Mike Westbrook
piano and me - takes one to four
reviews
Perhaps it was last month’s 50th anniversary of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert that got me thinking about solo jazz piano. As it happens, I’d been listening recently to the incomparable Art Tatum, particularly to the unaccompanied pieces from Jewels in the Treasure Box, recorded in 1953 at the Blue Note in Chicago and released last year, and to Paul Bley’s 1972 very different solo classic Open, to Love, now being given a vinyl reissue.
Then Mike Westbrook got in touch to tell me that his four volumes of solo recordings, made in various locations between 2022 and 2024 for private circulation under the title The Piano and Me, were now — thanks to entreaties from several quarters, including this one — available to everyone via download. And, kicking off a three-night season at Cafe Oto, I heard Alexander Hawkins play a half-hour solo set that achieved marvels of modernistic sonic architecture on material that will form part of a forthcoming solo release.
All this solo piano made me wish there was a place in London today similar to Bradley’s, the piano bar that existed in Greenwich Village between 1969 and 1996. A few months after it opened, I saw two significant pianists playing solo there. The first was the bebop veteran Al Haig, whose touch and lucidity made an understated but indelible impression. The second was Dave McKenna, in whose large frame were gathered all the virtues of mainstream jazz pianism. Like Jimmy Rowles and Alan Clare, McKenna seemed to know every standard ever written, and then some. He died in 2008, aged 78. A priceless film of him was made at a private party in 1991.
I love it when a pianist, whether on a concert platform or a railway station concourse, has the time to follow a train of thought wherever it may lead. That’s what I cherish about the Westbrook recitals, which follow on from his previous solo albums: Paris (2017) and Starcross Bridge (2018). He takes the opportunity to wander, but never without purpose. In the fourth volume of the new set, recorded at Ashburton Arts Centre in Devon, he moves seamlessly from his own “View from the Drawbridge” to Monk’s “Jackie-ing” and then John Ireland’s hymn tune “Love Unknown”. In the second volume, recorded at the Pizza Express, “My Way” runs into “Falling in Love Again”, then into “Lover Man”, and then into Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count”.
It’s a look inside the mind of a musician who, now in his eighties, finds nourishment in Mingus, Bacharach, Rossini and the Beatles. The pace is steady, the mood reflective. There’s time to explore the melodic byways, the harmonic implications. No Tatum-style technical fireworks, yet the result is mesmerising. And, as with all the music and musicians I’ve mentioned in this piece, it’s a reminder that the piano really is one of humanity’s noblest inventions.
Richard Williams - The Blue Moment
https://thebluemoment.com/
In an era when the term “jazz piano virtuoso” often conjures up images of dazzling technical displays, Mike Westbrook (who turns 89 this month) takes an entirely different path with the piano and me. The initial 2023 digital release was recorded live at Dartington Hall, a medieval great hall in Devon, England on June 26, 2022. That album, the first in a set of four, has been followed by three more, available as downloads and each recorded at various locations in the UK in 2023-24. (Under the imprimatur of Westbrook Records Special Edition, the recordings can be downloaded as a set or individually.) The complete collection is not about the flamboyant showmanship of the jazz tradition but rather something equally magical: the invention of new sonic rituals. Westbrook’s performances here exploretimbre, space and time—a journey where the listener navigates an aural world with patience and curiosity.
Across 32 tracks and 82 song titles, Westbrook draws inspiration from his original compositions and those influenced by jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, alongside pieces from the Great American Songbook and popular songs by Lennon and McCartney. By resisting categorization and drawing from these varied influences, he distills the entirety of his work into its fundamental essence: the piano and the present moment. Yet, within this simplicity lies a world of depth and complexity. Westbrook navigates these soundscapes through improvisation, crafting something fleeting yet profound.
Some composers and songs are foundational, as one would expect in any musical anthology. One presumes that each composition’s melody and harmonic underpinnings provide the texture, musical lines and dynamics on which Westbrook constructs his improvisations from the inside out (Monk’s “Jackie-ing” and “‘Round Midnight” fall into this category). The angularity of his compositional style, the layering of notes and recurring motifs, provide him with the freedom to abandon conventional expectations of the composition’s interpretation. By contrast is the tune “Sweet Kentucky Ham” by the ironic composer, singer and pianist Dave Frishberg. In this rendition, Westbrook captures the down-home blues underpinnings as the number unfolds with its quirky tempo. Hoagy Carmichael wrote the music for the well-liked ballad “Skylark”, which has been consistently included in Westbrook’s repertoire. His interpretation here is driven as much by what is omitted as by what is included: the spaces between the notes carry as much weight as the notes themselves, and silence is not an absence but an active participant in the musical discourse. There are two rather contrasting compositions that Westbrook favors in combination: Ram Ramirez’ “Lover Man” and the Billy Strayhorn gem “Blood Count”. These two compositions, in their traditional interpretation, are driven by rhythm and melody; the pianist chooses to bring them to life through the recognition of themes that emerge, resolve and re-emerge in different contexts.
