Charlotte Keeffe Right Here Right Now Quartet: Alive! In The Studio

One of the finest up and coming trumpeters on the UK scene, Charlotte Keeffe's résumé includes an ever increasing circle of collaborators including bassist Olie Brice, reedman Colin Webster and multi-instrumentalists Alex Ward and Martin Archer (the latter also boss of the Discus imprint). For the second album from her Right Here, Right Now Quartet, comprising guitarist Moss Freed, bassist Ashley John Long and drummer Ben Handysides, she aims to replicate a live set in the studio. If this is any indication of what they can do, run, don't walk if they appear on a nearby stage.

The 49-minute program confirms their strong suit as the mix of Keeffe's enticing compositions, the ensuing interplay and subsequent knotty improv. The recurring emergence of order from chaos (and vice versa) proves a winning strategy. Keeffe has perfected the art of penning themes which furnish sufficient hooks for soloists to draw upon, without ever seemingly constraining them. She is particularly fond of the sort of woozy airs which the trumpet, with its lexicon of half notes and smears, can inflect with all manner of emotional dimensions.

With regard to discourse Keeffe herself provides an inventive focal point. Her blurts, flutters, growls, breaths and whispers frequently promote the loosest, most open interaction. Freed's clean chiming lines and low key melodicism hark back to a jazzy lineage which offers an effective counterpoint to Keeffe's more out there machinations. Long and Handysides prove wholly attuned to the inside/outside ethos. Both slip seamlessly between propulsive vamps, prickly freeform and pithy commentary, either individually or in tandem.

The first three cuts flow into a continuous bloc, offering a taster of how all this might work out in concert. The initial spiky exchanges of "1200 Photographs I" falls into the warm embrace of a bleary refrain before segueing into a tonally savvy drum tattoo at the outset of "A Horse Named Galaxy." From here Long's pizzicato riff fuels a perky trumpet/guitar unison, which opens up for another bravura spot from the leader atop some choppy backing support. That in turn begets the dirge-like ensemble musings of "Cottontail," only to launch Freed's gentle sunny guitar. And so on.

Keeffe ends the album on an exuberant note, as the band relaxes into the joyful highlife lilt of "Brentford" (perhaps the only time those words have figured in the same sentence) then takes the piece out by singing the melody a cappella. It is a lovely touch, maybe taking a lead from producer Archer's well-proven flair for curating a satisfying listening experience. But it is the collective ability to switch in and out of tempo, form and freedom which especially distinguishes Keeffe's thrillingly realized conception.

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