There is a jovial intensity about the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio. As they launch vivaciously into the second set of their visit to a packed Ronnie Scotts, they clearly enjoy playing together, as the many smiles and expressions of delight they exchange on stage make blatantly clear. There is a relentlessness, though, as if they’d allowed themselves to be a little too possessed by their virtuosity and high volume.
As Ledbetter (pictured below) makes clear in his opening intro, almost a harangue rather than something tentative, the audience are invited to feel the music and express their delight, not expect the cool and thoughtful jazz that might be played in a library. This is jazz that has gone through the mill of hard rock – an inevitable generational thing - with a faint Latin and Caribbean party tinge that reflects Ledbetter’s frequent work with soca star David Rudder, and many Latin American musicians.
The result is a crowd-pleasing entertainment – complete with the charm of Ledbetter’s witty explanatory introductions. I was - strange to say - at time reminded of the easy-listening quality of the Dave Brubeck Quartet in its prime, not stylistically at all, for there isn’t the crossover nod to classical music that made hits like “Take Five” so popular, but because of the brilliant ability to sweep the audience away, a kind of charm, unsubtle in some ways, and yet appealing. There is a hearty bounce in that they do, on the sweeter side of funk, so less sensual, but exciting nonetheless.
Ledbetter leaves much room to his trio partners, his ego doesn’t get in the way: from the opening two numbers, “Two Cousins “ and “Elephant in the Room”, there are frequent bass solos, showcases for the considerable talent and invention of Rich Brown (pictured right) – sometime member of avant-gardist Steve Coleman and Five Elements – fluent on his versatile 6-string bass, bending the notes in a tradition that owes so much to Jaco Pastorius, touching the strings lightly for eerie effect rather than pressing them down in the fret-board. Swinging seamlessly between underscoring Ledbetter’ soften very rhythmic chord-riffs (the Latin keyboard touch here) and providing delicate counterpoint.
If drummers fall into two main categories – put simply, the Max Roach or school of intricate, delicately thought-through accompaniment, and the more vigorous fire of Art Blakey – Larnell Lewis (pictured below) crashes through with the thunderous ferocity of the latter, as if channelling the earth-shattering ancestral power of the Yoruba god Shango, expressed most movingly in the bata drums of Nigerian percussionists, who play so much louder than their Cuban santeria descendants. In the context of this trio, which, for all of Ledbetter’s intense block chord pyrotechnics, remains a jazz piano trio, Lewis plays at times too loud, crashing away on his snare drum and drowning the sound of the Yamaha grand, normally louder than a Steinway, but an ordinary piano all the same .
There is more crazed pomp – the word is apt - in “About Climbing Mountains”, but after a dramatic start, the piece thankfully quietens down. The relief after the storm is palpable, a little like the soothing calm that follows the thunderous clatter in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Quietly repeated notes from Ledbetter, a touch of minimalist keyboards, and a magical bass solo from Rich Brown, who throws out fluid runs that feel like a cooling breeze. These are for me the best moments in the set – enhanced no doubt by the clatter that precedes and follows them, but there is something about the pace and structure of the set, that doesn’t work as well as it might. There are too many set-pieces, in which the pianist underscores semi-solo pyrotechnics from drummer Lewis. It feels as if they might need a dose of ‘less is more’. As in one of the later pieces they play, “Song of the River” in which Ledbetter evokes the sights of an Amazon trip, and the fiery drummer contents himself – and the audience – with light play on the tom-tom drums, tribal lite perhaps appropriate in a moment when the music, as Ledbetter tells us he favours, is connected with visual images and impressions.
This is perhaps strongest on a touching piece, inspired by his baby daughter’s sighing, as he sat with her on his lap at the piano ”Suspirito” is a delight, and Ledbetter’s account of the music’s very intimate origins very touching. Lewis goes even quieter on the drums caressing the drums with his hands, and bringing them alive in a mode that suits a newborn’s amazement at the world.
But the magic is somewhat lost as this moment of sheer beauty is eclipsed by one of those climaxes that the trio seem to favour: they become collectively grandiloquent – maybe they know that an audience will respond warmly to this kind emotional manipulation. It feels at times like film music and these guys are clearly capable of more. The final piece, “Gravity”, the title track of their latest album takes them back to their near-to-default mode. An assault on the senses, that somehow falls short of the promise of its instrumental virtuosity and the evident complicity of the three musicians before us.
