Musings on a live jazz music session with Alan Dearling in Hebden Bridge
Sunday Easy jazz sessions at the Trades Club are becoming a nice sort of institution. Yesterday, it was the turn of Manchester pianist Matt Wilde and his trumpet-playing musician friend, Aaron Wood, to provide a musical tapestry for the Trades’ audience. Think ‘ambient jazz’, mellow, reflective, tinged with melancholy.
I believe that the duo created nine improvisations. Matt informed the crowd:
“We’re basically improvising themes, building like an ark or story, I suppose.”
Earlier, Matt said, “This is a mixture of new ideas, in progress work, and ones we’ve reinterpreted in a new way with flugelhorn, electronics and Keys.”
In the advance publicity we were told, “…pianist, producer, and composer Matt Wilde brings a distinctive sound that sits at the crossroads of jazz improvisation and electronic beat-making. Influenced by the sample-heavy work of Madlib, JDilla, and Pete Rock, his music carries a deep connection to hip-hop while remaining rooted in jazz.
Wilde’s sound is shaped by early UK garage as much as it is by jazz harmony and crate-digging discoveries like Bill Evans.”
Certainly, during the set Matt and Aaron created plenty of soundscapes, frequently led by Matt on his Prophet keyboard, with Aaron interpolating beat patterns into loops and then layering his horn sounds into Matt’s piano compositions. Overall, it was a highly polished, professional performance, sensual and sonorous – a lot of beats, blips, tinkling keys, gentle wisps of horns… It was intricate, tonally rich, but also somewhat ‘mono-tonal’, with, to my ears, not enough gradations, lights and shades of sound, and opportunities to let loose, have fun. I suspect that when the two musicians play in bigger ensembles, they join in a few more ‘playtimes’ and create a bit more excitement.
Along with friends who attended the Sunday Easy show we all thought that Matt did enliven the show with some of his anecdotes. One which resonated is perhaps worth repeating. Matt explained that he also teaches: “On one course, on AI Music, students create music with AI prompts…One student told me that the ‘food in the canteen was AI’. What he meant was, it’s pretty shitty!”
Aaron Wood specialises in playing trumpets and flugelhorn, as well as being a beat-maker, performing as a session musician, that he says can offer “…recordings that add some unique flavour to your sauce.”
Originally also primarily a beat-maker, Matt is apparently a self-taught musician. In many ways he’s been shaped by the UK club scene, especially in Manchester. Matt Wilde has released two albums on vinyl, the debut was, ‘Hello World’ and the follow-up is ‘Find a Way’. He has been receiving plenty of support across BBC Radio, Jazz FM and Worldwide FM and he has performed at major UK jazz festivals and respected venues such as Camden’s Jazz Café. His promo says that he is “…building a reputation for immersive, groove-driven live sets that balance spontaneity with tightly crafted, electronic-influenced production.”
Here is the video of Matt and Aaron, ‘Everyday Words’, which was one of the flagship pieces of the live set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsy_CZcf7LU
