The Gwilym Simcock Trio, Wyastone Hall, Monmouth (From South Wales Argus)

The Gwilym Simcock Trio, Wyastone Hall, Monmouth

2:44pm Tuesday 15th July 2008 in Search By Nigel Jarrett

British jazz can be a bit like British tennis in that a newcomer with more than nominal ability is hailed as a saviour, someone to pitch against international contenders.

But pianist Gwilym Simcock is a fully-formed marvel, at the very least a credit to the way our music colleges now treat jazz seriously as a performing option.

He is currently being deluged by accolades and prizes, all of them deserved, and he is that rarity in being a natural jazz player not hampered but spurred by a schooled technique.

This appearance with bassist Phil Donkin and drummer Martin France in the summer series of concerts presented by Nimbus Records invited comparisons with Chick Corea's live performances with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes.

Corea has described Simcock in glowing, not to say extravagant, terms but the vocabulary and the harmonic syntax are similarly fused to a capacity for invention that is stretched and cumulative in an unrestricted setting like this.

In Jerome Kern's The Way You Look Tonight and other tunes tending towards finer feelings, Simcock drew the sentimentality to provide a base for unequivocally sparkling explorations, often fired by what the other two musicians were contributing.

Much of the material was from Perception, Simcock's first album under his own name, and including Almost Moment and A Typical Affair, stitched in the middle for an opening salvo lasting twenty minutes.

Almost every tune was infused with the spirit of other traditions, not only classical, yet all contributed to a voice of unflagging exuberance which fed off themes old and new.