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Stratford Herald
January 2006

Jazz calendar starts on challenging note
As I remarked to several people at last Sunday evening's Stratford Jazz, if pianist Steve Tromans happened to be American, or even a Londoner, critics would be falling over each other to heap praise on his head. As it is, we're extremely lucky that he still plays at venues like the White Swan here in Stratford. Along with his DeBop Band, youthful but with seasoned ears, he produced some of the most absorbing music we've heard in quite a while.

The first set was varied, opening with Thelonious Monk's Bemsha Swing, which immediately established that it is more to Monk than anyone else that Steve owes his angular, offbeat rhythmic style. This was followed by an excerpt from Steve's own setting of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's Howl. It was perhaps not to everyone's taste, but the obvious virtuosity was appreciated by most of the audience; during the more contemplative passages there was an awed silence as Tromans alternately caressed and hammered the keyboard.

Tenor player Ed Johnston similarly switched between a plaintive reedy tone and a full-throated roar. The set closed with another Tromans original called Erasmus, a more accesible tune based on a strange Balkan-sounding theme, with drummer Miles Levin contributing two excellent solos full of dynamic shifts.

The main event of the evening, though, came in the second set with Steve's "re-construction" of John Coltrane's famed suite, A Love Supreme. The idea of playing around with such a revered work is nothing if not ambitious, and, of course, Coltrane being a tenor player, there was no pressure at all on Ed Johnston! In the event, all four pulled it off with aplomb, steering the right course between over-reverence and what some might regard as sacrilege. It was a genuine re-appraisal, the second movement, for example, being slowed right down to a bluesy crawl, complete with a walking bass figure from Chris Mapp, who also contributed a couple of fine solos.

The rhythm section played a vital role throughout, with Levin rolling round his kit, but for the final movement (Psalm) the focus was back on the two front line players. The level of intensity certainly didn't make for easy listening, and at times the music was, let's say, "challenging", but at its best it was enthralling stuff. At the end the slightly drained-looking Tromans, diffident as ever, paid tribute to the band (quite rightly) and even thanked us for allowing him to play it. As the pleasure was ours the gratitude was unnecessary - perhaps the only thing he got wrong all night.

"How do you follow that?" he asked rhetorically, but there was time for an encore. So it was back to Monk, for a rousing Straight, No Chaser, which he'd temporarily forgotten the title of (I'm glad I'm not the only one who has trouble remembering titles). It rounded off a great evening, and confirmed that the year has started auspiciously for Stratford Jazz.
Steve Baxter