CD Reviews:
The List
July 21st 2005
Burt /MacDonald sextet
A Day for a Reason
Tob Records **** (4 stars)
The latest disc
from this prolific group led by guitarist George Burt and saxophonist
Raymond MacDonald features pianist Keith Tippett in a project commissioned
by An Tobar Arts Centre on Mull, inspired by the town clock in Tobermory.
Created and recorded in March, the music features the group's characteristic
mix of tuneful, melody-driven songs and instrumental with no-holds-barred
free improvisation.
As in earlier live work in Glasgow, Tippett brings massive experience
as well as artistic clout to the project, and fits seamlessly into
the group aesthetic, A strong contender for their best work yet
on disc. (Kenny Mathieson)
The Sunday
Herald
July 9th 2005
David Keenan
George Burt/Raymond MacDonald Sextet Featuring Keith Tippett
A Day for a Reason (Tob Record) **** (4 stars)
A DAY For A
Reason was commissioned by the Tobermoray Arts Centre in order to
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the building of the Tobermoray
clock, which was completed in 1905 and dedicated to a far-travelled
Scottish adventurer, Henrietta Bird, by her sister Isabella. The
Glasgow-based Burt/MacDonald Sextet, in the company of renowned
English pianist, composer and improviser Keith Tippett, conceived
a themed suite of compositions designed to reflect the long-distance
relationship of the Bird sisters, with the clock functioning as
a framing device for a series of evocative portraits from Various
episodes in the sisters' lives. Burt/MacDonald have collaborated
with a clutch of well-known players, but nobody has ever seemed
so perfectly suited as Tippett. The pianist shares an immediate
common language with the group, his vocabulary drawn as much from
post-bop formalism as it is from modern composition, free improvisation
and pastoral minimalism. There's a real mix across the disc, from
song forms that sound like mini operettas, through abstract improvisations
and swinging free bop, but it all fits together seamlessly. Tippett
sounds great, and saxophonist MacDonald's own soloing is a highlight,
taking Tippett's leads and extrapolating them into the heavens.
The Herald CD
Reviews
July 16th 2005
George Burt/ Raymond MacDonald sextet
A Day fro a reason
Tob *** (3 stars)
Even by their
productive standards, Scotland's own Burt-MacDonald team have been
prolific lately in their work with British jazz luminaries. A Day
For A Reason, resulting from a project with pianist Keith Tippett
at Tobermory's progressive An Tobar arts centre, is almost a companion
release to then-Hotel Dilettante album and continues the\r collaboration
with saxophonist Lol Coxhill. A musical portrait of a Victorian
sisters who lived on and travelled far beyond Mull. A Day For a
Reason succeeds admirably in conveying a sense of place and of personalities.
It features a variety of moods, including straight-ahead jazz, Burt's
attractive melancholia, Nicola MacDonald's atmospheric songs and
brother Ray's freewheeling saxophone improvisations, with Tippett
making an inspired contribution as integral member rather than simply
a guest.
Rob Adams
The Sunday Herald
Jazz CDs: Burt/MacDonald Octet - Popcorn (FMR)
Blowing hot and buttered ***
Reviewed by David Keenan
POPCORN sees
the ranks of Glasgow’s prodigious Burt/MacDonald Quartet swollen
to octet levels by the incorporation of long-term sparring partner
Lol Coxhill, free-thinking German saxophonist Christoph Reiserer,
vocalist Nicola MacDonald and wild-card conceptualist Aileen Campbell,
who uses her voice to accompany the droning of a popcorn machine
and a hairdryer. Initially, the tendency would be to dismiss such
a methodology as so much gimmickry. However, the utilis-ation of
objects from the immediate environment as a source of expressive
sonic material feels like a logical extension of flash-of-the-moment
improvisatory tactics, and there’s a long history of musicians
fleshing out conventionally played pieces by exploiting their surrondings
in novel ways. Think of drummers Han Bennink or Chris Corsano’s
use of floors, walls, toys and body parts as percussive stand-ins,
or AMM’s Keith Rowe, applying anything from vibrators to whisks
as impromptu teases for his guitar. Throughout Popcorn, though,
the fact that what’s generating these sounds is a popcorn
machine and a hairdryer remains clear. This lends Campbell’s
wounded vocal drones and whoops an added poignancy which nods towards
a dream-home heartache and verbal breakdown soundtracked by the
pops and clicks of domestic gadgetry. Campbell’s contribution
forces the group into a striking dynamic rethink. Drummer Allan
Pendreigh and bassist George Lyle generate phantom rhythmic possibilities,
little knots in time that are as tonal as they are propulsive, while
guitarist George Burt still manages to thread flinty lunar notes
into the mix, sounding a little like US avant guitarist Nels Cline.
The horns are a tangle of activity; popping, slurping and cooing,
but they’re most effective when the voices cohere into a single
forked stream, engulfed in the forlorn drone generated by Campbell’s
machines. It’s an oddly affecting disc: melancholy, at points
genuinely challenging, and testimony to both the seriousness with
which the group approach the generative source material and their
ability to triumph in the unlikeliest of scenarios.
