Efpi Presents: Fairhall & Hunter ‘Winifred Atwell Revisited’ + Kuster - Ferrari - Byrne
Pianist Adam Fairhall and drummer Johnny Hunter are stalwarts of Manchester’s creative music scene. They’ve established a duo to explore early jazz forms through an avant garde lens. The piano/drums format is perfectly suited to this, being a favoured format in both Harlem stride and free music.
Adam’s interest in ragtime, stride, barrelhouse, boogie and blues has been well-documented on previous albums, including The Imaginary Delta (SLAM 2012, named Album of the Year by Bird is the Worm) and his solo album Friendly Ghosts (Efpi 2017). His ability to mix these idioms with contemporary approaches has resulted in a distinctive pianistic voice. Johnny’s versatility and inventiveness as a drummer has resulted in an equally individual musical personality, and as with Adam his vocabulary ranges across eras, from ragtime snare techniques to deft swing brushwork and clattering free textures.
Their current duo project is titled Winifred Atwell Revisited. In this they explore the repertoire and idiom of a neglected figure of 1950s British popular music, the Trinidadian pianist Winifred Atwell. Atwell was enormously popular in Britain and Australia in the post-war era, selling over 20 million records, and yet she is barely a footnote in jazz histories and histories of popular music. In a sense, her music falls between stools; too little improvisation to be considered genuinely jazz and yet too much a part of the murky pre-rock era of popular music to be considered by pop histories.
Nonetheless, in addition to forging a ground-breaking career as a Black female instrumentalist (she was the first Black person to have a no.1 hit in the UK), Atwell brought aspects of the honky tonk piano craze sweeping America together with the music hall and pub piano traditions of Britain, and her music resonated deeply with the mid-century revivals of ragtime and traditional jazz in both the US and the UK. In this sense Atwell was a nexus point of various streams of transatlantic popular music. She made boogie and ragtime household sounds in the UK.
Dee Byrne is a London-based saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in pushing the boundaries of jazz. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. She is a member of electronics duo Deemer, European quintet Ydivide and the London Improvisers Orchestra. Alongside Bern-based musicians Oli Kuster and Cyrill Ferrari, Byrne creates electronics-laden improvised music that draws equally from jazz and experimental electronica. Their debut album Motherboard Pinball was released with Efpi Records in September 2021.
Dee Byrne has a Masters in Jazz Performance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where she studied from 2008-2011. In 2016 Dee was a PRSF Women Make Music Artist and in 2018 she was a recipient of the Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England.
PHOTO CREDIT — Dee Byrne by Alan Ball
Adam Fairhall // Piano
Johnny Hunter // Suitcase Drums
-------
Dee Byrne // Saxophone
Oli Kuster // Synths
Cyrill Ferrari // Guitar
Venue information:
The Yard, 11 Bent Street, Manchester, M8 8NF.
Evening Concert + Livestream at The Yard
Monday 15th November 2021 at 7.30pm (Please note, doors will be at 7pm)