The Scottish folk/jazz band, Celtic Feat, dedicated much of its Sunday programme at the London jazz festival to the little-known connections between jazz and football (as in their song Jock Stein A Love Supreme). Later the same day, the formidable singer, Juliet Roberts, devoted hers to the contrariness of emotions and affections. And later still, the diminutive Italian powerhouse saxophonist, Rosario Giuliani, focused his set on the legacy of Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, reforged in his own fierce heat.
Celtic Feat played the finale Caber Records' Tossing the Caber show on the free stage in the Royal Festival Hall. The band, augmented by the agile sax lines of Julian Arguelles, succeeded in energetically hammering together the eager bounce Scottish reel and the more ambiguous rhythms of contemporary jazz.
Juliet Roberts, the former Working Week vocalist with one of the most majestic soul, gospel and jazz-inspired voices on the UK circuit, also drew together some disparate elements: roaring, confessional soul-singing, boldly ambivalent melody lines and the soft sheen of a string quartet. She affectingly delivered the repertoire of her new CD, Beneath the Surface.
Roberts calls these songs "innervisions", and they unquestionably are a very personal mix of an exhortatory, big-impact singing style and an unexpectedly private and meditative mood. She overdid the long autobiographical introductions - though she was engagingly aware of it. But in the slowly unfolding ballad, Hold Me Softly, the self-interrogatory Promises and the punchy Working Week song, Touching Heaven, she emphasised how far she steps outside the usual confines of the tradition that shaped her. There was plenty of dynamic jazz soloing too, notably from the excellent pianist Andrew McCormack (Roberts's arranger) and a young UK saxophonist of the moment, Soweto Kinch.
Over at the Pizza Express Jazz Club, saxophonist Rosario Giuliani played a scalding set with his own quartet. Giuliani quotes Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley and Jackie McLean as his driving forces, but the tantalising hesitancies and devious build-ups of Art Pepper are also audible, while John Coltrane's sermonising intensity powerfully influences the momentum.
Giuliani brilliantly varied the dynamics, preaching uproariously for 10 minutes on his new title track, Mr Dodo, then dropping into a barely audible whisper for a ballad. He is one of the freshest and fiercest saxophone sounds to have emerged in Europe in recent years.
