14 February 2008

Britain's most adventurous big band tours England this spring but you won't catch them in the usual halls and clubs. From 27 February to 19 March, Colin Towns's Mask Orchestra performs three jazz ballets with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in Birmingham, Oxford, Sunderland and Plymouth. It's the band’s second outing with the ballet company and follows their acclaimed 2004 tour. Featuring Ellington's Shakespeare Suite, Take Five - a new work based on Brubeck’s great quartet recordings - and (best of all) Towns' own Orpheus Suite, the tour offers both Jazz and dance fans a carnival for the senses as music, movement, costumes and lights combine to produce something new and special. Towns and BRB artistic director David Bintley share a desire to expand both the audience for and the range of their art forms. Also a film and TV composer, Towns is no stranger to the dramatic but how did this collaboration come about? 'A friend called Anne Bentley was playing bassoon with the company and she started feeding David Bintley my stuff,' Colin explains. “It really came from that. It took about fifteen years,” Colin laughs. “I’d always wanted to do a ballet but wasn’t sure how to go about it. The BRB don’t commission very much and David treads very carefully because he has to be seen to be spending his Arts Council money very wisely and to be reaching out to all areas of the public. So, I was really chuffed when he rang.” Orpheus takes the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but gives it a modern twist – the Argonauts of the original tale are transformed into a Jazz band to great effect. “Orpheus is not about snakes and poison in this show,” Colin tells me. “It’s about drugs and sex and inspired, by Miles Davis’ early years, when he was supposedly a pimp and had a string of hookers. In our story, we have ‘the moisturisers’, who perform that role.” He laughs again, as he describes the costumes the female dancers wear, “It’s true to the spirit of the myth but brings it into a different world.” Having seen the performance in 2004, what David and Colin have achieved is something quite beautiful. At times scary, at times sexy and always provocative, this was a marriage made in the underworld, if not in heaven. Obviously, working with dancers restricts the extent his musicians can improvise. So, how does Colin deal with that dilemma as a composer and arranger? It’s a difficulty that both Colin and David were alive to, as he tells me, “For a start, I’ve worked very closely with David and we have cut the solos down at times. But when one of the band is soloing, David can still guide the dancers by hanging on to what’s going on behind the solo. There was one piece from Orpheus that had this kind of late period Miles’ thing I was trying to get in. David wasn’t sure it would work but he got right inside it and gave it this fantastic dance setting. It has to be inspiring on both sides. If it works the dancers will really get a lot from it and the story will be told more effectively.” It’s not just the challenge of working in new areas that made Colin want to work with the company. It’s the chance to take Jazz out of its usual community and to a new audience that may be experiencing it for the first time, as he notes, “Dance attracts people from three or four upwards. To me and the band, it’s important to get as many people to hear this Jazz triple bill as possible because they’ll hear music they don’t normally hear - whether it’s historical like the Brubeck or Ellington or more contemporary like the Orpheus Suite.” Even so, it seems a shame that the Mask Orchestra hasn’t toured in its own right in the UK since the late nineties. “It’s always in the back of my mind,” says Colin, “but it costs a huge amount of money just to step outside the door. A number of places would like to take the Mask in the UK but (laughing) we’ve played more gigs abroad over the years than we’ve played here, which is bizarre. We’ve done some big, high profile festivals abroad and got great reviews. I will obviously write again for the Mask. It’s more how to go about it. With the demise of the record shops that makes it harder. You sell records on the gigs, so you really need a good bunch of gigs to actually get some money back after spending it all out.” The short answer is for fans to grab the chance to hear the orchestra this spring. They won’t be disappointed. Right from his first album, Bolt from the Blue, to Another Think Coming from 2001 and The Orpheus Suite from 2004, Colin’s approach has been both simple and complex. Simple in his choice of some of the UK’s best musicians to play his music – people like trumpeters Guy Barker and Henry Lowther, guitarists John Parricelli and Phil Robson, saxophone stylists such as Alan Skidmore, Peter King and Julian Siegel and that doyenne of Jazz singers, Norma Winstone. The complexity lies in the need to ensure that the music stretches and challenges these hugely talented musicians. It was while playing and recording with Rock band Gillan – and providing much of their material – that Colin taught himself to write and arrange music. Writing for film and TV provided an entry into different areas of music and when Colin began thinking of writing for a Jazz orchestra, he approached his old friend, Alan Skidmore. “I played him some of the pieces and his response was that we had to get the right players because this was really difficult stuff,” Colin recalls. “It was through Skid that I worked out who to approach.” Many of those he approached - like Skid, Julian Arguelles, Guy Barker, Henry Lowther and Peter King – have continued to be involved in Colin’s music. The life of a Jazz musician is hardly easy but the challenge of Colin’s music keeps these cats interested, as well as attracting younger players such as the brilliant young saxophonist Simon Allen, who joined the Mask for Orpheus and adds his talents to this tour. Sadly, demand for Colin’s skills remains higher abroad than in the UK and he works regularly with the German NDR and HR Big Bands. A recent project for the HR Big Band was dedicated to the Mahavishnu Orchestra and proved particularly successful. In fact, ex-Mahavishnu drummer Billy Cobham, who was involved, was so taken with it that he’s organised gigs in Australia. Towns will be playing the Adelaide Festival with Billy, an all star septet and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in March. It may be a while before you get to hear the Mask live again in the UK. So, do yourself a favour and catch this show, if you can. Trust me – you certainly will not be disappointed.