The Mark McKnight Organ Quartet
Rectial Room, City Halls
Thursday 5th November 2009

In the end, I decided to go to the Mark McKnight gig, partially swayed by the second comment on my previous post! Since it was Guy Fawkes Night, I was going to get the train - the display on Glasgow Green was likely to create parking issues - but I took the car in the end. I got parked OK, albeit in the most expensive and badly designed multi-storey in Glasgow (Q-Park, Candleriggs). I tried to get into three different spaces before I found one I could actually manoeuvre into - you need a Smart car in there!

Anyway, I was in enough time to get a ticket and wander round the corner for 10min to watch the biggest of the fireworks from Glasgow Green over the buildings - shiny!

The gig was not that busy, since it was bonfire night and there was a Celtic game on too, but the smallish selection of seating was about 3/4 full. A mixed audience - some lone older guys, a handful of students, a handful of professional musicians and some randoms like myself.

The quartet consisted of Mark McKnight on guitar, Will Vinson on alto, James Maddren on drums and Ross Stanley on Hammond organ. The set was a mix of Mark McKnight's originals and some standards.

Acoustically, the room has a lot of reverberation, even more so when it's not so full. For loud bands, this is bad, but for this small group it was actually beneficial to my ear. It lent a wonderful smoothness to the sound - combined with the beautiful tone quality of the sax and guitar in particular, the band sounded rather like a cube with rounded edges. In my head, anyway...

Did I mention the tone quality? *g* Yeah, one of the nicest alto sounds I've heard. At some points I wasn't really listening to the notes, just the tone! Same for the guitar - don't know if it's the guitar, the technique or the amp (or some combination of all three) that produces that sort of clean jazz tone, but I wish I knew and could translate it to bass!

The organ added a nice sound too - I'm more used to hearing Hammond organs in funkier music, rather than straight ahead jazz, so it was a bit unusual for me. But it was nice. My favourite parts of the gig were the couple of bits where the band dropped away and the organ was left playing very quiet, interesting harmonies, and playing about with the sounds and effects it has available. I particularly liked the intro to Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. He was also taking on the role of the bass throughout, playing walking bass lines on the left hand. That must be awfully difficult to coordinate with what the right hand is doing, especially when improvising!

On exiting the gig, I passed The Beer Cafe next door where the Michael Dean's Quartet were playing, and it was a lot busier and livelier, but then, it was free and in a a pub! Plus, they'll have benefited from the passing trade of people leaving the fireworks display. An interesting contrast, nonetheless.

Here is a review from Byas'd Opinion, and here is one from Rob Adams at The Herald.

I wonder how the Portico Quartet gig at the Arches was. Rob Adams at the Herald certainly wasn't impressed by them at their Edinburgh gig on the 4th... But John Walters at The Guardian was more appreciative of their London gig. See doughnutdiary's thoughts on the Glasgow gig in the comments for this post.