Jazz@Penylan Festival, Cardiff
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LIVE rock and pop events often happen in huge indoor venues, outdoor stadiums and fields of many acres, but the history of myths and legends in jazz is very different. The whispered religion of sacred performances never to be repeated or just occasionally captured on a recording are the cache of jazz aficionados.

Cardiff, very recently, has been busy reframing itself as a “music city,” home to huge rock and pop “events.” But is the “music city” good for local music?

Launching a hyper local jazz festival may be a brave (or foolish?) venture at this time, but a new one day jazz festival in Penylan, a suburb just outside the city centre, happened this Saturday. An antidote to the big budget corporate events clogging up the city’s arteries, it chose to promote the “niche” music of jazz and local professional musicians of significant talent. Many were local to Penylan, implying a “community” and offering a platform to celebrate the art of improvisation.

In common with similar community jazz events, St Edwards church plays a crucial role as the venue for three top-drawer acts in the afternoon. Local jazz stalwarts Glen Manby (alto sax) and Julian Martin (piano) fittingly kicked off the festival with a quartet featuring Slowly Rolling Camera’s Aiden Thorne on double bass. Their acknowledged hard bop skills never fail to lighten the mood on the disappointingly hot afternoon.

Then came popular guitarist James Chadwick’s Inside Out Quartet. Audiences connected with Frome saxophonist Sam Crockett’s vintage tenor, revered double bassist Paula Gardiner and amazing drum accompaniment from Liz Exell, who framed and added depth, perspective, light and shade around the central cool of Chadwick’s guitar. The afternoon concluded with the young London-based Other Oceans Quartet, who managed to combine light, space and texture with urgency, and made an impression.

The evening took place at The Gate, a well-established venue with impressive sound and lighting, and a staging which combined dramatic framing with a black velvet curtain backdrop between imposing columns and four backlights. Here the Simon Spillett Quartet played fast-paced Tubby Hayes songs with tenor sax which blistered alongside the heat in the auditorium.

The evening’s gig was called Tenor Madness, as a nod to the loved Sony Rollins album, and the second tenor was provided by the legendary Jean Toussaint, whose young, exciting quintet keeps him cool as air conditioning. A fitting finale to the festival, JT5 featuring Tomorrow Warrior’s Joti on trumpet was a treat for the enraptured audience.

Lastly, young, fresh but masterful, the Isla Croll Quartet at the Four Seasons Coffee House. This was the late-night, intimate, chill yet playful experience that jazz legends are made of.

There were few people to see or hear that closing act, but it dropped the curtain on the first jazz festival in Cardiff for 30 years, and the first ever without corporate or major public funding. And in 10 years time, many more will claim to have been sat in that dimly lit coffee house watching a mesmerising performance of Bye Bye Blackbird, as if it had never been heard before.