Interview... York Press

Identity By Subtraction could only be the title of a jazz album. Saxophonist Denys Baptiste laughs in recognition of that truism when York Twenty4Seven makes the cheeky suggestion in advance of tomorrow’s tour date in York to promote his new recording.

“It was a phrase I heard in a debate and it had immediate resonance for me because I’d never heard it before and I started thinking about it,” says Denys.

“It’s that thing of identifying yourself by the things that you’re not; that thing of taking on superficial things you feel you ought to be. Like playing a solo on a pop record that you do just to fit in, but then you learn to take away those things that make you just a functioning musician.

“And then, beyond music, there’s also that social thing of being a black man living in the UK.”

Born to St Lucian parents in London on September 14, 1969, Denys says he used to define himself solely as a musician.

“But I don’t do that now. I’m a husband, a father and a school governor in Enfield,” he says. “I also do things for the Arts Council, looking after a number of organisations to make sure they get their funding on time; things that I though I’d never do. So every day is different now.”

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Review... St Georges Bristol

by Jon Turney

And so to another sort of re-creation. The final date in St G’s short sequence of John Coltrane themed gigs featured Denys Baptiste’s quartet tackling A Love Supreme. That is a brave thing to do, if only because it is on everyone’s list of top albums in jazz history – though it happens reasonably often: Branford Marsalis is the last touring performance I can recall, David Murray has done some, and so on.

Baptiste gave us a game of two halves. First set was selections from his own new recording. These were uniformly excellent, even though the decision to play acoustically – as folk often do at this venue – produced a few sound problems. It needs musicians who haven’t forgotten how to do that, and it seemed as if the drummer had for a while. He drowned out everyone else in the first number, and occasionally throughout when he mistook volume for intensity, as drummers will.

It’s a great band, though, with Gary Crosby on bass and the phenomenal Andrew McCormack on piano. And the pieces were plenty varied. The opener, suffering from the drumming, was a pretty straight Coltrane-style blow, but there were affecting ballads, a bluesy tune dedicated to the Large Hadron Collider (a man of broad interests, Denys) and a somewhat Rollins-like Dance of the Maquiritari, inspired by the composer’s discovery that he had a Venezuelan great grandmother. That was the set closer, and the most convincing and uninhibited effort of the first half. Guess they were getting warmed up for the demands of the second.

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Identity By Subtraction... The Jazz Breakfast review

The saxophonist is not exactly prolific – this is his fourth disc in 11 years – but there is always a feeling that his music has benefitted from the long gestation period. It’s thoughtful, rich and has some real personality and depth.

The line-up is the classic quartet format, with Andrew McCormack on piano, Gary Crosby on double bass and Rod Youngs on drums, and Baptiste uses it to express his “responses to life’s experiences as a black man of Caribbean descent playing jazz music in the UK in 2011”.

The title track and Apprehension both push hard, while Dance Of The Maquiritari has a lovely light step and a great hook of a melody line. Special Times is a graceful soprano exploration.

There is a timeless quality about the compositions which I rather like. Take a tune like Evolution From Revolution, which, although it might have the occasional modern turn and a beat which has hip-hop nuances from Youngs, could come from any time in last half century.

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