Awen Ensemble
May 2 @ 19:30 - 22:00
£14.00A creditably extensive UK tour by Awen Ensemble of Leeds, comprising 16 dates spanning over a month, includes three early May shows in Wales. It’ll be the septet’s first performances in the country, though for Emyr Penry Dance – trumpet player, co-founder of the Ensemble and their de facto bandleader – a show in Aberystwyth will take him back to the town where he grew up. Subsequent Welsh shows take place in the performance space at the back of Pontcanna enclave Kings Road Yard (head towards the Pipes brewery and turn left) and a café in the Gwynedd mountains that has to be one of the most remote active venues in the UK. Awen Ensemble’s debut album {Cadair Idris}, released just before their tour begins, is named after a peak at the opposite – southern – end of Snowdonia. Its lyrics, sung by Amy Clark, tell the tale of a woman who camps out on the mountain in an attempt to test the ancient belief that anyone doing so will become either a poet or a fool. This yarn is transmitted in the form of nine tracks which intermingle early-70s modal/spiritual jazz, the more exploratory side of that era’s soul and folk (Rotary Connection or Joni Mitchell, say) and an understanding for Celtic music which also reflects the Irish background of guitarist Ruari Graham while overall bearing comparison to the Welsh fusion of Burum. With double bass, sax, vibraphone and Rhodes players rounding out the group, Awen Ensemble’s sound is delicate but surefooted, and distinctive among the current British jazz landscape. words NOEL GARDNER
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