This concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall marked the end of the 10th Rhythm Sticks festival, which celebrates all manner of percussion and drum music.
I’m not a big jazz fan, so I don’t know if I am sufficiently educated to give a critical view of the concert, so I’ll just fluff my way through with some general thoughts.
The opening band “Polar Bear” are a four-piece band augmented by a female singer and a guy who makes terrible noises on an Apple Mac laptop. The band itself started off well and I was very impressed with the interaction between the drummer/band leader Sebastien Rochford and double bass player Tom Herbert. In fact, I enjoyed Herbert’s contribution the most as he was a good solid player and provided a good foundation for some of the free-form stuff going on. The two saxophonists, Peter Wareham and Mark Lockheart, blew very well and they took it in turns to solo and react with each other. It was a 45 minute set and the band started off very well, flagged in the middle, and caught our interest again with the final stomper of a song “King of Aberdeen”. Interesting and if I see their CD around, I might even give it a go.
The main attraction was this expanded Earthworks band, featuring members of Tim Garland’s Dean Street Underground Orchestra. I’d never seen Earthworks before and I knew with this configuration I was flying into uncharted waters. Tim Garland was the band leader for the night, leading the group through a combination of material from the Earthworks and Dean Street Underground Orchestra. A lot of the Earthworks material was almost unrecognisable because it had been re-tooled for a 9-piece band. There was lots of great soloing and it was all good fun. I had a few issues with the mix – I couldn’t hear the drums and bass clearly enough – but I think this was down to the sheer amount of sound coming from the stage. There was even a namecheck to KC from Tim Garland during the show.
It was a really interesting and engaging evening of music I had never heard before. The Missus pointed out that this was the first gig where NO GUITARS were present. That was refreshing, indeed. Now I really want to hear Earthworks as a four-piece!

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