REVIEW: The Adam Waldmann Group

Featuring Jim Hart at The Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston, March 4, by Jane Fulcher.

The Vortex Jazz Club is a painfully trendy place. Since moving from Stoke Newington last year it has hiked its prices up, thrown out its knowledgeable crowd and brought in some hysterical trilby-wearing Hoxtonites.

It is described by some as London’s most serious jazz club, but when they have a band covering popular songs by The Police, Joni Mitchell and Michael Jackson, this comes into doubt. Unless they are doing it in an ironic way. This may well appeal to the trilbies but is utter boredom to music lovers.

This is not to say that the Adam Waldmann Group is bad at playing their instruments. Waldmann is a competent saxophonist and is backed with equal aplomb by his excellent drummer, Tim Sampson. Some of the bass solos (Sam Lasserson) were a little flat, which, when covering a Police song, is a bad move. If Sting were dead, he would be rolling in his grave.

The problem I have with bands like this is that they may strive for irreverence and wit in reworking popular tunes, but achieve only an annoying nod towards self-satisfying superiority. This is not Errol Garner wittily incorporating flashes of Tchaikovsky into his Concert by the Sea. These are boring trendies trying to make music out of irony.

Having said that, the place was packed and they got people dancing, something so rarely seen at British jazz nights. I just hope that it was not Billie Jean but the quality of their playing that sparked the moving and shaking.