Reviews of Friendly Ghosts

Here are five great reviews of my solo album Friendly Ghosts, released last year (2017). Please click on the reviews to enlarge.

From Wire magazine (reviewed by Daniel Spicer):

From Jazzwise magazine (reviewed by Nick Hasted):

 

This is from London Jazz News:

http://www.londonjazznews.com/2017/08/cd-review-adam-fairhall-friendly-ghosts.html

CD REVIEW: Adam Fairhall – Friendly Ghosts 
(Efpi Records. Review by AJ Dehany) 

Adam Fairhall is a great example of an outside player who plays inside. Raised in Cornwall and resident in Manchester, he is pianist in Nat Birchall’s Coltrane-inspired band and piano-preparer in free improvisation sextet The Spirit Farm. He is one of the pool of musicians including drummer Johnny Hunter who are associated with but never profess to completely belong to the Manchester scene. His debut solo piano album Friendly Ghosts is released on that scene’s inspiring independent Efpi label run by Beats & Pieces Big Band leader Ben Cottrell. 

Friendly Ghosts has a lightness of touch, an abundance of invention, and a twinkling sense of mischief that make it an absolute scream. Pine Apple Rag slices Scott Joplin’s rag tune into piña colada. Egyptian Fantasy imbues a sibylline original with the ‘Spanish tinge’ of early New Orleans music. There’s some unabashedly postmodern thinking going into Fairhall’s gustaceous redigestions of boogie woogie, ragtime, ballad and New Orleans styles. By foregrounding the most fake-book elements of these ideas he deepens the dive into spontaneous elements, with a raucous sense of performative rather than academic deconstruction that goes beyond pastiche.

KT Boogie opens with dense digging at the low end of the piano leading to a broader conception celebrating the ‘Katy Line’ of blues lore and his two year old daughter Kate. I’m Getting Sentimental Over You is the closest to the ‘straight jazz playing’ of the ballad songbook, with enjoyable command and clear chops developed from significant experience as a sideman. Typically, Restaurant Music’s reflective mixture of Messiaen and Cecil Taylor gives way to Blue Square’s off-kilter blues.

The energy and exuberance of the performances springs from wow to how when you realize that the album was recorded live— on a solo piano progress around the North of England in 2014. The excellence of the sound, an invisibly-produced blend of warm piano and subtle ambience, comes in part from fantastic instruments on the two nights from which the album’s selections are drawn: the Steinway at St Ann’s in Manchester and the Kawai at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle.

The aptly named New Great Northern Stomp takes off from Chicago Blues legend Otis Spann’s eponymous Boogie Woogie, and drags us careening up the rippling route across the Peak District toward Manchester, clipping past the reservoirs at Woodhead and Crowden and almost certain death at the parish of Tintwistle or Glossop. Along the way you hear Northern accents: not the voice itself, but that quality of irreverence that nonetheless attends deep respect. The quality of pastiche is not strain’d.

 

From All About Jazz:

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/friendly-ghosts-adam-fairhall-efpi-records-review-by-roger-farbey.php

By Roger Farbey

* * * *

Following undergraduate studies, virtuoso pianist Adam Fairhall took a Master’s degree at Leeds College of Music, receiving a MMus in Jazz Studies (Performance) in 2005. Whilst at Leeds he studied with pianist Mark Donlon and took lessons with British jazz composer Matthew Bourne. The title of his album Friendly Ghosts, Fairhall’s debut recording as a soloist, gives a strong clue as to its contents, revisiting as it does the earliest sounds of jazz to the most avant-garde.

Stylistically, Fairhall’s is a melange of stride, ragtime, boogie-woogie, bop, blues and free improvisation. The trick he has finessed is to wrap-up these well-known styles in a novel format, so for example “KT Boogie” is underpinned by thunderous, rumbling notes played on the low registers. The right hand meanwhile explores the higher end of the piano in an almost crab-like fashion. Interspersed are flashes of free improvisation which are never allowed to drift far before familiar lines re-emerge.

Appropriately, “Pine Apple Rag” begins in Scott Joplin mode but breaks down, not entirely, but just enough to permit stride piano to interject. Although superficially playful-sounding, this is not meant as parody. An interesting stylistic comparator might be Derek Bailey‘s Ballads or his follow-up Standards because Fairhall comes close to Bailey’s latter recordings, but without deserting melodic structures in favour of chordal dissonance. The head is played but then is abandoned in favour of total improvisation. Another perfect example is “Blue Square” where the initial straight blues is deconstructed and broken down before resuming in stride format, in anything but a straight idiom.

