Review: ‘Dissent’ by Michael Pignéguy and Solomon Pitt at The Ellington

Dissent by Mike Pignéguy and Solomon Pitt at The Ellington
Saturday, March 25, 2023

A capacity audience at The Ellington last Saturday was treated to an international show guided by a Perth-bred drummer/composer/arranger with a Gallic name, Michael Pignéguy (Pin-ye-ge). With vocalist Solomon Pitt and a fine ensemble of Perth’s jazz fraternity, he delivered an evening of sensational soul-jazz. Aptly named Dissent, the repertoire, a hybrid of originals and classic covers, was all bar one presented in startling original arrangements. The exception, P.J. Morton’s transcription of the Bee Gee’s How Deep is Your Love, was startling too but in a slightly different vein. All up it was a dynamic night’s performance that left the room breathless.

This show has been cooking a long time. The ingredients came together in the late 1990s when, following a suggestion by Rhys Creighton of Jam’n Music Network, Pignéguy developed the Soul-Jazz project for his then acoustic ensemble, the Mike Pignéguy Sextet. Working in the kitchen of legendary American jazz composer Eddie Harris (1934-96), he began arranging a set of classic soul-jazz standards. Once he fell into the rhythm, Pignéguy was inspired to compose new material in this style.

The final Soul-Jazz suite was presented to great acclaim in Perth during the late 90s and early noughts. This material became a key component of the sextet’s touring repertoire and subsequently wowed audiences around Australia, New Zealand and ultimately in Los Angeles and New Orleans. With other compositions inspired by the process, the set was served up on the sextet’s second album, Pure, along with similar compositions by, and performances with renowned Sydney saxophonist Dale Barlow.

The tunes went into the freezer when, in 2006, Pignéguy relocated to Abu Dhabi. For the next dozen years his focus shifted to world music. Working with an array of international artists in The Awakenings Ensemble, he toured extensively throughout the Middle East. Not long after the ensemble’s invitation performance at the Lincoln Centre in New York, Pignéguy returned to Perth. Although he continued to work in world music, his taste for jazz did not wane. In 2022, he revived the sextet and returned to the soul-jazz focus. Never one to sit still, he thought to spice it up with a lyrical dimension.

Enter Solomon Pitt, a singer of Torres Straight Islander decent who came to prominence through the WA Jazz Project. Pignéguy has collaborated with many prominent female vocalists in Australia, the Middle East and Asia, but this is the first time he has worked with a male singer. He and Pitt quickly developed a fluid writing style which ultimately took the project off on a tangent. Not only did they reinterpret the extant songs and add lyrics to some of the instrumentals, but they began to write a whole bunch of new songs as well. Dissent is the culmination of this collaboration.

For its premiere on Saturday, the velvet-voiced divo and amazing drummer were complemented by the anchoring keys of Tristen Wills, the textured percussion, discreet congas and virtuoso vibes of Steve Richter, the slinky sax and thrilling flute of Mike Collison, a very cool trumpet on the lips of Lachie Glover and a lyrical bass under the fingers of Joe Powell. Their sound was balanced on the desk by the ever crafty James Hewgill.

Fresh faced and frenetic, dressed for a Satdy night barbecue or pool party, the Dissent ensemble were anything but languorous. A band that can both play the most precisely scripted passages and take off into pure improvisation, their virtuosity was perhaps best captured in the first song of the second set, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. From Richter’s feverish vibe intro through to the horn blast at its end, this was the first time the band had played all the way through Pignéguy’s arrangement of this Tears for Fears classic. Needless to say, you would never pick it, their rendition was faultless and inspirational.

Solomon Pitt makes the perfect front man for this great group. His ‘one-sided-conversation’ intros, while lacking in detail, were an utter delight and when he sang, his range sent shivers down your spine. He skipped seamlessly from the Philli-soul of the Pignéguy/Temperley/Fernandez-penned You Know You Do to the disco-funk of How Deep Is Your Love. On the latter he managed to jump back and forth between his natural baritone and a soaring Barry Gibb falsetto, a joy to the ear.

Pitt is no slouch with lyrics either. Over the past decade or so he has taken a deep dive into the realms of spontaneous poetry. He brought this to the stage with the improvised lyric to the aptly named Spoken Word. While the sextet played Pignéguy’s arrangement of Eddie Harris’s Cold Duck Theme, Pitt riffed a wild scat poem, even surprising himself with the run of words and rhymes that flowed from his mouth.

Before they launched into Ron Ayers' We Live in Brooklyn, he asked the audience to shout out the names of their suburbs. On various verses, Brooklyn, became Midland, Freo and Gidgi, a lovely local touch.

But it was Pignéguy’s unique rhythms and strict pauses that held the ensemble together. He guided them into some very tight corners—the fusion of flute, trumpet and vibes on We Live In Brooklyn showed no cracks—then gave them a solid bed on which they could each open up and soar. Every tune had at least two juxtaposed solos. If stand-outs can be picked among the many superb moments, it would be Richter’s vibes on Grant Green’s Jan Jan and Glover’s trumpet on the Hoagy Carmichael/Stuart Gorrell classic Georgia on My Mind. On this and at many other moments, Glover’s playing was reminiscent of Uan Rasey’s sensually sensational horn in the Jack Nicholson film Chinatown.

The most spectacular of the evening’s arrangements was Crazy, the penultimate song in the second set. Not content to merely orchestrate, Pignéguy completely deconstructed the harmonic base of this beautiful old song and rebuilt it from the ground up. Understated and glorious, you had to work hard to recognise Gnarls Barkley’s original tune.

Each set finished with the Pitt/Pignéguy original Forgets, another frenetic number which brought this dynamic band to the boil. Like every song they played, it moved through a panoply of timbres, tempos and textures, would suddenly stop, then take off again into another searing solo or beautifully lyrical passage. By the time they reached the encore, the band was steaming. Although technically identical, this finale sounded like an alternative version. It was a hot note on which to round out this glorious show.

Mike Pignéguy and Solomon Pitt are two shining stars that are definitely worth following, while the Dissent ensemble are yet another indication of the incredible talent circling in the Perth jazz scene. Watch their space and follow where they all fly.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Linda Dunjey