Laura Jurd: The Big Friendly Album

The Big Friendly Album is what it is called and that is exactly what it is. London-based trumpeter/cornetist and composer Laura Jurd's fourth album under her own name is a big hearted, gorgeously lyrical, feel-good romp, which does not preclude cerebral engagement but which wears its complexities so lightly that one barely notices them.

Jurd last came to the attention of All About Jazz during The Great Pause, with the release of the perfect little masterpiece To The Earth (Edition, 2020), her third album leading her quartet Dinosaur. She gave us an interview then, which can be read here.

The Big Friendly Album draws from folk traditions, particularly those reflecting Jurd's Scottish heritage, but filtered through a jazz sensibility. Also heard are the blues and the occasional splash of alt-rock. The album was planned, says Jurd, as a move from the concert hall to the street, and the three-horn frontline (cornet, euphonium and tuba) is arranged to accentuate the informal vibe. On the opening track "Fuzzy," however, it is the joyous abandon of a New Orleans marching band cutting loose that is evoked, rather than that of a Scottish one. As noted, the feel-good factor does not deny cerebralism and Jurd's composing incudes bitonal passages and asymmetrical time signatures, the first easy on the ear and the second in no way a hindrance to toe-tapping forward motion. "Passing Clouds" brings an interlude of gentle melancholy midway through the album.

Jurd, who plays acoustic and electric piano in addition to cornet on some tracks, leads a sextet completed by Martin Lee Thomson on euphonium, Danielle Price on tuba, Alex Haines on guitar, Ruth Goller on bass and Corrie Dick, the only holdover from Dinosaur, on drums. Flautist Finn Peters guests on "Fuzzy," Norwegian avant-folk accordionist Frode Haltli on "Sleepless," "Little Opener" and "Passing Clouds," violinist Dylan Bates on "Pentatonic," and soprano saxophonist Mark Lockheart on "Houseplant." Haltli, Bates and Lockheart also make brief contributions to "Henry," appropriately enough as the song is a celebration of Jurd's new-born son and everyone is invited to the party.

If it is possible to smile while playing the cornet, one senses Jurd would have been doing so, broadly, while recording The Big Friendly Album. In that regard, she is rather like another unassuming innovator, the great pianist and composer Horace Silver, who in the 1960s challenged the growing orthodoxy that jazz was Serious Business and needed to be performed with a pained rictus. It is, anyway, hard to imagine listeners to The Big Friendly Album going away anything but h-a-p-p-y.

Footnote: At the time of writing, there is no YouTube footage around the new album, but there is some good stuff about its immediate predecessor, Stepping Back, Jumping In (Edition, 2019) on the clip below.