As if to insert an interlude in the proceedings, there’s the unequivocally contemporary improvisation of “Restaurant Music” whilst the lengthy “New Great Northern Stomp,” opening in free territory, explores all possible stylistic avenues before its Terry Riley-esque percussive close. With his staccato-esque piano style Fairhall comes over as a mix of Thelonius Monk, Howard Riley and Cecil Taylor with some Meade Lux LewisArt Tatum and Erroll Garner thrown in for good measure.

Fairhall’s stream of consciousness inventiveness, which merges a myriad of styles, is rarely heard and few can get away with it. Perhaps some of Keith Jarrett meandering solo performances share some of Fairhall’s attributes as does Victor Borge’s eccentric, often hilarious approach, as echoed by Fairhall on the opening to Sidney Bechet’s “Egyptian Fantasy.” The late Dudley Moore could certainly handle, turn-on-a-dime, multiple styles, but in a comedic context. This however is not comedy music but something far more inventive and demanding. It’s also very good.

 

From Bandcamp Daily (reviewed by Dave Sumner, of EMusic and Bird is the Worm):

Adam Fairhall’s first solo recording goes reveals his talent for bringing together jazz of the past and present, and focusing it through the lens of his own singular perspective. On his excellent 2012 release The Imaginary Delta, the pianist created a convergence of jazz’s stages of evolution, where a rag or blues nestled comfortably alongside electronic effects and modern conventions that eschew swing and bop. But that album was made with an ensemble cast, which made it difficult to determine where the composer’s vision left off and that of the collaborators picked up. But Friendly Ghosts is Fairhall all by his lonesome, and the same confluence of jazz expressionism that marked his last session comes shining through. Nostalgic echoes of rag and stride come through strong on tracks like “KT Boogie” and “Pine Apple Rag,” while tracks like “Egyptian Fantasy” serve as a tour guide to jazz lineage. It’s one of the more intriguing solo recordings to be released in 2017.

 

The album received airplay on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, Daniel Spicer’s radio show The Mystery Lesson and multiple plays on Jazz FM. It also received a mention in the Best of 2017 round-up on Portuguese site Jazz.pt (in Jose Dias’s ‘best international discs’ list).

Wire article, May 2016

I neglected to upload this excellent article which appeared in Wire magazine last year. It’s on the new generation of Manchester improvisers, and I was interviewed along with many of my friends and favourite musicians. The photo on the second page is me. Please excuse the phone photos; if you click on them them should get much bigger…

First reviews of Friendly Ghosts

Friendly Ghosts, my solo piano album released last month (August 2017) on Efpi Records, has had a couple of great reviews so far (more reviews are expected!).

This is from London Jazz News:

http://www.londonjazznews.com/2017/08/cd-review-adam-fairhall-friendly-ghosts.html

CD REVIEW: Adam Fairhall – Friendly Ghosts 
(Efpi Records. Review by AJ Dehany) 

Adam Fairhall is a great example of an outside player who plays inside. Raised in Cornwall and resident in Manchester, he is pianist in Nat Birchall’s Coltrane-inspired band and piano-preparer in free improvisation sextet The Spirit Farm. He is one of the pool of musicians including drummer Johnny Hunter who are associated with but never profess to completely belong to the Manchester scene. His debut solo piano album Friendly Ghosts is released on that scene’s inspiring independent Efpi label run by Beats & Pieces Big Band leader Ben Cottrell. 

Friendly Ghosts has a lightness of touch, an abundance of invention, and a twinkling sense of mischief that make it an absolute scream. Pine Apple Rag slices Scott Joplin’s rag tune into piña colada. Egyptian Fantasy imbues a sibylline original with the ‘Spanish tinge’ of early New Orleans music. There’s some unabashedly postmodern thinking going into Fairhall’s gustaceous redigestions of boogie woogie, ragtime, ballad and New Orleans styles. By foregrounding the most fake-book elements of these ideas he deepens the dive into spontaneous elements, with a raucous sense of performative rather than academic deconstruction that goes beyond pastiche.

KT Boogie opens with dense digging at the low end of the piano leading to a broader conception celebrating the ‘Katy Line’ of blues lore and his two year old daughter Kate. I’m Getting Sentimental Over You is the closest to the ‘straight jazz playing’ of the ballad songbook, with enjoyable command and clear chops developed from significant experience as a sideman. Typically, Restaurant Music’s reflective mixture of Messiaen and Cecil Taylor gives way to Blue Square’s off-kilter blues.

