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>>> JAZZREVIEW MAGAZINE - STRATFORD HERALD

JAZZREVIEW Magazine
January 2005

Steve Tromans DeBop Band
Then comes the Steve Tromans DeBop Band, bringing a latecomer crowd, swelling the numbers to, oooooh, 20 listeners. This was more appropriate to their extroverted sound. Tromans has become very active on the Birmingham scene. At the year's beginning, he premiered Howl, a musical response to Allen Ginsberg's epic, spontaneously-penned poem. This was commissioned by Birmingham Jazz, for a nine-piece ensemble. The pianist graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire in 1997, where he'd already formed the GreenTromanStreet trio (with bassist Mike Green and drummer Steve Street).

Tonight, Tromans unveils his reading of A Love Supreme, timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of John Coltrane's classic work. Quite why any band would persist in attempting to address such an already enshrined wonder is puzzling. Why it should be deemed necessary to re-visit a composition that already seems so finished, such an emphatic original statement having been made...

Nevertheless, the DeBop trio provides an enjoyable ride. Their head-start is that they have no saxophone, and that the first version Tromans heard as a schoolboy was not the official album version, but rather a bootleg of its only live performance, which has recently been made available over the counter by Impulse!. This means that Tromans has never viewed the work as a graven image, a finished entity, making it easier for him to mess with its sanctity.

Tromans solos on a synth-piano that sounds too cranked up and distorted for the room's size, but he's consistently inventive, eloquently throwing shapes and casting shadows across the four-part odyssey. Tromans avoids stating the melodic themes in too obvious a manner. Meanwhile, bassist Ryan Trebilcock and drummer Dough Hough receive ample soloing space, roiling and tumbling around with sensitised nerve-endings. The closing "Psalm" section features Lizzy Parks intoning Coltrane's poem in an individualist style, balancing well between sung lines and asymmetrical speech-patterns. It all clock in at approximately the same length as the original.

Love Supreme does offer a stirring interpretation, a chance to hear new facets to this monumentally challenging work.
Martin Longley