Review: The Janelle Ashley Quintet at The Ellington Jazz Club
The Janelle Ashley Quintet at The Ellington Jazz Club
Monday, May 1, 2023
It’s a privilege to see a band at their first gig, onerous to review them.
The Janelle Ashley Quintet represent the emerging generation of Perth jazz players. With the exception of (electric and double) bass player Alistair Peel, the members of the band are all in their early twenties. Individually, over the past few years, they have made their professional debut onto the Perth scene.
Since graduating from the Academy, vocalist Janelle Ashley has appeared in many soul and RnB gigs primarily at the Ellington. This was her chance to spread her wings and show what she can do in an impressive range of jazz and soul styles.
Lachie Glover (sax, elsewhere trumpet), Jackson van Ballegooyen (grand and electric piano) and Ebs Daramola (drums) have already featured in many of the ever-evolving jazz ensembles seen at the Ellington, Fringe World and elsewhere. Like Peel, they are solid players who can fire when the spotlight is on them.
Although young, these musicians are by no means novices, they have been honing their craft for much of their lives. Before their tertiary music studies, Ashley, Glover, van Ballegooyen and one of the two special guest backing vocalists, Amy Wright, were together at the specialist music high school, Carey Baptist College. While Ashley went to WAAPA, Glover, van Ballegooyen and Daramola ventured to Mount Gambier to study at the James Morrison Academy.
Their repertoire Monday spanned the classic American songbook through to contemporary soul-pop. The arrangements, though peppered with improvised solos, tended to follow the original artists rather than branch out into new interpretations.
The shape of the ensemble varied throughout the night. The core quintet carried most of the songs, but grew at key moments to include the guest vocalists, Emma Jo and Wright, reduced on two numbers to a spare piano and single vocal, and, for a stunning rendition of Hiatus Kaiyote’s Stone of Lavender, to a quartet with the two other singers.
Ashley’s singing covered a lot of ground. The exquisite highlight was her poised and haunting duet with van Ballegooyen of Esperanza Spalding’s Fall In. Her unique talent though lies in her syncopated scat style. Sparks flew when she and Glover doubled and counterpointed each other in a vocal-sax scat dual on Spalding’s I Know You Know and the Dizzy Gillespie classic A Night in Tunisia.
The most spectacular singing though was when the three female vocalists fired up. Their sweet harmonies on Fingerprints, the first song they did together, was instantly arresting, while the tight syncopation on Molasses, which ended the night, was just great. The concentration that went into hitting the right notes in the right place of Molasses was impressive. It’s one thing to do this on an instrument, something else with voice alone.
On some of the other songs, Ashley’s vocal dexterity got the better of her – she seemed more intent seeing how many notes she could sing than on what the song itself required. More attention to the words here would have helped.
The playing across the board was excellent. The Peel/Daramola rhythm section were very tight and, with van Ballegooyen’s keys, provided a warm bed for the sax and singers. All four instrumentalists know their chops and how to explore both the obvious and hidden corners of their instruments. Every solo was dexterous and original, especially Lachie Glover channelling his inner Charlie Parker. Even so, the repeated round-robin of solos – sax, piano, bass, drums – became formulaic. Impressive the first time, ultimately it extended some songs beyond what they could reasonably carry. In this, a few judicious cuts by a musical director would have brought the show into sharper focus.
Amy Wright took over lead vocals on the American songbook standard All of Me, delivering a charming and dynamic rendition. She too is a singer to look out for.
Toward the end of the night, there was a lovely moment when the four old school friends were spaced evenly along the front of the stage. It must have been touching for the family and friends in the audience to see them thus, knowing how far they have travelled apart and together to now be professional players on the scene.
Over the past thirty plus years, the Academy of the Performing Arts has had a profound impact upon the musical arts in Perth, especially jazz. This is now truly a city of musicians. In this septet of players and singers, the tradition continues and the future looks bright.
IAN LILBURNE
Photos by Alan Holbrook