Duke Ellington’s compositions are not forgotten in these recitals as three of his pieces are explored: “Mood Indigo”, “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” and “Sophisticated Lady”. One of the defining characteristics of this multi-sided set is Westbrook’s acute sensitivity to sound itself, exemplified by these numbers. Each note is placed with precision, and every dynamic shift is carefully judged. The underlying melodies are still there to be heard, but it requires an exercise in deep listening. Homage is paid to popular music with the inclusion of a couple of Lennon/McCartney favorites: “Because” and “She Loves You”. Despite its esoteric nature, the pianist’s impression of these songs is warm and human, as his approach is both expressive and personal, with each piece feeling like an intimate conversation.
In this release, Mike Westbrook presents something that is distinctly his own. It serves as a testament to the lasting power of improvisation and the boundless possibilities of the piano in the hands of an artist who dares to think outside the box.
Pierre Giroux - The New York City Jazz Record
https://nycjazzrecord.com/
As regular readers may be aware, I’ve been a great admirer of the composer, bandleader and pianist Mike Westbrook for many years. If memory serves, the first music I ever heard by him (thanks to John Peel, I suspect) was the 1972 jazz-rock album Solid Gold Cadillac; certainly the first time I saw Westbrook perform live was more than 50 years ago, on 18 October 1974 at Cambridge’s Lady Mitchell Hall, when his orchestra played the music from the albums Citadel/Room 315 and Love/Dream and Variations. Thereafter I bought many subsequent releases – not to mention some of the earlier ones from the ’60s – and saw Westbrook perform live whenever I could.
One of Westbrook’s many strengths has been his versatility as a composer; entirely open-minded about musical style and form, he has embraced jazz, rock, popular standards, classical and opera, musical theatre, religious and ritualistic music, poetry and the spoken word and much besides, working with ensembles large, medium-sized and small. Maybe that’s why the entry on Westbrook in The Penguin Guide to Jazz claimed, ‘If he is also an improviser, and there is no doubt that he is, it is not as an instrumentalist. Instead, he improvises with genre and with the boundaries of genre.’ Now, while it’s perhaps true that Westbrook’s primary importance is that of a composer-arranger, to argue that he doesn’t improvise as an instrumentalist is nonsense, as Westbrook’s latest release makes abundantly and quite gloriously clear.
The new digital album the piano and me – takes one to four is comprised of four solo recitals recorded between June 2022 and March 2024 in Dartington, London, Topsham and Ashburton. Westbrook has made solo albums before – I’m pretty certain that 1978’s considerably less improvisational Piano was the first non-classical piano record I possessed – but this latest is his most substantial yet. (It’s possible to buy the four albums separately or, I’d recommend, as a single set.) The third album, recorded in Topsham, is subtitled The Birds of Dartmoor, and consists largely of original compositions; the other three do include some Westbrook tunes (most notably View from the Drawbridge from Citadel/Room 315), but mostly offer takes on numbers by some of his favourite composers (Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Lennon and McCartney), with the hymn Just a Closer Walk with Thee, L’amoroso e sincero Lindoro from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Lover Man, Falling in Love Again, As Time Goes By and Skylark added in for good measure. Oh, and My Way is there too, a song entirely appropriate for this most distinctive, distinguished and deeply personal musician, who has always done it his way.
That Penguin Guide claim notwithstanding, Westbrook’s creative personality is consistently discernible in his playing and thinking, whatever the material. The opening track of the first album here is She Loves You, yet so searching is the pianist’s contemplative account of the melody and harmonies that much of it is barely recognisable as the Beatles’ upbeat hit. Returning repeatedly to a clutch of favourites – Mood Indigo, Jackie-ing, Johnny Come Lately, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Sweet Kentucky Ham and Because among them – Westbrook probes, fragments, elides, embellishes, condenses, stretches, circles and reinvents the originals in endlessly imaginative ways, so that everything feels fresh. If the mood is predominantly thoughtful, measured, minor-key and intimate, rather than virtuosic or flashy, that certainly doesn’t make for repetitiveness. Rather, I was constantly aware that I was listening to the live creativity of someone steeped in musical memories and possessed of a profound knowledge of – and profound love for – a wonderfully wide range of musics. As an occasional birder I was particularly intrigued by the evocative portraits on the third album (wisely, for the most part Westbrook doesn’t try to root his melodies in birdsong, but seems to be thinking rather of personality, movement, landscape and mood). But elsewhere I loved the rewardingly considered, tangential approach he takes in tracing his way to, around and away from the core of the various classics and standards; surprises are frequent and illuminating. Just try this as a sample.
One last point. I recently underwent an unusually enervating bout of ‘flu, so weak I couldn’t even listen to music or the radio, let alone read or whatever. When I finally began to feel a little stronger and up to using my ears, I opted for the piano and me, and it proved a fruitful choice; simply by listening quietly and closely, without distraction, I could immerse myself in the music’s constant and subtle shifts, its humane sense of scale, its unemphatic but gently penetrating beauty. It’s music, in other words, that requires and amply rewards attention.
Geoff Andrew - https://geoffandrew.com
Mike Westbrook