The energy and exuberance of the performances springs from wow to how when you realize that the album was recorded live— on a solo piano progress around the North of England in 2014. The excellence of the sound, an invisibly-produced blend of warm piano and subtle ambience, comes in part from fantastic instruments on the two nights from which the album’s selections are drawn: the Steinway at St Ann’s in Manchester and the Kawai at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle.

The aptly named New Great Northern Stomp takes off from Chicago Blues legend Otis Spann’s eponymous Boogie Woogie, and drags us careening up the rippling route across the Peak District toward Manchester, clipping past the reservoirs at Woodhead and Crowden and almost certain death at the parish of Tintwistle or Glossop. Along the way you hear Northern accents: not the voice itself, but that quality of irreverence that nonetheless attends deep respect. The quality of pastiche is not strain’d.

 

This is from All About Jazz:

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/friendly-ghosts-adam-fairhall-efpi-records-review-by-roger-farbey.php

 

By Roger Farbey

* * * *

Following undergraduate studies, virtuoso pianist Adam Fairhall took a Master’s degree at Leeds College of Music, receiving a MMus in Jazz Studies (Performance) in 2005. Whilst at Leeds he studied with pianist Mark Donlon and took lessons with British jazz composer Matthew Bourne. The title of his album Friendly Ghosts, Fairhall’s debut recording as a soloist, gives a strong clue as to its contents, revisiting as it does the earliest sounds of jazz to the most avant-garde.

Stylistically, Fairhall’s is a melange of stride, ragtime, boogie-woogie, bop, blues and free improvisation. The trick he has finessed is to wrap-up these well-known styles in a novel format, so for example “KT Boogie” is underpinned by thunderous, rumbling notes played on the low registers. The right hand meanwhile explores the higher end of the piano in an almost crab-like fashion. Interspersed are flashes of free improvisation which are never allowed to drift far before familiar lines re-emerge.

Appropriately, “Pine Apple Rag” begins in Scott Joplin mode but breaks down, not entirely, but just enough to permit stride piano to interject. Although superficially playful-sounding, this is not meant as parody. An interesting stylistic comparator might be Derek Bailey‘s Ballads or his follow-up Standards because Fairhall comes close to Bailey’s latter recordings, but without deserting melodic structures in favour of chordal dissonance. The head is played but then is abandoned in favour of total improvisation. Another perfect example is “Blue Square” where the initial straight blues is deconstructed and broken down before resuming in stride format, in anything but a straight idiom.

As if to insert an interlude in the proceedings, there’s the unequivocally contemporary improvisation of “Restaurant Music” whilst the lengthy “New Great Northern Stomp,” opening in free territory, explores all possible stylistic avenues before its Terry Riley-esque percussive close. With his staccato-esque piano style Fairhall comes over as a mix of Thelonius Monk, Howard Riley and Cecil Taylor with some Meade Lux LewisArt Tatumand Erroll Garner thrown in for good measure.

Fairhall’s stream of consciousness inventiveness, which merges a myriad of styles, is rarely heard and few can get away with it. Perhaps some of Keith Jarrett meandering solo performances share some of Fairhall’s attributes as does Victor Borge’s eccentric, often hilarious approach, as echoed by Fairhall on the opening to Sidney Bechet’s “Egyptian Fantasy.” The late Dudley Moore could certainly handle, turn-on-a-dime, multiple styles, but in a comedic context. This however is not comedy music but something far more inventive and demanding. It’s also very good.

The Spirit Farm gets ace reviews!

I’ve been terrible at updating my site this past year (I blame it on the arrival of our second child!), but below are three of great reviews of The Spirit Farm’s eponymous album, released on SLAM in April 2015. The group, a  freely-improvising six-piece, performed at the  Southbank Centre in  November as part  of the 2015 London Jazz Festival, and we are hoping to get a tour together in the coming months.

The album also placed at no. 5 on Daniel Spicer’s end-of-year critics’ poll in Jazzwise magazine.

Link to New York City Jazz Record review:

New York City Jazz Record review of The Spirit Farm

Jazz Journal review:

Spirit Farm Jazz Journal review

 

Jazzwise review:

The Spirit Farm review, Jazzwise, June 2015

The Markov Chain – new project!

