The Dean Street Underground Orchestra is a biggish band aiming to be a regular presence at Dean Street's Pizza Express Jazz Club, with a repertoire of originals by its members and some jazz classics. It has the makings of a creative collective, but a big band (even a nine-piece such as this one) is a big boulder to push uphill, and at the moment the Underground Orchestra's de facto leader is Tim Garland, the fine UK saxophonist and composer who joined Chick Corea last year and now spends much of his working life out of the country.
Garland's high profile, vision of jazz and long history as an inventive bandleader have made him a strong candidate to get this kind of a venture on the road. The Underground Orchestra's (so far) monthly Monday-night shows are still too heavily weighted toward Garland's own music, but the spiritedness of the playing and the blue-chip pedigree of the performers suggest that much more of a workshop feel could emerge over time, with composers inside and outside the band using it as a springboard for new work.
This Monday's line-up imposingly included Winston Clifford on drums, Gareth Williams on piano, Andy Panayi on reeds, and Jamiroquai's Martin Shaw and the former Jazz Warrior Kevin Robinson on trumpets. The band also brought out a large and expectant audience with a good many classy musicians in it, so there has certainly been a buzz on the wires.
An eclectic Loose Tubes echo is sometimes distantly apparent in Garland's ensemble writing, in pieces that enmesh orthodox jazz elements with materials drawn from all over contemporary music and traditional folk forms. A richly harmonised uptempo piece peppered with tempo changes preceded Panayi's light and liquid flute account of Garland's Little Serafina, with the notes of the soloists fluttering lightly down onto yielding pillows of brass chords.
On the quicker Gentle Nemesis, a typical, lyrical Garland melody, Shaw's flugelhorn solo mingled lustrous long sounds with nimble and elegant double-time figures as Clifford's cymbal beat began to lean on him. Will Vincent, a young American altoist Garland was introducing to London, delivered a superb solo of rugged, leathery sounds turning into rounded, mellifluous high notes, his secure control and storming energy occasionally reminiscent of Bobby Watson.
But the real potential of the band as a powerhouse inter preter of strong composition burst out on Made by Walking - a headlong contrapuntal swinger of pumping chords going every which way, with the horns winding conversationally between them and around each other, and Garland, Williams and Robinson breaking out with telling solos. Definitely a space to watch.
