Scene 49
ART MATTERS
ALL THAT JAZZ
) I would like to introduce you to or remind you of Marion Charles, an artist whose studio is at Phoenix Brighton. Born in south London, she studied sculpture with Ben Franklin at Redhill & Reigate School of Arts & Crafts, and at Goldsmiths College with Ivor Roberts Jones. She has been awarded the Royal Academy Award for Sculpture and a postgrad year at Wimbledon College which allowed her to work with Israeli sculptor Menashe Kadishman.
REVIEWS
BY ENZO MARRA
Her drawings are now figurative in tone but not based on observation, their impact more caused by their immediacy and the directness that is involved in their application. Their inspiration ranging from the concept of the landscape, the face and its different emotional displays and resonances, the nude figure and how it can be seen, stood, striding, stood up. The range of mediums she utilises allowing a wide variety of strokes and surfaces to be seen, adding to the subject matter that they are used to portray. Inks, pastels, felt tips, wax, collage and water-based pigments. Drawn and painted, pencil strokes visible, washes and blocks of dried pigment, previous layers peeking through, the manners of their creation as visible as the subject matters they have been deployed to represent. This freedom allowing each series she begins to have little or no constraints other than the need for a support to hold them together. Her cast of figures included in the Blessés de Guerre series are both suitably visually and psychologically dark in the same instance, threatening without any blatantly obvious signifiers dragging us to such a conclusion. The darkness of life as important to portray as more positive reactions to at least keep us rational and somewhat thankful. The Bedroom series, an exploration of the nude from a very different viewpoint, allowing her to portray the emotion that could be unvoiced in the mind of the body that is being denied the protection and security of worn clothes. Their final achieved appearance differing with each change in inspiration, yet as a whole still unified by the intent seen in their individual execution. Her freedom to use colour in subdued and extravagant manners giving each series a coherent identity, never reducing the forms executed to empty stylisations or graphic depictions. Each addition to each series, needing to exist not merely another permutation. Each honest and necessary, another expression that demanded to be freed and seen. Their final achieved appearance differing with each change in inspiration, yet as a whole still unified by the intent seen in their individual execution. Over the years she has brought up her two sons as a single parent while being involved in teaching life drawing, sculpture and other related art subjects. These joys and social realities feeding and guiding the realms that her artworks will next spread their wings into. Having reacted to undergoing heart surgery, the concept of the bedroom and of protest, her deployed imagery is very much an extension and a mental unpacking of her experience and unique viewpoint of the lived world.
BY SIMON ADAMS
) VINNY GOLIA, HENRY KAISER et al: A Love Supreme Electric (Cuneiform). American saxophonist John Coltrane’s masterpieces, A Love Supreme and Meditations, are among the most spiritual, devotional works of jazz. Both were originally performed acoustically, which makes guitarist Henry Kaiser a brave man in attempting to rework the two pieces for electric instrumentation. He hasn’t slavishly copied the originals, rather delivering “a salvo dedicated to John Coltrane”, which transforms both pieces into new, enhanced compositions. What results is a sonic maelstrom of wailing guitar, pulsating Hammond organ riffs, and a furious rhythmic drive that sends both pieces into a new place altogether. Purists will recoil in horror at this attack on two of jazz’s unassailable heights, others will greet these new versions with undisguised glee. ) FRED HERSCH: Songs From Home (Palmetto). Piano genius – and gay icon – Fred Hersch describes this set as “kind of a comfort food album, with a little badass stuff in there. I didn’t want to make an easy listening album, but I did want to play some music that would make people happy.” Which is what he has done spectacularly well, turning in a set that embraces a contemplative Wouldn’t It Be Loverly from My Fair Lady as well as truly moving version of Jimmy Webb’s classic Wichita Lineman, a jaunty The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four and a stride version of the famous 1918 pop song, After You’ve Gone, not to mention a Joni Mitchell cover and a couple of Hersch originals. Anything Hersch plays oozes style, but this set – recorded in lockdown in his home studio in Pennsylvania – also holds your hand and tells you everything will soon be alright. ) JOHN HOLLENBECK: Songs You Like A Lot (Flexatone Records). American band leader, arranger and composer John Hollenbeck delivers his music with considerable wit and aplomb. He likes to entertain as well as inform. His latest set follows on from 2013’s Songs I Like A Lot and 2015’s Songs We Like A Lot with another set of popular classics, this time chosen by ‘You’, his audience, and arranged for two vocalists, a pianist and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. Among the reworked songs are Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up, The Bee Gees' usually saccharine How Deep Is Your Love?, and a radical rewrite of The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows. This is adventurous stuff that while easily accessible because of its well-known songs is also challenging in its musical demands. Take time to enjoy this fine set.