The Markov Chain is a new trio with Adam on piano, Tim Fairhall on bass and British Free Music legend Paul Hession on drums. The trio play freely improvised music. Their debut performance was at the Manchester Jazz Festival 2013, a gig that received an excellent review by Mike Butler, who wrote:

This was the orgiastic, earth-shaking, cacophonous real deal, with none of the mimsy “I don’t feel ready for this yet” reticence that besets so much homegrown free jazz… The hour passed too quickly. I loved it.

The full review can be found on Mike’s website at:

http://www.dyversemusic.com/2013/08/manchester-jazz-festival-wednesday-31.html

The trio are currently mixing their debut album. Please keep an eye out for news about the album’s release and upcoming gigs.

Imaginary Delta also appeared on a couple of other ‘Best of’ lists…

The Imaginary Delta also placed at #63 on eMusic’s Best Albums of 2012. Here’s what they had to say:

On The Imaginary Delta, pianist and composer Adam Fairhall speaks with a forward-thinking attitude of innovation while channeling the voice of jazz’s past. A traditional rag becomes a futuristic avant-garde deconstruction. The use of effects and turntables enhance, rather than preclude, the expression of a soulful blues. A blowing session doesn’t miss a beat with the incorporation of sampling. Fairhall has united these disparate elements to create a remarkably engaging album of… both scope and vision, and is vivid evidence of the strength represented by a new generation of UK jazz musicians.              

4 stars.      http://www.emusic.com/music-news/list-hub/emusics-best-albums-of-2012-4/

The album also got an Honorable Mention on Ted Gioia’s Best of 2012 list. Gioia is a well-known American historian of jazz and blues; I remember finding his book The History of Jazz in the uni library many years ago and really getting into it. His book Delta Blues is great too. So I love the fact that he listened to our album and dug it.        http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2012.html

New Reviews of The Imaginary Delta (SLAM)

Ian Mann  www.thejazzmann.com

October 26 2012

This excellent album by Manchester based pianist and composer Adam Fairhall was released in May on George Haslam’s Slam label but with Fairhall due to bring his group to London to perform this material at the 2012 London Jazz Festival in November the time seemed right for me to take a rather belated look at it.

I know Fairhall’s playing through his work with fellow Mancunians Matthew Halsall (trumpet) and Nat Birchall (saxophones), he appears on Halsall’s “On The Go” and Birchall’s “Sacred Dimensions”, both of which have been reviewed elsewhere on this site. He has also been part of Halsall’s touring line up.

But there’s more to Fairhall than just his sideman role. He also works as a solo pianist and runs a trio featuring Tim Fairhall (bass, presumably his brother although I’m not totally certain of this)) and drummer Gaz Hughes. The seeds for “The Imaginary Delta” project would appear to stem from his duo with electronics artist Paul J. Rogers who provides samples of 1920’s blues recordings which Fairhall then merges with more contemporary musical influences such as the piano stylings of McCoy Tyner. Their album “Second Hand Blues” was released on ASC Records in 2011.See Fairhall’s website http://www.adamfairhall.co.uk for further information on this and his other projects.

“The Imaginary Delta” grew out of his experiments with Rogers and was commissioned by the 2011 Manchester Jazz Festival. The album was recorded live at the city’s Band on the Wall venue on 26th July 2011 and features an expanded line up of Fairhall on piano plus the horns of James Allsopp on clarinets, Chris Bridges on trombone and jug, and Steve Chadwick, leader of cult Manchester band the Magic Hat Ensemble, on trumpet. His regular trio colleagues Tim Fairhall (bass) and Gaz Hughes (drums) complete the rhythm team with Rogers acting as the wild card contributing the modern musical accessories of laptop, electronic processing and turntables alongside arcane instruments such as the diddley bow and novelty items including chains and pepper grinder. In this sense he’s a kind of Leafcutter John figure. Steve Mead, the Artistic Director of Manchester jazz festival spoke of Fairhall’s ambition to “draw upon the early language of jazz and make it speak to us in the 21st century”. Acclaim for the festival performance and subsequent live album (the latter mixed on an analogue desk to preserve the warmth of the live sound) has been virtually unanimous resulting in an invitation to bring this music to the capital as part of the 2012 LJF.

