Paul Mottram – Seven Ages of Man
(Ubuntu Data UBU0140. Album assessment by Mike Collins)

The possibilities are we’ve all heard music composed and organized by Paul Mottram. His profession as a composer stretches again to the 80’s and has resulted in an encyclopaedic CV of TV and Movie credit. Seven Ages of Man sees Mottram carry his expertise and artistic creativeness to bear on a challenge conceived as a jazz-classical hybrid, mixing the liberty and sound world of jazz with the expansiveness and construction of orchestral music.

Tim Garland is on the coronary heart of this challenge, Mottram’s affiliation with him and Jason Rebello on piano dates again to their time as college students at Guildhall. The suite was composed with Garland in thoughts and developed with a formidable sextet on the core, Jonny Mansfield on vibes, Misha Mullov-Abbado on bass, Ralph Salmins on drums and Paul Clarvis on percussion becoming a member of Garland and Rebello.

Mottram has used Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages’ as a tool to construction the suite and as inspiration for themes and moods, including two sections at the start, Origin and Gestation to set the scene for the journey from Toddler to Previous Age. The result’s 70 minutes of absorbing, various and vibrant music. The mixing of written passages and improvisation is seamless with the orchestra offering by turns texture, rhythmic power and accompaniment, dense layers of concord, hovering melodies and typically all of those directly.

Garland brings a finely tuned sensibility to the challenge from his personal large-scale writing and enjoying initiatives with orchestras. The primary sound we hear in Origin is his unaccompanied soprano sax, quickly joined by the remainder of the rhythm part after which the orchestra. Toddler is a gently transferring lullaby with the soprano retreating and weaving evocative melodic patterns. Schoolboy, which first develops with a fastidiously orchestrated dancing dynamic from the interplay of strings and sextet, then morphs right into a pulsing groove and Garland’s spiralling solo injects a bristling power, prolonged by flowing solo from the piano.

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Via the assorted ages, the writing develops moods, elegant melodic themes and evocative textures. The mixing of the sextet and the orchestra mixed with chic enjoying, offers the music an actual emotional cost. The Seven Ages of Man is a fantastically realised conception. Ubuntu Data, who’ve launched the CD, are quick constructing a strong monitor document for supporting and releasing adventurous and attention-grabbing music.

Mike Collins is a pianist and author based mostly in Bristol, who runs the jazzyblogman website https://jazzyblogman.wordpress.com/.

Twitter: @jazzyblogman http://www.twitter.com/jazzyblogman

LINKS: Album function by John Bungey
Buy Seven Ages of Man