I came across Joe Harriott through the Jazz Britannia series on BBC 4 and at the Barbican. It was wonderful: wander down the road to see the gigs (I went to the one Gilles Peterson curated) and then pop home to get the history and the context. Everything that an immersive multimedia education experience should be, with Quality Of Life to boot. And we were there when it was at its best: Jazz Britannia in 2005, Folk Britannica in 2006. Earlier this year they did Soul Britannia. I've nothing against a good bit of soul, but the programme of gigs was noticeably thin, which in turn put me off the TV series, and it all felt like the producers were running out of ideas. We can't even get digital telly now…
Anyway, back to Joe Harriott. Some of his music was featured in the gig and Harriott's seemed among the most interesting, and sad, stories to be told in the TV programmes (an overview can be found on Joe's Wikipedia entry). Among the British jazz players, he seemed to be the one that went first into playing "free" and, well, abstract music, before the likes of Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble took the next steps. From the bookstall in the Barbican I picked up Joe Harriott: Fire in His Soul
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
|
Comments