“The Imaginary Delta” is a suite in six parts that blends Rogers’ early blues sources with the writing of Fairhall. Sampled sounds are merged with real time instruments to create a fascinating patchwork of ancient and modern. Opener “Baptist Prayer Meeting” contains a sample of George “Bullet” Williams “Middlin’ Blues” and features Rogers on diddley bow (now you know where Mr. McDaniel got his stage name from) alongside the more conventional jazz instrumentation. The piece grows out of Rogers’ samples and diddley bow to embrace a more contemporary modal sound with rich, deep bass clarinet voicings from Allsopp and Tyner style piano from Adam Fairhall.  The sound generated by the three horns is pleasingly full and the piece eventually concludes with a passage of solo piano.

“Sedalia Rag” combines the rhythms and syncopations of ragtime with more contemporary free jazz leanings. Rogers’ electronic whooshes and bleeps contrast nicely with the more conventional jazz instrumentation in a series of free jazz exchanges informed by the spirit of the past. There’s a prolonged passage for the trio of the Fairhalls and Hughes with Tim’s muscular bass stalking Adam’s piano as the chatter of Hughes’ drums provides both punctuation and comment. When the horns return the piece becomes more obviously a “rag”, albeit one filtered through the prism of Charles Mingus and the whole sixties free jazz movement.

“Arabian Fantasy” includes a highly effective sample of Ivy Smith singing Cow Cow Davenport’s “Cincinnati Southern Blues” which is grafted seamlessly onto a seductive, undulating modal theme. Allsopp’s subtly bluesy clarinet solo, Bridges’ growling trombone and Chadwick’s slow burning trumpet feature then evoke the spirit of New Orleans but in a wholly contemporary setting.

“Tutwiler Train Stomp” begins with spooky free jazz sounds but Fairhall’s piano gradually leads the piece into an exuberant romp with some terrific horn interplay, Chadwick’s brassy trumpet contrasting superbly Allsopp’s woody low register bass clarinet. The horns also get the chance to solo at length with Allsopp going first sketching sinuously mesmerising bass clarinet lines above the propulsive rhythms of bassist Tim Fairhall and drummer Gaz Hughes. Bridges then rasps away fruitily on trombone before Fairhall brings it all home with some torrential piano runs. The solos are punctuated by squalling collective passages and the piece eventually fades away to end as mysteriously as it began. Quite a railroad trip. 

Not surprisingly “Victoria Spivey” features the sampled voice of the lady in question singing “Nightmare Blues”. The piece begins with the crackle of Rogers’ electrics and a sound like ghostly pump organ, perhaps meant to simulate the steam whistles of the Mississippi river boats. Fairhall’s piano delicately wanders around these atmosphere setting effects before settling into an authentic blues pattern onto which the disembodied voice of Spivey is superimposed. Chadwick’s trumpet slurs and growls offer suitable embellishment and the other horns are subsequently added to the mix. The band keep the blues mood going after Spivey is faded out with Chadwick and Allsopp on bass clarinet contributing pithy statements. There’s also an extended solo bass feature for the consistently excellent Tim Fairhall who later enters into dialogue with Bridges with Chadwick, Allsopp and Hughes later joining in as the blues edges closer to free jazz. Adam Fairhall picks up the blues baton again with a solo piano feature that embraces a number of jazz and blues styles. The ghost of Victoria Spivey then returns to sing us out.

The closing “Harlem Fast Shout” sees the group tearing it up in uproarious fashion beginning in Cotton Club era Ellington style before veering off into a free jazz squall and back again. The mood is exuberant and playful with trumpeter Chadwick’s fiery opening solo an undoubted highlight.

“The Imaginary Delta” is a superbly realised project with Adam Fairhall as the fulcrum but all the musicians involved play well and make significant contributions. The merging of different jazz and blues styles and of divergent technologies is seamlessly done and the entiree album represents a remarkably coherent whole. Fairhall is to be congratulated for his vision which blends his extensive knowledge of jazz and blues styles with strong compositional skills to present an entity which is entirely convincing. “The Imaginary Delta” conjures up the ghosts of not only of the musicians sampled on the soundtrack but also those of Ellington, Mingus, Tyner, Ayler and more and (to paraphrase Steve Mead)  makes their spirits speak to a 21st century jazz audience.

4 out of 5 stars

Dave Sumner (Allaboutjazz Download of the Day Editor), Birdistheworm.com, Best of 2012 (thus Far) List

August 27 2012

It is a remarkable challenge to create a piece that is both innovative and nostalgic, one that blends the influences of the past with a vision of the future, and to do it without sanitizing one or the other.  On The Imaginary Delta, UK pianist Adam Fairhall does exactly that.

