British jazz pianist Alex Wilson is one of those infuriating people blessed with not only an abundance of natural talent, but also a fair helping of personal charm.
Both were on full display at his first performance for the Jazz Factory music festival, a set of three solo piano pieces played beneath the vaulted ceiling of Manesterly Palace on Wednesday night.
Settling at his grand piano, Wilson turned to the audience, unfolded a small crib sheet and read a few words of welcome and thanks in halting Arabic, the result, he said, of two 15-minute lessons prior to the event. The pronunciation may have required some work, but the sentiment was well-received; the audience was firmly on his side for the rest of the evening.
If the intricately painted ceiling hadn’t been firmly nailed down it might well have been lifted by the thunderous applause that punctuated his finale.
For Wilson, playing solo is something of an exception; he is more commonly found performing as leader of a big band alongside musicians from quite diverse backgrounds.
Indeed, if anybody’s career embodies the spirit of cross-cultural collaboration behind the Jazz Factory, it is Wilson’s. His first four albums established him as a Latin jazz musician of note, incorporating influences from Cuba, Africa and American jazz, among others. His fifth and sixth albums have focused more on salsa, but have included contributions from the worlds of soul, gospel, R&B and bhangra.
The three tunes with which he bewitched the audience on Wednesday, however, were all drawn from his instrumental piano album “Inglaterra.
First out of the box, “Hamattan evoked his family ties to West Africa. Based around a hypnotic rhythmic cell played on a middle-D, the tune proceeded with the urgency of a telegraph message.
“That’s a piece I wrote many years ago, he told Daily News Egypt before the show, “and it’s named after the trade winds that hit Sierra Leone.
“I’m not very good with names, but the original version had two saxophones and a flugelhorn, and it had this warm, gentle sound to it. My father said it evoked a warm, gentle breeze and so he suggested the name.
Next up was “Currulao Cool, a piece that spans two oceans and two continents.
Wilson’s improvisation around the currulao theme took the audience from a sprightly opening evocative of piratical adventures on the high seas, through the lazy early hours in a smoky jazz bar, and back through some furiously hammered chords to the original tune.
The set concluded with an interpretation of the Miles Davis tune “Solar.
“Miles Davis’ original harks back to the time when he was playing with Charlie Parker and Cannonball Aderly, and all those, in the 50s and 60s, said Wilson.
“It was an idea of my drummer. We all love jazz, even though we play in a salsa and Latin world, and he said: ‘Look, this would work in a danzón rhythm.’
“Danzón is a very stately rhythm. It was developed from a dance brought over by the Haitians, who were exiles, escaped from the Revolution. They came over to Cuba and brought this ‘contradanza,’ which was an English country dance, and added to this was French chamber music, because the upper echelons of colonial Cuba were listening to French chamber music. And so these two forms combined in quite a distilled way with Afro-Cuban percussion element, and they all fused to create danzón.
“So, skipping forward, originally ‘Solar’ was played in a swing style. But if you slow it down, it’s quite a stately sort of rhythm, and it works. It’s not an exact science. What I’m doing is evoking that rhythm, but I’ll be playing the jazz chord changes.
Wilson says that his solo performances are always interpretations rather than reproductions of the original. This is partly due to his roots in jazz, a key element of which is improvisation.
“There is a tradition of improvisation in jazz piano, particularly starting with Keith Jarret and his Köln concert in 1975, which was a seminal solo piano album, says Wilson. “That really set the benchmark. He came with some ideas and he just played. It’s like a stream of consciousness, if you like.
Added to which, says Wilson, replicating such traditional forms on a single instrument is impossible. Inevitably, the results will be a new form all of its own.
“You can play salsa piano on its own, but that would be like taking one of the ingredients from the ingredients of a cake, and expecting it to taste like a cake.
“So what I do when I do a solo piano concert is invoke all of my influences, one of which is salsa. But there’s also jazz, for example. And there’s also so Malian influence, because I did a Malian musical collaboration recently. So it’s sort of an encapsulation of where I am musically, I guess, on the piano.
“It’s not an exact science. What I aim for is just to be able to sit and just to go anywhere. With the structures in my mind, but actually to go wherever the mood takes me.
Catch Alex Wilson tonight, 7 pm, at El Amir Taz Palace.
