Orphy Robinson

Orphy Robinson (vibes) and Pat Thomas (piano) were the guests at The Spin jazz club tonight, playing with Raf Mizraki on bass and Mark Doffman on drums and they produced some great music. They took the Jazz Real Book (contains the chord charts, melody and lyrics - where there are lyrics - of hundreds of jazz standards) chose their tunes and then ignored them, using the chords only and creating their own tunes over the top. This was stunning improvisation flowing seamlessly from one riff to the next: sometimes they played the chords backwards, then forwards, and then backwards again, turning the piece on its head, thrashing it out, finding its essence and then bringing it back down - the sense of invention was exciting!

This was like a session with Bach at his most inventive but with added funk and groove... In fact all the great composers were renowned for their improvisation - Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Liszt, Debussy - but they all exhibited their virtuosity performing solo. What was amazing this evening was the quality of the musicianship required for the musicians to play off each other and pick up and develop themes that weren't their own, and that were brand new, here and now! It was a one-off, I do hope someone was recording it!