PRESS / f-ire

The Telegraph - October 13, 2005

How jazz got hot again

Award-winning jazz musician Gilad Atzmon salutes the F-ire collective, saviours of the British sound

It was British jazz that first captured my imagination. Back in the late '70s, I used to visit a British record shop in Jerusalem. It was here that I found my first jazz albums. A long time before I had managed to get my hands on any John Coltrane vinyl, it was the work of Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes that introduced me to the beauty of black music. Scott and Hayes had it all: the energy, the power, the wit, the inspiration, the originality, the warmth and the wisdom. Living then in the Middle East, I remember regarding London as the Mecca of Jazz.

In the early '90s, I settled in London, though it was academia that brought me over - studying philosophy during the day and blowing my horn by night. But to my great astonishment, the British jazz that I encountered was more confused than the firm energy of Scott and Hayes. It seemed there was some kind of crisis in the air. Scott and Hayes were rebels; they played as if they were fighting for their lives. This shouldn't be that surprising. In the '50s and '60s, jazz was still a revolutionary art form. There was no funding system and to play jazz in that era was a survival mission.

But in the '90s, there wasn't much left of that spirit of resistance. Younger British musicians were heading towards a deadlock. Playing the old standards didn't make much sense any more, and cloning contemporary Americans made even less. In the '90s, jazz was no longer revolutionary art and, as if this wasn't enough, it was barely entertaining. It had become an insular and over-sophisticated art form. Frequently, I heard jazz musicians accused of self-indulgence. Time was ripe for a big change.

Making new music is probably the easiest part of it all. A far greater challenge is to find an audience for such music. Far more complicated still is to break through. Ten years ago, a 26-year-old London-born sax player and composer called Barak Schmool decided to change the rules of the game.

He formed a musical collective. Without realising where exactly he was aiming and how revolutionary his ideas were, he founded a community of promising young musicians who decided to learn from each other and share their knowledge with the world. In 1997, they named themselves the F-ire collective. Now they are a big success story.

F-ire is a group of exceptional musicians who support one another while being committed to sustaining cutting-edge musical artistry. Together, they help each other organise performances, recording projects and educational activities. Among the collective you find Seb Rochford's band, Polar Bear, who were recently short-listed for the Mercury Music Prize. Pete Wareham's Acoustic Ladyland (winner of the BBC Jazz Awards' best band of 2005) now sell out every venue they choose to play in. The F-ire collective seems to be everywhere: in big concert halls, tiny Jazz clubs, London colleges and even carnivals. Now the entire group is just about to launch their first UK tour. They have travelled from the far margins into the heart of British jazz establishment.

Oliver Weindling, the man behind Babel, the record label behind Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland and Ingrid Laubrock's latest album, told me that F-ire is in fact an astonishing "marketing exercise" made by a group of young musicians who realise that "if there are no opportunities you have to create them. Too many British jazz musicians are not getting off their arses," he says.

But it goes deeper. Barak Schmool has realised something that many jazz musicians insist upon forgetting: that jazz is an urban art form with a social message, thus it must reflect on our urban life. For Schmool, to play jazz is to intermingle with one's social landscape. To make music is "to put the music into the community and the community into the music".

This is exactly what you hear when you listen to Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland and the latest F-ire compilation. It is loud, it can be rough, it is angry, it is beautiful but, more than anything else, it belongs to London and London belongs to it.

When I ask Schmool what he dreams of, he says: a place where F-ire can practice and mix with others. Plainly, he is fighting against all odds. When the world seems an ever-more egotistic environment led by greed, Schmool bears a message of hope. This may sound naïve but, astonishingly enough, his message is making a difference.

If there was an identity crisis in young British jazz just 10 years ago, it is now subsiding, and a lot of that is thanks to the work of F-ire. The measure of inspiration presented in the collective's work reminds me of the very best of British jazz.

In it you can hear the epic enthusiasm of Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes, the complexity and virtuosity of guitarists Alan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin, the poetic beauty of saxophonist John Surman and pianist John Taylor, and the militant conviction of Courtney Pine and the Jazz Warriors. Maybe I wasn't wrong. Maybe London is a Mecca of Jazz after all.