Reviews
Round Trip are trumpeter Richard Turner, tenor player Tom Challenger, bassist Tom Farmer and drummer Josh Morrison, and they dispense a vigorous brand of
ost-bop jazz, its harmonic freedom (as with, say, Ornette Coleman’s early bands) considerably enhanced by the absence of a chordal instrument.
This was the fourteenth gig of nineteen UK dates the band are currently playing across the UK, and their familiarity with Turner’s varied compositions (which ranged from pieces utilising standard sequences the opener, ‘Dead Roses’, a contrafact of ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ through expansions of relatively simple motifs to vigorously interactive spark-striking over driving rhythm-section work) was apparent throughout their performance.
Turner and Challenger are an intelligently contrasted frontline pairing, the trumpeter’s bright flair and chattering urgency tellingly complementing the tenor’s slower-building, sculpted solos, and the passages where they indulged in garrulous chattering byplay were among the gig’s highlight moments.
Farmer and Morrison were sympathetically selfless and assertive as appropriate, and overall the band provided yet more evidence of the rude and robust health of the latest crop of UK jazz musicians.
- Chris Parker
