander Hawkins/Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Studio, Derby, Sunday 16th November, 2014...

Fire music on a grey day...

The Studio is a small venue, part of The Derby Theatre, which the audience amusingly approach in a straggly line led by an usher, out the foyer and round the back via a carpark.  A Ballardian vista before entering - attending a gig there has a certain surreal charm... But the space is intimate, with good acoustics, perfect for an improvising duo whose collective sonic range will cover a large area. The players:  Louis Moholo-Moholo, a very spry, lithe 74 year old master drummer, well known as the keeper of the Blue Notes flame, sadly lone survivor of that seminal band.  In tandem with Alexander Hawkins, a rising star, improviser, composer, organist and pianist, here playing the latter.  Delivering two sets that delighted the audience who witnessed some mighty music this drab November Sunday afternoon.  Moholo-Moholo can whack it out when the spirit moves, in mighty reverberations from deep kick to high ride/crash, an awesome sight with right hand held high for several seconds before smashing his stick onto the surface of choice.  Hawkins has an impressive technical range that includes a tough two handed style so when they lock together in loud sequences the individual particles in the soundstream don't get blurred mushily but ring clean. Similarly, the almost microscopic details in the quieter passages have a wonderful clarity, faint trickles of high register notes, internal piano plucks and barely audible faintly struck/scrape finessing of cymbal and drum surface.  Benefitting the drummer especially, when he moves to delicate, filigree stick work that would be inaudible even in a club, perhaps, unless you were perched next to his kit...
     Louis M-M is, of course, a longtime, well-known musician with an illustrious pedigree, both in the UK and internationally.  What impresses here is his youthful energy and questing imagination, someone who still relishes the challenge of naked improvisation, no falling back on past glories.  His younger cohort, Alexander Hawkins, displays a similar joy to his playing, knows his traditions well but is not bound by them - he has developed a contemporary technique that accommodates the history and folds it into the ongoing moment without jarring transitions that can veer into pastiche in the wrong hands.  This is a major accomplishment for this listener, an organic movement of the music that consolidates what has gone before without being shackled to old and/or new orthodoxies.  His music contains plenty of dissonant fire but is intriguingly buttressed by a love of melody, rhapsodic lyricism laced with jagged stabs, delivered in long waves that ebb and flow within the ample spaces that his technique and conception provide.  Hawkins has achieved a confident maturity within a few years and with a drummer such as his venerable companion to free up the lines so that they can breathe easily, this means the performance can move between abstraction, dense chromaticism, sudden longer notestreams that spring out and hymn-like slow rocking evocations of South African tunes that reflect back on Louis Moholo-Moholo's musical heritage, with occasional humorous vocal interjections to mix it up - such as Hawkins wordlessly singing a phrase echoed by the drummer in one sequence.  Plus what might called the 'Yes Baby/No Baby' interlude.  (You had to be there... see below).  And a couple of bits of Monk chucked in, why not?  
     Music expands, contracts, changes to fit the ground of its performance, I suppose.  In concerts, finer details can get lost but are compensated for by broader gestures.  For me, improvisation is usually best heard up close and literally personal, where the audience are grouped together in a dynamic relationship with performers, their energies and attentions hopefully contributing in some small part to the creation unfolding and the Studio provided the perfect environment for another inspiring afternoon.  My second visit (first one a few weeks back to witness another cross-generational meet-up with Evan Parker and Seymour Wright blowing some mighty saxophones solo and duo).  A big shout out to the compere, Corey Mwamba, whom I sat behind and whose enjoyment of the music was obvious and Derby Jazz for organising.  More, please...

   Here's a vid of the duo from The Sage, Gateshead... Catch the No Baby/Yes Baby routine as referred to above about 13.30 minutes in...

Corey Mwamba compering...