Manchester Jazz Festival, Tuesday, 30 July - John Ellis, Billy Moon, Moss Project

John Ellis

John Ellis Trio

Bridgewater Hall Foyer 

It’s a song-based set of the familiar and not so familiar. His first words are, “I am here, don’t reject me”, which is not so much about the condition of the exposed performer as the Creator reminding that He’s available for reassurance, feeling slightly hurt at the neglect of His subjects. It sets the tone of the show: gospel fervour, trance-like concentration, inward-looking but willing to reach out. This trio performance by a Manchester pianist/singer who has always been there, and who, like the Creator, has sometimes been taken for granted, is a triumph and a revelation.  

It’s so spontaneous that the accompanying musicians - the Turners Pete and Rob, on bass and drums respectively - watch and listen with attentiveness, and perhaps a little wonder. Ellis follows the inspiration of the moment. So the next song is ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’, the most subversive statement of atheism ever to gain entry to the Great American Songbook, and Ellis is simultaneously channeling the cool of swinging hipster Mose Allison, whilst essaying the gospel cadences of Abdullah Ibrahim. 

The hour-long set is halfway through when Ellis, who has been following the flow in an unbroken sequence up till now, turns to address the respectable patrons of Bridgewater Hall for the first time. “Dirty fracking bankers,” he says. “Dirty fracking bankers,” he repeats. He seems to have latched onto the phrase as the best way to shake off his self-induced trance. “Dirty fracking bankers,” he announces for a third time, before going on to profess undying love for the Stone Roses and praising their songs as the culmination of the folk tradition. He proceeds to sing a rapturous ‘Shoot You Down’ and follows this, again following the principle of ironic juxtaposition, with ‘If I Had A Hammer’. 

No, this is astonishing actually. No one has achieved such feats of transformation with songs - turning glib platitudes into sublime statements of the human condition - since Nina Simone. More than once, I was reminded of the Nina & Piano album, and my praise doesn’t come any higher than that.     

It was impossible to predict what he was going to do, or say, next. What did he do next? ‘Norwegian Wood’. There was always veiled sleaze in the song, sure, but Ellis, with his ability to strip away the petty guise of anodyne pop, conveys the full atrophied spirituality and mania of Lennon’s original. He achieves this by dispelling all the smug jollity to reveal the full depth of self-abasement and the stupidity of a random act of destructiveness. Musically, he adds Afro-Cuban rhythms and a Yoruban chant. 

This is dark, dark, dark, and Ellis above all seeks to entertain. So he chooses to send everyone off happy with a favourite from My Fair Lady, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’, and, for good measure, gives it a ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ bounce. But Ellis being Ellis, he still manages to illuminate a human truth that eluded every previous version. “All I want is a room somewhere…” How simple! How modest! How impossible!   

Billy Moon, Moss Project 

Festival Pavilion Teepee 

Billy Moon

A string quartet - an instant signifier of intimacy and melancholia - A.A. Milne readings, tinkly piano and teacups. Billy Moon are very English, and my response is very English too, which is, essentially, to blush and say, “Not now, old chap, there’s a time and a place, don’t you know?” I consider I have a high tolerance of twee, but Billy Moon really push the envelope of twee. Having said that, I’m in a minority, and a mesmerised crowd gave Matthew Bourne, Seaming Tu, Olivia Moore and Semay Wu - who, collectively, are Billy Moon - a rapturous ovation. 

Reciting over music is a problem area for me, I admit, but Moss Project propose a novel way of combining music and literature with their new album, What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes? It’s a CD encased within the hard covers of a book, and in the book are short stories by distinguished writers, with each story a response to an original piece of music contained within. It’s a brilliant way of overcoming the dread functionality of the CD, and turning it into an object of art on par with an LP. I’ve read the stories, and can honestly say that many of them are wonderful. 

Moss Project

For this performance, Moss Project have enlisted an author to read the stories between numbers. I’m getting ready to feel awkward and English again. 

In the event, it works brilliantly. This because the author, Lawrence Norfolk, is a personable fellow who reads well. His delivery and ease have presumably been honed by book readings up and down the land. Cleverly, he cherry-picks the very best stories, namely ‘The Angel’, his own ‘Caravans’, and ‘Bubble’. But most of all it works because Moss Project are on cracking form, and play with an intensity and assurance I’ve not seen in them before. Alice Zawadzki’s violin has become a beautiful foil for her voice, and is similarly passionate and adept. Moss Freed has assimilated the Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin influences into a distinctive freewheeling style: clean and lustrous and sharp-cutting. Marek Dorcik subdivides each beat into clipped fractions, in the best funky manner. I might miss the wonderful Ruth Goller, but stand-in bassist Kevin Glasgow rises to the challenge magnificently. 

And the relationship between text and music becomes more apparent at close range. One can more readily appreciate the darkness that lies beneath the lightness and buoyancy of ‘Bubble’.