Some bloke called Shakespeare once said: ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’. Well the noble bard must have been thinking of the final gig at McHugh’s yesterday which turned into a beautiful celebration of the strength and vitality of Northern Ireland jazz. McHugh’s has called time on the popular Saturday afternoon jazz club which had delighted fans of the music for the past two years and the basement was packed to the rafters as the final line-up of Linley Hamilton, David Lyttle, Alan Shields and special guest Ronnie Greer took to the stage. Ronnie is one of Northern Ireland’s finest blues musicians and his delicate soulful playing in a set featuring Monk, Mingus and Miles, showed once again that jazz and blues are just two sides of the one coin. One of the highlights of the set was David Lyttle’s arrangement of ‘All Blues’ from Miles Davis’s iconic ‘Kind of Blue’ – the album that even non jazz fans have in their record collection. The drummer’s solo on this piece had to be heard to be believed, as he pulled out every trick in his substantial musical locker. There was a different feel to yesterday’s session and we glimpsed the future of Northern Irish jazz when a trio of Ballyclare-based 16-year-olds – Jack Kelly, Alex Aiken and Jake Holmes played three songs – Basin Street Blues, Honeysuckle Rose and Doctor Jazz, during the break to great cheers. And after the interval, three members of cutting edge quartet Robocobra, Chris Ryan, Tom Tabori and Jamie MacKenzie, joined the band to play some superb straightahead jazz, showing how this great music brings people of all ages, styles and backgrounds together. Another young musician, drummer Ben Flavelle-Cobain also showed what he could do, confidently soloing with the band. There has been a renaissance of jazz in Belfast in the past two years and McHugh’s has been at the epicentre of it. Unfortunately, the cold hard reality is that money talks and it appears the gig was no longer financially viable. As the session neared its conclusion, Terry Corr, a great advocate of jazz and one of the most loyal members of the regular audience, made a passionate speech, praising the energy and commitment of Linley Hamilton in promoting jazz and arguing that the bean counters who know the price of everything and the value of nothing should have been there to witness the sheer joy that music can bring. Ronnie Greer also thanked his great friend for giving musicians the opportunity to play the improvised music they love in the way in they want to. Linley Hamilton thanked McHugh’s for providing musicians with a platform for the past two years and promised that it was merely the ‘end of the beginning’, hinting that the gig would resume at a new venue later this year, so Watch this Space… You got the impression that the audience didn’t want the gig to end and as session approached its conclusion, they demanded an encore. The band finished appropriately with the Ellington standard ‘Things Ain’t What they Used to Be’ to a rapturous standing ovation. As the crowd made their way out into typically grey Belfast late August evening, we are reminded of the immortal words of another great scribe, Vinnie Jones, who once said: ‘Goodbye McHugh’s – It’s been Emotional!’
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:17:53 +0000