Originally commissioned by the Manchester Jazz Festival (and premiered live at Band On The Wall), Fairhall harnesses the disparate sounds of an ensemble built around obscure, traditional, and modern instruments and technology, and sets them upon a suite of compositions informed by traditional and modern musics alike.  Instruments like piano, trombone, clarinets, trumpet, drums, and bass team up with jug, didley bow, sampling, turntables, and effects, for a series of tunes informed by the blues, ragtime, stride, free jazz, modern and traditional jazz.

And Fairhall doesn’t just play it straight.  These are deconstructed jazz tunes that leave the heart intact.  The influences are just that… influences.  This is modern, forward-thinking music that just so happens to conjure up voices from the past.  In many ways, the artist most logically referenced by this album is Charles Mingus, who himself, also made experimental innovative music that, also, was heavily indebted to traditional jazz and blues.  It as if Fairhall isn’t channeling the music of Mingus, so much as he is the spirit with which Mingus gave life to his music.

Now, about that music…

Your album personnel:  Adam Fairhall (piano), Chris Bridges (trombone, jug), Steve Chadwick (trumpet), James Allsopp (clarinets), Tim Fairhall (bass), Gaz Hughes (drums), and Paul J Rogers (laptop, turntable, diddley bow).

The opening track starts with the processed sampling of an old recording, used as an interlude to the menacing, yet boisterous “Baptist Prayer Meeting.”  As the samples diminish into the background, the other musicians enter the recording with bass clarinet sneers and stormy skies piano.  Drums rattle off stark warnings, and diddley bow adds a percussive element that doesn’t cheer the mood.  The is Jazz composition as balled-up fist.

But the thing of it is, that initial menace gives way to a joyous energy as the band surges more emphatically into the tune, trumpets and trombones lending their voice to the rising tide of sound.  When the tide quickly recedes, and the sound returns to the opening menace… well, it just doesn’t sound that ominous anymore.  Beauty need not always source from pretty sounds.  There is beauty in scars, in shouts, in growls, in ferocity… just so long it’s arranged properly and played with heart and soul.  The song ends as it began, quiet, eerie, and the samples of sounds from another time.

Second track “Sedalia Rag” opens with prancing horns and the scratch of turntables.  The two forces wrestle, and become as one, their sounds indistinguishable from one another and from their moments of individualism.  Hints of traditional ragtime peek out from the free form nature of the tune, especially if the ear follows the breadcrumbs laid out by Fairhall’s piano (most distinctive in the second half of the tune).  But, again, Fairhall’s incorporation of those elements into the composition, ultimately, serve to emphasize its modernity, not its ties to the past.

On “Arabian Fantasy,” the mix of slow blues and sampled vocals is equal parts warm and haunting, like hearing the voice of a dearly departed from beyond the grave.  Pace picks up with some nice solo sections, especially from trombone.

Fourth track “Tutwiler Train Stomp” is a nice blowing session tune.  Bass clarinet takes the spotlight, both on its own and when matched with the higher pitched trumpet.  The tune begins with effects, but the traditional instruments take over.  The trumpet section is particularly riveting.

Fifth track “Victoria Spivey” begins with a repeated sample of skewed piano.  It’s the type of unsettling sound one would expect to hear on a (indie-rock) Mark Linkous song.  Fairhall begins playing over it, and adds an element of elegance to the proceeding.  Then vocals are sampled in, with Fairhall’s piano and Bridges’ trombone playing over it.  The rest of the ensemble slowly files in, adding quiet accompaniment.  The tune takes several sharp turns in tempo and style, but ends the way it began, with Fairhall’s piano and the sampled vocals.  It’s a nice bit of cohesion to a tune that showed many facets.

Album ends with “Harlem Fast Shout,” a hopping tune that conjures images of dance floors filled with Friday Night revelers and musicians on the bandstand playing into the wee hours of the night.

Nearly three months back, I mentioned in my brief synopsis of this album for eMusic that this is “An album of outstanding scope and vision.”  Now, three months later, and plenty more listens under my belt, the truth of that statement hasn’t lost any of its strength.  The Imaginary Delta is a stunning achievement.

