The first concert for Jon Corbett's Dangerous Musics since the release of their album Kongens Gade in September.

Corbett's trumpet is setting the tone : he can yearn, sigh, sing weep or rant, but the phrases are always short, with a kind of surprise feeling of wonder on them, like musical question marks. If anyone is well placed to interact with the trumpeter, it's Nick Stephens, his long time musical partner, the one with the deep sound and round tone, and the equally sudden improvisational surprises. Moholo-Moholo is equally fantastic, and the moments are many when the listener - me, you - can do nothing else than smile or laugh because of the pure percussive joy he is hearing, inventive, precise and yes .... right. The band's energy creates an incredible pulse and drive, and that without explicit rhythms, quite an achievement - Stef, Free Jazz

DANGEROUS MUSICS



JON CORBETT

Jon Corbett played in various John Stevens' groups: Away, Folkus and Freebop, Barry Guy's Jazz Composers Orchestra and Harry Becket's Four Flugelhorn group. His own groups have included Freelance with John Butcher and Elton Dean, Dangerous Musics with Pat Thomas, Roger Turner and Nick Stephens and the Affinity Orchestra featuring Paul Rutherford, Alan Tomlinson, Maggie Nichols.

Corbett's playing, while relying mostly on conventionally-pitched utterances, springs meditatively into wild vibrato-driven frenzy that somehow, ironically, has calm at its core - Marc Medwin, All About Jazz USA

Corbett's lithe malleable trumpet feels like it's perpetually trying to engineer an escape route from its high register, from where broken fanfares and disquieting screams tumble around Stephens's rapid response bass - Phillip Clark, The Wire.

NICK STEPHENS

Nick Stephens worked regularly with John Stevens from 1976 until 1994. He collaberated with Dudu Puckwana on various projects and has a long running musical partnership with Frode Gjerstad. Their group Calling Signals has featured Paul Rutherford, Terje Isungset, Hasse Poulsen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Paal Nilssen-Love, Lol Coxhill and Jon Corbett. In 2005 he started Loose Torque Records which now has 23 releases, many featuring old friends Tony Marsh and Corbett. The latest release, and future project, a cello/bass duo with Fred Lonburg-Holm.

Stephens thrives in a trio where he can soak up space with booming long notes, slip in a sleek line between the splash of cymbals and the texture of a horn, and place other worldly arco color in the foreground. The bassist is the fulcrum of two of the better albums by improvising trios this year. - Bill Shoemaker USA

One of the great international bass players, on whom you can rely whatever the situation. - Improjazz,France

Stephens' beautiful arco underlines the most intriguing sections, while his fingured phrasing constitutes the backbone of short bursts of total freedom - Touching Extremes Italy

LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO

Louis Moholo-Moholo and The Bluenotes arrived in England in 1965. The music scene was knocked sideways with their stimulating rhythms and songs which influenced the jazz and improvised music scene in Europe which was also establishing its own identity at this time.

In 1965-67 Louis toured South America with Steve Lacy, returning to Britain in time to join Chris McGregor's newly formed Brotherhood of Breath which stunned audiences around Europe with their own special South African big band sound. Within this big band there were many other combinations of which Louis and Harry Miller on bass, formed one of the most formidable rhythm sections, such as Mike Osborne's Trio, Elton Dean's Ninesense, Harry's own group Isipingo, and various groups led by Dudu Pukwana. One of the most exciting groups he led in the early seventies was the mighty Spirits Rejoice featuring Evan Parker, Radu Malfatti, Nick Evans, Kenny Wheeler, Keith Tippett and the twin SA basses of Harry Miller and Johnny Dyani.

During the eighties Louis toured America with Peter Brotzmann's trio, and continued to work in Holland, Switzerland and Germany leading his own groups and developing many musical partnerships, including duos with Cecil Taylor in Berlin, Irene Schweizer in Switzerland. Another important milestone in Louis's career was the forming in 1990's of his nine piece band “Viva-La-Black”, which became the first group to tour South Africa, arranged by the British Council, as the lifting of Aparthied and freedom became imminent.



Jon Corbett photo by Peter Gannushkin, Downtownmusic.net