Hot Lament
Paula Gardiner (bass, acoustic guitar, flute)
Lee Goodall (saxophones, flutes, percussion)
Mark O’Connor (drums, percussion)
Paula Gardiner’s presence on the Welsh Jazz scene has been an inspiring one for a long time. As well as heading up the Jazz course at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Paula is the Honorary President of the Swansea-based organisation, Women in Jazz. In fact, Paula has been so active around the region that it is surprising that she has yet to achieve the wider recognition in Britain and Europe that she so richly deserves. Hot Lament, Paula’s third CD under her own name will change all that.
Featuring Paula on double bass, guitar and flute alongside regular trio partners saxophonist Lee Goodall and drummer Mark O’Connor, Hot Lament is an album of delightful contrasts. One of Britain’s most lyrical and melodic bass players, Paula Gardiner is also an accomplished classical guitarist and flautist. Guitar was her first instrument and through her classical studies, she grew to love the music of Bach and also that of Brazilian and Argentinean composers, like Leo Brouwer, Manuel Ponce, Egberto Gismonte and Hermeto Pascoal. Her first influences from the Jazz world came from European players like Eberhard Weber, highly melodic musicians and composers, who draw on a European heritage, as well as on Jazz.
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From these sources, Paula Gardiner fashions a music as warm, as attractive and as subtle as anything you will hear this year. Her trio can play anything from the Great American Songbook to Abstraction, imbuing their repertoire with their own conception and feel. Hot Lament moves easily from the sombre, elegiac opening title track, through the Folk-ish, almost medieval moods of In the Garden and the Celtic-sounding Compassion. Elsewhere, with Lee Goodall’s flute to the fore, there’s a strong West-African vibe to Riding On The Back Of The Salmon and Comment, the latter one of Paula’s most lovely melodies. Three short tracks bracket the set, almost as witty, ironic but affectionate asides on the Jazz Tradition, to which the trio give full vent on No Coincidence.
Hot Lament is a trio record and one that in its range shows up the limitations of many other such ventures. There’s an authority and maturity of vision here that surpasses so much that calls itself Modern Jazz. If there’s a track that defines Hot Lament, it is Beneath Rioja Skies – vibrant and forceful, it’s a sheer masterclass in the Art of the Trio. With Hot Lament, Paula Gardiner is no longer a Welsh-kept secret.
If you like this album check out ‘Circular Motion’ by the Kevin Figes Quartet
If you’re not taken with this, why not try ‘Lost Something’ by Bourne Davis Kane
