Recording of the Week, Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra - Tales from the Jacquard

Nottingham-based saxophonist, composer, arranger and bandleader Julian Siegel’s latest project is his most ambitious to date. Though Siegel’s put in plenty of time as a sideman for folks like Andrew Hill, Django Bates and Kenny Wheeler, he’s also focused much of his energy on leading his own projects - either with his Julian Siegel Quartet, or with jazz-rock four-piece Partisans alongside Phil Robson, and now with his comparatively new venture, The Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra. While today’s album Tales from the Jacquard marks the orchestra’s first release, the project made its debut back in 2017 as part of a tour commissioned by Derby Jazz and Right Tempo, with support from the Arts Council. The nineteen-piece orchestra features some of Siegel’s favourite European and UK-based players, each of them handpicked by himself - and while it’s Siegel’s name on the posters, he makes sure these soloists all get their moments in the spotlight.

The eponymous ‘Tales from the Jacquard’ suite itself draws upon the East Midlands’s history as a centre of lace production, particularly Derby and Nottingham - though Nottingham’s historic Lace Market is more a centre for retail and restaurants nowadays - the title itself is a direct reference to the jacquard punch cards used to program the mechanical lace machines. Siegel cites childhood memories of visiting these lace factories with his father, who was also a huge fan of big band musicians like Count Basie and Duke Ellington, as a formative experience for him; it’s these two seemingly disparate ideas that form the core of the three-part ‘Jacquard’ suite which takes up the first half-hour of the record. The rest of the record, meanwhile, consists of reworked pieces that Siegel originally wrote for his quartet album VISTA in 2018, and though smaller in scale originally it’s a testament to his arrangement chops that they work so well as part of the Jazz Orchestra project too.

The ‘Jacquard’ suite makes frequent use of real recordings of the machines that inspired its namesake; the first movement opens with the mechanical sounds of the lace machines, before moving on to slow rise of woodwinds and brass, the latter half of the movement kicking into a jazzier gear with a swinging backbeat and cool, syncopated bassline. It’s pianist Liam Noble’s circling ostinato melody that takes us into the second movement of the suite, and once the tune settles into itself we’re treated to a solo from flautist Tori Freestone, before returning to the clockwork ostinato again with the brass doubling the melody. Siegel’s brass arrangements sound almost choral at times; the way he writes the lead melodies for brass and woodwind has such a rich warmth to it, with the players’ dynamics giving these thick melodies some clarity in the harmonies. It’s the second half of the third movement where the band starts to go all-out, with fiery solos coming in left and right, an explosive climax as the band slows down and returns to the opening motif.

There are some great moments outside of the core suite, too; the slower ‘Song’ makes for a nice low-key pace breaker, while ‘The Goose’ as a bouncy, bluesy number. There are plentiful moments in the latter half of the record where Siegel shines the spotlight on his soloists once again, be it the fiery trumpet solo over ‘The Missing Link’ or the extended section in ‘Fantasy In D’ that sees several soloists trading off each other in rapid succession; needless to say, there are no weak links in Siegel’s orchestra. The pieces are often beautiful; Julian Siegel has a truly distinctive way of writing his melodies; meanwhile his skills with arrangement grant every tune on Tales from the Jacquard a seamless ebb and flow, where powerful lead melodies coexist with expert soloists, the resulting work being some truly stand-out modern big band jazz.