Sunday, 30 November 2008 07:16 Written by Jasper Rees

Give It One

Jasper Rees's Article in the CD booklet

The French horn has always stood apart from its colleagues. Joining the orchestra relatively late, in the concert hall it has been seated away from the rest of the brass section. It has never muscled its way into the colliery brass bands of the north of England, and in America has infiltrated the marching band only in the guise of a mellophone.

There’s one inner sanctum above all where the horn has struggled to get its foot in the door. When jazz began to flower as a musical form between the wars, its small caucus of renegade instruments gradually welcomed intruders from the orchestra. “Horn” duly became a catch-all name for any number of brassy instruments with slides, reeds or valves. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the pioneering Julius Watkins started to make a case for the French horn as a jazz instrument, recording with his own sextet on Blue Note, and with the short-lived outfit Les Jazz Modes. But while he became a session player with Coltrane, Mingus, Monk and Miles Davis, even he had difficulty securing gigs and in one disastrous interval jumped ship to the more employable trumpet.

Other jazz horn players have come along in his wake, notably John Clark and, more recently, Tom Varner, Adam Unsworth and James MacDonald. They all have one thing in common: they’re American. In the 1950s the great British virtuoso Dennis Brain would play salsa with Roberto Ingles and his Orchestra, but full-time horn jazzers have always been thin on the ground in Europe and the Russian Arkady Shilkloper is the only player so far to have earned serious recognition this side of the Atlantic.

In 1999 conductor Geoffrey Simon and Hugh Seenan, former principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra, chose to commemorate the remarkable depth of horn-playing talent in London with The London Horn Sound, a CD featuring music adapted for horn ensemble ranging from Wagner to Queen. Its success provoked imitations, as horn players from the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic followed The London Horn Sound into the recording studio. One of the most vibrant recordings on The London Horn Sound CD was left till last, a sixteen-strong account of Duke Ellington’s Caravan. Its popularity, particularly when it was performed as the finale to the British Horn Society’s 25th Anniversary festival in 2005, with Jim Rattigan taking the solo, prompted Geoffrey Simon and Hugh Seenan to get the band back together again.

The result is Give It One, a fizzing, snapping, swooning collection of jazz tunes which have been put through the mixer and come out revealed afresh. Performed by between six and eighteen horns with piano, bass and drums, what this extraordinary set of recordings reveals is that the best French horn players can turn their hand to this style as if born to it, both as virtuoso soloists and selfless ensemble players.

And some can compose, too: Give It One features as many originals as arrangements. Richard Bissill, whose regular gig is Principal Horn of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, composed Los Jaraneros and Fat Belly Blues in addition to arranging Not Like This, The Trolley Song and the title song, Give It One. The old jazz hand Jim Rattigan created Caseoso after arranging Daydream, while Timothy Jackson, a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s horn section, not only composed Lana’s Lullaby and Three Point Turn but gave us an inspired Sound Of Music Jazz Suite, available exclusively as a download from www.giveitone.com.

The ensemble is supported throughout by the remarkable Gwilym Simcock on jazz piano, who also reminds us of his horn-playing roots by knocking out a solo in a composition of his own making, Blues For Hughie. As an arranger Simcock makes the case for the horn as a convincing substitute for even the most iconic voices with his versions of The Way We Were and God Bless the Child.

There have been some personnel changes since the first London Horn Sound CD. In Angela Barnes of the LSO and Kathryn Saunders of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra there are two more women than there were last time round. Other than that, the only fair way to single out individual players from such a peacock display of staggering talent is to draw the listener’s attention to the holes in the ozone layer punctured by Pip Eastop’s high playing in God Bless the Child and his numerous jazz solos, and the meaty wit of Tony Halstead’s low-range mastery in Fat Belly Blues. For connoisseurs of the rare and difficult French horn technique of singing and playing at the same time, there is a masterclass from Frank Lloyd and Jackson in Three Point Turn. And on several tracks a quartet of Wagner tubas, variously led by Dave Lee and Jeffrey Bryant, adds a darker hue to an already rich palette.

People who know the horn world will be eager to know which soloist is producing which sounds. Maybe these names will also become familiar to jazz listeners who for now are merely curious to find out how “the soul of the orchestra”, as Schumann called the French horn, cuts it without white tie and tails. In Give It One, from the heart-melting laments of Not Like This and Daydream to the hip-swaying Latin accents of Caseoso and Los Jaraneros, they have their scintillating answer.