Culture Whisper meets Gwilym Simcock

Culture Whisper meets Gwilym Simcock

It must be any pianist’s worst nightmare. As I shake hands with Gwilym Simcock, widely regarded as one of Britain’s most exciting jazz artists (though it turns out he doesn’t much care for that label), he shows me a livid scar on his right thumb, where he tore a ligament falling awkwardly during a football match last autumn. He’s due to make a full recovery, but it was, he says, no doubt with understatement, “a stressful experience”. He even played a couple of gigs one-handed to honour existing commitments. 

Last week's launch of Simcock's Reverie at Schloss Elmau, an album of new compositions for his duo with Russian double bassist Yuri Goloubev, at The Forge, Camden, was his second release this year. (Instrumation, which explores new ground between classical composition and improvised performance, was launched in mid-January.) Schloss Elmau, an idyllic Bavarian cultural hideaway with a gem of a concert hall, was also the location for Simcock’s 2011 debut solo album, Good Days at Schloss Elmau, for which he received a Mercury nomination. “It’s a great train journey into the mountains,” he says of his time at Elmau, “and when I’m there I’m in a little bubble. It gives me the opportunity to focus on music making. That doesn’t happen often.”

The partnership with Goloubev began more than five years ago. Both players have composed new music for the album (there’s only one non-original track), and it’s such a close musical relationship that performing one another’s work comes instinctively. “Yuri has a similar background: we see certain elements of music the same way. He’s easy to play with - a fiendish bass player - and is a godsend to write for,” Simcock says. “I can write anything. Yuri always complains, but can always play it. It’s rare to see someone so connected with instrument.” And he compares Goloubev to the great bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius: “Jaco turned the bass guitar into a melody instrument. Yuri does the same on the acoustic bass: he makes it sound like the ‘cello.” 

Dispel all notions of the double bass as Saint-Saens’ elephant: in Goloubev’s nimble fingers it’s an instrument of visceral passion, combining the yearning, lyrical timbre of the ‘cello with the guts and grunt of, say, Charles Mingus’ bass. Paired with Simcock’s piano, by turns limpidly crystalline like an Alpine lake and ruggedly towering like the mountains, there’s a huge tonal palette available, while retaining the intimacy of a duo. 

Part of the similarity in Simcock and Goloubev’s outlook stems from the fact that both are classically trained, at the highest level, but both found their best creative fit in jazz. For Simcock it was “a subtle journey”, which started with his father, who would play without written music at home. Then there was teacher: “Steve Berry [who taught Simcock at Chethams School of Music] made me a cassette of jazz musicians. He chose musicians like [Pat] Metheny and [Egberto] Gismonti, closer to the classical tradition, and the transition seemed possible and exciting. Jazz was very close to what I was doing already.” The “jazz” label can be unhelpful, however: “I’ve had so many conversations about jazz, and the word puts people off the music before they hear it. That four-letter word covers a huge, disparate range of music. I just like music with improvised elements to it; communal music making,” he says. 

Though both this year’s albums have been launched in London he reckons he works abroad more than in this country. 'I like travelling,” he says. “The fact there’s a musical family worldwide is such an exciting thing...Yuri is one of my closest collaborators, but he’s a Russian now living in Italy. And it’s really humbling to find music lovers in Asia or Australia who ask me to sign a CD, who are so moved they have bothered to get hold of my music.” 

Work has taken him to Germany, home of one of his labels, ACT, and a real powerhouse for contemporary jazz. “There are lots of great concert halls, the infrastructure is wonderful, and there’s always a young audience,” he says. Here, in contrast, “it’s difficult to get a young audience, and everything is based around London.” And he recounts an experience at a provincial English jazz club, where he was playing some of his own work. “At the interval, the manager came to see me. He said he was enjoying the music, but he asked me to ‘throw the audience a lollipop’, because they were finding the new music difficult, and wanted something familiar.” Being a serious musician can be a frustrating business.  http://www.cadoganhall.com/event/city-of-london-sinfonia/

America is the next frontier. Of his many new projects, he speaks with perhaps most enthusiasm about The Impossible Gentlemen – an Anglo-American band, featuring Simcock, and British virtuoso guitarist Mike Walker (who between them write all the music), with American drummer Adam Nussbaum and (13-times Grammy-winning) bassist and producer Steve Rodby. The players’ different backgrounds make for a diverse sound, with echoes of blues, funk and country. Making it work as one is part of the excitement. “I’m not from the 'straight-ahead US tradition', it’s not where I come from at all,” Simcock explains. “I felt daunted, but every time we got together, the sound has become more homogenous.” The process of writing with Walker has also been exciting: “Working with Mike is incredible, unique. His approach to writing is very individual, left field, and co-writing music together can be difficult, but for the two of us it’s become 100% natural.” 

With the band members divided by the Atlantic for most of the year, gigging can be difficult, but there are plans to take The Impossible Gentlemen into the US market. “We’re working on doing more one-off gigs and getting the profile,” Simcock says. And the new album, out next year, will be even more diverse. “There’s lots of exciting stuff ahead,” Simcock enthuses. “It’ll be more layered, with the French horn, the Hammond organ, different from the stuff we normally do. I want that to become part of my style.”

Alongside, of course, creating a new dialogue between the composed and improvised traditions, and exploring 19th and 20th century music through his duo with Goloubev. In the next few months Simcock has gigs booked in Germany and Italy, not to mention France, Norway, St. Petersburg, Jersey, and South Carolina. In London, you can catch him at  Pizza Express, Dean Street , on Saturday 5th April and Cadogan Hall on Thursday 1st May.