Updated Tallis tunes provide jazz horns with plenty

reviewed by John Shand

Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2008

Bearing the Bell - The Hymns Of Thomas Tallis (ABC)

Anyone who has seen The Tudors - a bawdy, glossy TV confection about Henry VIII, in which no one ages - will have encountered Thomas Tallis. He's the bisexual hippie dreamer who scribbles music to order. The wonder of the real Tallis is that he created liturgical music under four monarchs from Henry to Elizabeth I during the greatest religious upheaval in English history without ever being burned, hanged or beheaded.

Early music lovers aside, his fame now rests largely on Ralph Vaughan Williams's stupendous work for strings, Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis, along with one still-popular Anglican hymn. Enter Andrew Robson.

The Sydney jazz saxophonist has an abiding love of Tallis's work and saw its potential as a fertile ground for improvisational ideas far removed from jazz standards or original tunes. He has taken nine tunes Tallis wrote to accompany translations of the psalms by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth (and the first person in that position to not be burned at the stake for some years).

Robson has scored these hymns for his own alto or soprano, Sandy Evans's tenor or soprano, James Greening's trombone or pocket trumpet and Steve Elphick's double bass. Then he has built in room to improvise within the spirit of each piece.

The result is startlingly new music. The combined sonority of these four instruments preserves the slow-moving stateliness of Tallis's hymns, while adding flashes of a brighter, warmer and feistier humanity as the horns leap and swoop.

The piece Vaughan Williams used is here, stated by Greening's pocket trumpet with a reflective sadness that is underpinned by the bass and supported by long notes from the saxophones.

Greening's short solo becomes a logical extension of the beloved theme, juxtaposing almost unbearable sadness with a defiant joy.

Elsewhere Greening's trombone has never been better recorded, sounding like a great river of liquid bronze. Robson's penchant for merging chirpiness with more intense emotions works amazingly well in the context, while also generating regular surprises.

Evans, whose playing has always had a majestic dimension, sounds as if she's born to this music, as does Elphick. Sometimes the very nature of the melodies makes the combined horns reminiscent of period instruments. At other times you could be listening to the music of a more poetic tomorrow.

Bearing the Bell

(ABC Classics)

Sunday May 11 2008

Reviewed by Roger Mitchell Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne)

In short: His canon fired once
more, Thomas Tallis lives.

THE origin—tunes by Thomas Tallis for eight psalms, and an ordinal hymn—is classical, but the journey instigated by Andrew Robson ventures into jazz.
An ideal setting in which to hear Robson (alto and soprano sax), Sandy Evans (tenor and soprano
sax), James Greening (trombone, pocket trumpet) and Steve Elphick (double bass) interpret Tallis
would surely be Holy Trinity Cathedral during Wangaratta Festival of Jazz. We can only hope.

Robson’s arrangements successfully retain ‘‘the integrity and character’’ of the originals,
while allowing improvisation. Andrew Ford, in the CD notes, calls it a ‘‘collaboration across half a millennium’’. The players explore—in a way frowned on in Tallis’s time—independent, but harmonically related, pathways. They move beyond homage
with sublime melodic interplay, slow and soaring majesty, aching lament, moving unison and, at
times, glorious freedom.

Bearing the Bell – Andrew Robson

ABC Classics

Reviewed by Adrian Jackson, Rhythms Magazine August 2008

Robson’s other recent release offers something different. It’s sub-titled “The Hymns of Thomas Tallis’ and it presents Robson’s arrangements of nine pieces by the 16th century English composer. They are played by a chamber group, comprising Robson on alto sax (or soprano on one piece) Sandy Evans on tenor sax (or soprano on five pieces), James Greening on trombone (or pocket trumpet on one piece), plus Steve Elphick on bass.

Andrew Ford’s liner notes do a splendid job of telling us who Tallis was, and suggests a few recordings that might serve as precedents for this set. (Finnish saxophonist Jukka Perko’s Kaanaanmaa and Norwegian jazzman Jan Garbarek’s collaborations with the Hilliard Ensemble.) Even so, this stands as a strikingly unusual album, and a surprisingly effective one. Robson’s arrangements don’t stray far from the hymnal character of the originals yet allow space for the various soloists to shape some quite eloquent and personal statements. It’s an odd amalgam, combining the formality of church music, the elegance and symmetry of chamber music and, in subtle measures, the personality and ad libbing characteristics of jazz.

It works: check it out and you’ll soon get the point.