Reviews of The Imaginary Delta

Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise:

Mike Butler, Manchester Evening News:

Dave Sumner, emusic.com:

Adam Fairhall, The Imaginary Delta: Originally commissioned for the Manchester Jazz Festival, pianist/composer Fairhall bought together a mix of early jazz forms and current technology and music approaches. So what you have are piano, drums, trumpet, trombone and clarinets joined by didley bow, jug, electronics, turntables, and samples of vintage jazz. It has that same synthesis of haunting and nostalgic warmth as anything that Charles Mingus recorded during his most creative moments, and switches from futuristic avant-garde to Olde Tyme swing with alarming seamlessness. An album of outstanding scope and vision. co-Pick of the Week.

Francois Couture, blog.monsieurdelire.com

With this record, UK pianist Adam Fairhall is rethinking the delta blues in post-modern terms. Through six original compositions, he manages to combine traditional instrumentation (clarinet, trombone, trumpet, bass, drums, jug) and electronic devices (laptop, turntable), drawing inspiration from the delta blues, European free improvisation, and the mash-up culture. Paul J. Rogers spins period recordings, which he treats and integrates to Fairhall’s playing (a blend of ragtime, stride, and free). Strong arrangements, puzzling moments, a very successful artistic proposition.

Vittorio Lo Conte, musiczoom.it (dodgy Google trans;ation from the original Italian):

Usually publications of Slam Productions are dedicated to jazz
more modern, but of course we take the liberty to publish even
something special, like this amazing live concert of the band
around the pianistAdam Fairhall.
apprezare The reasons are many who do.Certainly the crowds
and special atmosphere that musicians communicate to those who now listen, and
the music of course, that brings together past and present without
conflict of any kind, from Duke Ellington’s early atmosphere of the things
modern, post-bop jazz from with some reference to the free.
A mosaic that gives rise to a fascinating painting with color, which
blends the past and the present as they have already done great
as Charles Mingus
The group is made ​​only by the leader on piano, byJames Allsopp
to clarinets (a great solo on dolphianoTutwiler Train
Stomp, while elsewhere it makes us feel the archaic sounds of the band
New Orleans),Chris Bridges trombone,SteveChadwickon trumpet,Tim Fairhallon
bass,Gaz Hughesondrums andPaul J.Rogers,who with
his turntables and electronic instruments with which launches the samples so
as to add special effects to sound magma.
The music is simply fun, unconventional, created by a mind
that is inspired visionary, distantly, to precendenti of Mingus who
willingly invited pianists of his groups to play stride and between
clusters.
The samples of the voices that sound archaic blues make us understand, if
we had forgotten, what is really the swing, while the
emotional participation of the musicians do the rest.
A hard, in short, everything to which he escape aseptic atmosphere
of a recording studio, yet you need tools tomodern communication dall’addetto
managed to work well.The pianist and leader is just an original mind from
which we expectreally

 Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery (New York):
ADAM FAIRHALL With JAMES ALLSOPP/CHRIS BRIDGES/STEVE CHADWICK et al –
The Imaginary Delta: Live July 2011 (Slam 289; UK) Adam Fairhall on
piano & compositions, James Allsopp on clarinets, Chris Bridges on
trombone & jug, Steve Chadwick on trumpet, Paul J. Rogers on laptop,
electronics, turntable & diddely bow, Tim Fairhall on bass and Gaz
Hughes on drums. The Slam label has a long history of discovering new
and often unrecorded musicians from Great Britain, as well as South
America and Italy. Pianist & composer Adam Fairhall is a new name for
me and here debuts an impressive septet. This disc was recorded live
at the Manchester Jazz Festival in July of 2011. Starting off with a
strange mutated blues sample the group soon jump into a strong,
hard-swinging groove. The team of frontline horns – clarinet, trumpet
and trombone, has a distinctive sound that seems to dip into some New
Orleans-like rambunctious. This band is consistently tight and
spirited with exuberant piano from Mr. Allsopp. “Sedalia Rag” does
actually sound like a rag and the entire vibe does make me smile.
Utility player, Paul J. Rogers, knows how to insert certain samples
or sounds to enhance those old school references from jazz’s long
history. There is an ancient blues/jazz voice by Ivy Smith sampled on
“Arabian Fantasy” and “Nightmare Blues” by Victoria Spivey used on
another piece. The band erupts on “Tutwiler Train Stomp” which
features some smokin’ clarinet, trombone and piano solos. Mr.
Fairhall’s septet do a good job of keeping one foot in the past and
the other in the present without resorting to copying an older style
too closely. I guess this makes sense since this is “The Imaginary
Delta”.