Impossible to pigeonhole
Jazz music makeover specialists The Neil Cowley Trio tell Angela Michael why it doesn’t really matter what their music is called, it only matters that it is good
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THE Neil Cowley Trio are quite simply undefinable. As they themselves say, it’s not a matter of labelling them post-jazz, punk-jazz or jazz-chill out, but more a question of “how good is it”?
That question, at least, can be answered with no hesitation; it is very good.
Led by the maverick child protege and pianist Neil and bolstered by two more very fine musicians in the form of Richard Saddler on double bass and Evan Jenkins on drums, this unlikely trio seem to have accidentally stumbled into the limelight with their debut album, 2007’s aptly titled Displaced.
Speaking of their undefined place in the music industry’s shopping list of genres, Neil says: “I think the word trio put a lot of people off. They didn’t really know what to expect or where we fitted in. But then neither did we. We just found ourselves in a world of jazz.”
They did manage to fit in somewhere, though, as Displaced was voted best album at the 2007 BBC Jazz Awards. This was a high accolade, indeed, for the miscast outcasts, especially as they had never really set out their stall to impress the lofty world of jazz impresarios.
Neil said: “It helped, it definitely helped, but the BBC Jazz Award is taken a lot more seriously abroad than it is here. We went to Germany and people would come down to the gigs to see us just because we had won.”
The band really turned the corner, though, following an appearance on Later . . . with Jools Holland in mid-April. Since then, the pianist really feels like they have found their audience, and that their audience has found them.
Remembering an evening which he says is “engraved in his mind forever”, Neil said: “Things have been going really great since the Jools Holland show. Sometimes we felt like the audiences were turning up to the wrong evening. Now we have full houses nearly everywhere we go.”
Neil is no stranger to sold-out venues. A naturally gifted pianist, he performed a Shostakovich piano concerto to a full house at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall when he was 10. Turning his back on the Royal Academy, he answered an advertisement in the music magazine Melody Maker at 17 and threw himself into the world of pop. Playing for bands such as Zero 7, The Pasadenas and The Brand New Heavies, Neil was always going to find a band to call his own or rather a “trio”.
Visiting Aberdeen as guests of Jazz Aberdeen and touring with their current album, Loud . . . Louder . . . Stop, the band have followed up their debut award-winning record with another fine exploration of jazz music and its hiding places, or lack of them. Neil says of the trio’s adventures into the world of jazz so far: “We were slightly intimidated by the whole scene. Were we capable of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of the jazz language? With Loud . . . Louder . . . Stop I realise that we didn’t want to.”
See The Neil Cowley Trio Tonight at The Blue lamp, Aberdeen. Call 01224 619769 for tickets or visit www.jazzaberdeen.com
