A genre that can encompass most every style from the traditional and mainstream to the free and improvised, jazz is for many still the most pejorative of musical terms. Despite its long historical association with elements of cultural subversion and the use of narcotics, a louche detachment and sense of heightened sexuality, the word jazz often conjures up images of formality, elitism or impenetrability, a highbrow world inhabited by the intellectual and the bourgeoisie, a regular byword for everything that is really just plain old boring. An hour spent in the company of the Tori Freestone Trio just goes to show that it is anything but.
The former Leeds College of Music graduate Freestone tonight returns to the city of her studies with her tenor saxophone and Dave Mannington on upright bass and Tim Giles on drums right there by her side. Together they
showcase material from their forthcoming début album In The Chophouse, the freedom of expression and warmth in their playing forged from years of close friendship and an innate trust in each other’s considerable abilities.
Billed as SPROGGITS: A night of new work, improvised music and jazz from young improvisers and composers based in Leeds – curated by Glaswegian pianist and composer Declan Forde and with an excellent support slot from Dave Kane on improvised, solo bass – the Tori Freestone Trio produce a beautifully fresh sound born of quietly restrained improvisation, often threatening to do so but never quite spinning off uncontrollably into that totally out-there weirdness one often relates to free jazz. Organic in feel, melodic in nature and egalitarian in form, it seems wholly apposite that they should tonight be performing their music in the natural, unassuming surroundings of the erstwhile pork pie factory that is the Wharf Chambers Cooperative Club. Perhaps listening to jazz music can be really cool after all.
In The Chophouse by the Tori Freestone Trio is released on 21st April 2014 through Whirlwind Recordings Ltd.
