As with the previous reissues, this is a welcome return of a recording that doesn’t feel as if it has been away a day too long.
Myriad Streams: Myriad004
Phil Bancroft: tenor saxophone; Steve Watts: double bass; Marcello Pellitteri: drums
Recorded 10th and 11th August 1996 by Peter Haigh at Pierhouse Studios in Granton, Edinburgh.
Yes…you did read correctly that this set was recorded 28 years ago. This recording was Phil Bancroft’s first outing as leader and originally released on Caber Records. While the more tenacious online shopper might still be able to find copies of the original CD, Myriad Streams have reissued this recording so that it can reach the wider audience it deserves.
One of the many pleasures of jazz music is that good examples of the genre do not date or get mired in the fads of the times in which they were recorded. On this set, Bancroft is joined by a drummer from the US and bassist from the UK with a week’s residency of the trio at the marvellously intimate Henry’s Cellar Bar in Edinburgh (sadly demised as of a couple of years back) under their belts.
Apart from a languid cover of Ellington’s ‘I Got It Bad’, a very short but fractious group improvisation, and the rollicking ‘Space Buffie 1999’ (written by Phil’s brother, Tom), the set consists of five original compositions from Bancroft. This release joins his most recent releases on his Myriad Streams label, which include other sets originally released on Caber, such as 2004’s ‘Headlong’. An obvious point of comparison between this release and ‘Headlong’ is the structure of the compositions versus the much freer sound of the improvising quartet.
On both, Bancroft plays his lighter side (in comparison with the harder edge of his playing in AAB) but he still works his tenor saxophone in the style that anyone with a passing acquittance of pretty much any aspect of the Scottish jazz scene will immediately recognise. As with the previous reissues, this is a welcome return of a recording that doesn’t feel as if it has been away a day too long.
