B’Jazz Event Review – SBNYJF 2013: Who Said Jazz was for Old People?

As appearing in the September issue of B’Jazz magazine.

For the last five years, the highlight on my yearly calendar has been an annual trip to a blistering cold town in the heart of the Eastern Cape. As both a jazz lover and a lifelong student of music, the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival (SBNYJF) in Grahamstown is nothing short of paradise.

The aim of the festival is develop the future of jazz in South Africa by exposing over 300 students at school and university level to the complex, rich and ever evolving culture of jazz. With over 40 national and international jazz educators, the festival incorporates live performances, rehearsals, workshops, lectures and networking opportunities for all of its attendees. From 9am each morning until roughly 1am the next morning, the opportunity for each student’s total immersion in the language and sound of jazz exists nowhere else in the country.

This year’s SBNYJF was no less enriching, inspiring and poignant than any of its predecessors, bringing professional jazz musicians from as far afield as Sweden, Holland, America, Switzerland, France and Norway to break the proverbial bread and rub shoulders with fledgling young South African cats – and what a glorious exchange it was.

From the very first performance by the Dutch ‘Superjazz’ group BRUUT! to the last performance of the festival by the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band (as led by trumpeter Marcus Wyatt), the scene was set for an extreme week of swingin’ heads, insatiable bebop licks and hard grooves.

What follows is a brief and by no means – comprehensive description of what hooked me.

Shane Cooper

Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz – Shane Cooper

My favourite performer of the festival was undoubtedly the 2013 Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz – Shane Cooper. For the plethora of gigs he was allotted, he brought his distinct command of the double bass to the fore in a massive way. Whether solidly underpinning the collaborative quintet he formed while on exchange at the Jazz Werkstatt in Bern, Switzerland (along with Marc Stucki Andreas Tschopp, Kyle Shepherd and Kesivan Naidoo), his own quintet as featured on his debut album Oscillations (with Bokani Dyer, Reza Khota, Justin Bellairs and Kesivan Naidoo) or with Swiss pianist and master of poly-rhythm Malcolm Braff – Cooper was the boss of bass.

I knew Cooper’s performances would be be special from the get go, having been a fan of his bass playing since the very first time I saw him play. What intrigued me more was the possibility of what his personal compositions would sound like – and how he would find a way to break the conventions of what a lot of ‘bass music’ tends to sound like.

This he did tastefully with a double bass solo at the onset of his first show which incorporated both pizzicato (fingered) and arco (bowed) style playing. The bowed portion was played on the lower end of the bass, which created the sound of children playing on a swing – this was then put through a loop pedal, which took the audience into a trance like state, just before the full band came in with the hard beats.

While embracing the acoustic limitations of the traditional jazz ensemble – ever the more astonishing, was Cooper’s use of loops and modern electronic rhythms. I was intrigued to discover that the rhythmic heartbeat or backbone of his shows were easily reminiscent of modern electronic music, the type that one would rather find in grimy industrial clubs than in intimate jazz settings. I also picked up on the cinematic quality of his ensembles, again reminiscent of a band called The Cinematic Orchestra – which I later learnt was one of his favourites.

Read more: http://joshprinsloo.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/bjazz-event-review-sbnyjf-2012-who-said-jazz-was-for-old-people/