Plaistow
Only the very best groups have the ability to mould their music and their environment into what seems like a single organism. This was something that struck me very powerfully while listening to Plaistow in Bremen’s Weserburg art museum during the 2016 Jazzahead festival.
On the face of it, the room was not the most helpful in acoustic terms. Anyone trying to play conventional piano-trio jazz would soon have been overwhelmed by unwanted reverberation. But that’s not what Plaistow do. And, quite characteristically, Johann Bourquenez, Vincent Ruiz and Cyril Bondi had given the matter some thought in advance. Without compromising the substance or reducing the essence of their music, and without limiting their creative freedom to pursue a three-way conversation, they found an adaptation that both made the room seem like a perfect space for their music and allowed their fans to hear it from a new perspective.