Scott Flanigan: Clouded Lines

A hefty eight years separate Scott Flanigan's debut, Point of Departure (Self Produced, 2015), and Clouded Lines (SF Sounds, 2023). Not that Flanigan has been idle. In the intervening years the Belfast pianist has completed a Ph.D in jazz performance, recorded a duo album with French vocalist Fabrice Mourlon, co-founded a thriving Friday-night jazz club and, in his day to day life, juggles gigging and teaching schedules in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. Clouded Lines, the fruit of a joint commission from Moving On Music and the PRS Foundation, sees Flanigan take significant strides in his development as a distinctive voice, while maintaining a firm foothold in older jazz traditions.

If Point of Departure saw Flanigan wear his main pianistic influences fairly prominently on his sleeve, those guiding compasses have now been largely jettisoned. A very personal stamp colors the melodies of "Prelude," which intros and outros the album—achingly pretty yet tempered by darker hues. Harmonically alluring too, they represent a kind of ribbon and seal that underscore Flanigan's intentions to pursue his own trajectory. His manifesto is heard to strongest effect on the album's centrepiece, the three-part suite "Clouded Lines," which Scott debuted at the Brilliant Corners jazz festival in 2019. Then, as now, the pianist is flanked by guitarist Ant Law, drummer Kevin Brady and bassist Dave Redmond.

Over the course of the suite's nineteen minutes, Flanigan constructs a vibrant musical narrative—visceral and tender at its extremes—that pits contemporary lines against bebop scurry. Redmond and Brady are versatile rhythmic guides, laying a thick-pile carpet of comforting support in the quieter passages, and muscular propulsion when the music takes wings. Flanigan and Law make for an exciting front-line, soloing with free-wheeling relish on the suite's opening and closing segments and combining in harmonic and melodic symmetry that lends the music much of its distinctive character.

The allure of jazz's so-called golden era colors two of the remaining three tracks. Flanigan displays great finnesse on George Gershwin's pretty ballad "I've Got A Crush On You." Starting as a classic piano-trio piece, Redmond and Brady drop out around the minute mark, leaving Flanigan to forge a delicate solo trail of subtly classical bent. Bass and brushes-stirred cymbals re-join only as the piano fades, to apply a softly sparkling finishing touch. The self-penned "It's Not Yourself" is given the bebop treatment. Driven by Redmond's fast-walking bass and Brady's insistent ride cymbal, Law and Flanigan take turns to strut their stuff, bringing Brady to the party in a call-and-response section before returning to the head.

Sue Rynhart's "She Has Music," from the one-of-a-kind singer's Crossings... (Self Produced, 2015), calls to Flanigan's more contemporary temperament; solid groove allied to melodic lines that waste no time in sinking their hooks underpin gutsy solos from Redmond, Law and Flanigan.

With his second album as leader Flanigan does not so much bridge past and present as toggle freely between the two. Whatever the terrain, the playing is first rate throughout. But it is in the more progressive original compositions, particularly the spectacular opening to the "Clouded Lines" suite, where the music smoulders and catches fire. It is here, looking towards a new horizon, that feels like Flanigan's real point of departure.