Tides, the jazz/classical crossover project driven by the partnership of classical composer Colin Riley and jazz saxophonist Tim Whitehead, was premiered on Sunday by the 12-piece Homemade Orchestra.
Riley told a crowded house of vociferous and mostly young sympathisers that it was part of his plan to fool them about what was improvised and what was written. Since the main improvising voice was Whitehead's articulate, Brecker-like saxophone, with trumpeter Dick Pearce shadowing, the game was maybe not as hard to play as he might have liked. But Riley does appear to offer his strings and woodwind players some interpretational space as well.
The repertoire was mostly drawn from the Homemade Orchestra's Tides CD, and as on that disc the emphasis is on Riley rather than Whitehead. The latter's fans had to be content with the sparky opening performance from the saxophonist's own quartet. Whitehead likes putting new spins on pop and jazz standards, with help from his offbeat partners - particularly drummer Milo Fell, with his eccentric mix of swing fluency, bumpy funk and breaking-glass cymbal effects, and the intelligent and almost cliche-free postbop pianist Liam Noble.
The Homemade Orchestra then played two sets, pausing only for a texturally interesting interlude: a soprano singing contemporary poetry to Riley's intricate string lines. This was another showcase for the composer's softly vibrant embroidery, though the mixture of operatic haughtiness and vernacular witticisms remains an acquired taste. But the Tides repertoire showed little of this stiffness. Noble's fragile chords launched the opening While It Lasts, which gathered momentum to become a choppy ensemble piece with Whitehead's forceful tenor burning at its centre.
A low bass drone and the mercurial trickle of a vibraphone enveloped an upward-spiralling sax motif on the ruminative Bird and a Loose Tubes-like raucousness appeared in I Know Who the Alligators Are. But Whitehead's saxophone was at its most evocative in the arching high-register figures over undulating chords on his own A Third View of Annet.