08 February 2004
Live Reviews:
Edinburgh Evening
News Jan 20th 2005
Past master Harry and the furious free-playing five Jazz
GARY FLOCKHART
Burt MacDonald Quintet with Harry Beckett, ****
Henry’s Jazz Cellar
BY boasting and hosting some of the biggest names in jazz over the
years, it’s easy to see why nine out ten hep-cats prefer the
underground delights of Henry’s to any other jazz-listening
venue in town. And the Edinburgh institution has so many artists
of the highest calibre already confirmed to appear this year, their
programme reads like a who’s who of the jazz scene. Even by
Henry’s high standards, however, the guest appearance of trumpeter
Harry Beckett was a real coup. One of the most absorbing and inventive
players anywhere, Barbados-born Beckett has been a seminal figure
in British jazz for more than four decades now. Having arrived in
the UK in 1954, by the early-60s he was working with the legendary
likes of Charles Mingus, Ronnie Scott and Charlie Watts. Last night
was the 69-year-old’s first collaboration with the Burt MacDonald
Quintet - led by two of Scotland’s most distinctive jazz performers,
guitarist George Burt and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald. Completing
the line up for this gig were vocalist Nicola MacDonald, bassist
Bill Wells and drummer Tom Bancroft. Throughout this gig whenever
Beckett pitched in a trumpet solo, you could see Burt and MacDonald
marvelling over the way his improvisations provided perfect foil
for their songs. Take Me Back to Appsala, written by Burt, set the
bar high from the onset - kicking off 90 minutes of free-form jazz
ranging from the eloquent to the explosive. At the end of the opener,
Nicola MacDonald was introduced, providing velvety-voiced vocals
over some wayward and arresting sax. The next composition, Behind
The Big Clock, featuring beautiful brush playing from Bancroft on
drums, had more than a touch of Tom Waits about it. Elsewhere, Down
By The Sally Gardens, a song Burt composed using the words of the
poet William Butler Yeats, was an example of free-flowing improvised
jazz at its best. After another fierce saxophone lead-in, it melted
into one of most melodic songs of the set, before improvised madness
took over again.
After a short break came the evening’s standout track. On
Little Train by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Beckett provided more truly
great improvisation, and the drum solo was outstanding. Another
highlight came during a song called Smooth Day. In its infancy,
while Nicola MacDonald was lending her creamy vocals, you’d
have been forgiven for thinking this was just some straight-ahead
jazz standard. Half-way in, however, Beckett and Raymond MacDonald
changed the direction of the piece entirely - their furious free
playing providing many exciting twists and turns. Predictably, after
one of the best jazz gigs Edinburgh has seen in some time, the musicians
left the stage to applause that was long and loud.
The Herald
January 21 2005
Burt/MacDonald with Harry Beckett, Henry’s, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce
GUITARIST George Burt and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald bring an
under-appreciated musical intelligence to the music they write and
arrange for their quartet, here completed by Buddha Bill Wells on
bass and Goldilocks Tom Bancroft on drums and augmented to a five-piece
with the addition of MacDonald's sister, Nicola, on voice and melodica.
They have also been bringing some of the big names of the fruitful
flowering of British jazz in the seventies to Scotland. Thirty years
ago Barbadian Harry Beckett – now a gnomic 74 years young
– hooked up with the South African exiles who came to London
with pianist Chris MacGregor, and the spirit of MacGregor's ground-breaking
big band, Brotherhood of Breath, was clearly audible in this gig,
as much in Ray MacDonald's Dudu Pukwana stylings on alto as in the
guest star's spare but copious soloing on trumpet and flugelhorn.
Beckett's sound is rougher than in his heyday and noticeably less
fluid, but it retained its distinctive charm across a range of material
from the pens of both the co-leaders, the first set including Burt's
settings of poetry by Andy Shanks and W B Yeats alongside MacDonald's
poppier tunes such as the African-inflected Remember Fun. It was
after the break, though, that they found a more relaxed, funkier
groove – oddly, since the material was Burt's arrangement's
of Villa Lobos and Schubert, the latter (Franz's Wild Years) featuring
some marvellous growling trumpet from Beckett. With the arrival
of tenor saxist John Burgess it was a crowded stage for the guitarist's
Fibonacci's Blues (not as complex as its title suggested) but his
robust soloing heralded the best exchange of the night between Beckett
and MacDonald.
The Herald, Tuesday July
1 2003
Burt-MacDonald Quintet with Lol Coxhill
Henry's Jazz Cellar, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
Half-way through Sunday's second set at Henry's, Lol Coxhill is
directed to play, without prior warning, "a beautiful solo
soprano saxophone improvisation". For a one-time busker on
the streets of London and player of vast experience, this is no
tall order and, despite a certain initial reluctance, Coxhill, who
sported a shaven head some 40 years before it became fashionable,
complies with typical ripe-toned relish, working towards a bashfully
sung Embraceable You to "ensure that they don't ask me to do
this again". Fat chance. Rather than handing in his notice,
this is likely to become a fixture of an already fruitful partnership
between one of the current Scottish jazz crop's most inquiring combos
and this great character of the improvising scene. Few avenues are
left unexplored in guitarist George Burt and saxophonist Raymond
MacDonald's musical vision. Choppy reggae rhythms, winsome jazz
songs, a notably fidgety arrangement of Yeats's Down By the Sally
Gardens, folksy simplicity, and robust bluesy intricacy, even a
Schubert miniature renamed Franz's Wild Years (Tom Waits fans will
get this), and a dancing, train-rhythmed Villa-Lobos adaptation:
all this and more become assimilated into the Burt-MacDonald metier,
and without ever hogging the limelight, Coxhill has something pertinent
to contribute to all of them. Often, as has always been the group's
way, the ensemble walks a fine line between ordered charm and utter
chaos. But the sum of the co-leaders' varyingly sweet and anarchic
guitar playing and fiery saxophone invention, Nicola MacDonald's
increasingly characterful singing, melodica playing, and whistling,
Allan Pendreigh's sensitive, directional drumming, George Lyle's
strongly rooted basslines, and Coxhill's sheer nous is unfailingly
interesting and frequently fascinating.