The Church, September 26
8/10
In both his piano playing and his composing Gary Daley has a way of making aural images appear out of – and retreat back into – aural mists. Had this ensemble not included drums, there’d have been few hard outlines: just malleable, soft-focus harmony and melody, hinging on a keen feel for rhythm.
Daley unveiled a 90-minute suite, Round the Sun, scored for keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and eight-voice choir, which was thematically cohesive, without becoming samey. It diverged rhythmically, texturally and in mood, but kept us in a specific sonic world – even when stretched to embrace John Lennon’s Across the Universe.
Despite the suite’s inception lying in Daley’s being severely afflicted by Covid, it’s more a song of hope than a diary of suffering, expressed with his innately restrained sense of beauty. This was immediately evident on the opening Breath, blurring improvising quartet and wordlessly singing choir.
Not that contrast was absent. Soma had a blistering feature from guitarist Hilary Geddes, who happily adds some of the grit and grunge to her sound that too many clone-like jazz guitarists eschew. Qualia had a solo prelude from drummer Chloe Kim, who was obliged to try working within fairly strict dynamic constraints, given the lively acoustics of the venue, a sibling of the fabulous Phoenix Central Park. But constraints are creative spurs to artists of Kim’s sophistication, as she alternated tinkling cymbals, jolting blocks of drums and delicate punctuations.
Qualia itself featured a poetic Daley at the Fazioli concert grand, and a singing unison melody from piano and guitar (carrying echoes of Keith Jarrett and Sam Brown in the 1970s). Geddes’ solo prelude led us into Across the Universe, which, gently sung by Arlo Sim (plus choir), slotted seamlessly into the suite, its refrain of “nothing’s going to change my world” enunciating the work’s inherent theme of resilience.
For the blithe melody of Spiders, Daley swapped to his magnificent Guerrini accordion, playing over an intrinsically edgy 5/4 groove. Nothing to Leave, a solo bass feature from Jacques Emery, was a little cosmos of its own, juxtaposing the sheer weight of the lowest bowed notes with flurries of higher pizzicato sighs and cries.
The ensemble seemed to relax more thereafter, evident in the intensifying rhythm and playful piano/guitar exchanges of Ghost in the Machine. Daley’s solo piano piece, Nothing to Show, exemplified his unerring sense of space and placement, before Round the Sun segued into Begin Again, with a burst of melodic opulence from the piano giving way to a repeated chant from the choir, and a sense of the circle being completed.
It would be interesting to hear the piece in a room with even more scope for drama in the drums’ dynamics – but perhaps that would harden the lines and lessen the mistiness. Any arts festival picking up this project will be proud to have done so.