Music Spoken Here presents: TRYPL
Thursday 9th January 2025 – The Marrs Bar, Worcester
On the coldest night of the new year and with the nasty winter bugs that are doing the rounds at the moment, I wasn’t sure what sort of turnout we’d get last Thursday. The day before the gig, bassist Davide Mantovani had to drop out due to illness and even our sound engineer Willis was struck down at the eleventh hour, but it all came good and the seven-piece TRYPL saw The Marr’s Bar packed for cracking night of hot Latin jazz to start 2025 on high note!
It is inevitable when working with bands of in-demand musicians that, on occasions, advertised lineups, particularly where larger bands are involved, will change on the night for various reasons. Those who follow Music Spoken Here at The Marr’s Bar may recall that TRYPL’s co-founder and saxophonist Paul Booth’s other band HOOP was rescheduled in 2023 due to Paul landing a TV show tour. For the same reason he was dep’d when Tristan Banks’ Quartet played that year, at first by Tom Barford, who was then taken ill and replaced last-minute by the exceptional Tom Smith, who filled in astoundingly on both sax and flute, sight-reading most of the music which he’d seen for the first time that day! When HOOP eventually played in November, another of TRYPL’s co-founders Ryan Quigley stepped in for Tom Walsh on trumpet, learning the set on the way down from a studio session in Sheffield earlier that day. It is a testament to the high standard of musicians that we are so lucky to be able to enjoy here in Worcester.
Tonight, three of the band were stand-ins, with Ryan replaced by Sid Gauld (who, along with Paul, had finished up 13 back-to-back sold-out shows at Ronnie Scott’s with Incognito the week before), John Crawford (who previously appeared at The Marr’s Bar in Tristan Banks’ Quartet) replacing the advertised Will Barry on keys, and Mirko Scarcia stepping in last minute on upright and electric bass.
Quite a queue had formed outside the Marr’s Bar – something we haven’t seen in a while, and once the doors opened, people began to file in to the sounds of Latin jazz from our resident DJ Steve ‘Moore Fe Jazz’. By the time the first set started, half an hour later, it was standing room only!
There was to be no ‘easing in’ tonight, with the set launching into “Nao Ha Tempo Para Agora” with a scorching, up-beat introduction from John Crawford on his Roland digital piano. The horn section then came in together before each taking solos. Paul Booth took the first on tenor sax, followed by Trevor Mires on trombone and finally Sid Gauld dropping his first trumpet solo of the evening. The piece, which was written by Ryan Quigley and appears on their forthcoming second album, closed out with a feature from Davide Giovannini on drums, with some additional flourishes from Andres Ticino on percussion. As it happens, Davide and Sid join Neil Angilley (pianist in Steve Taylor’s Fusion Phew who appeared in May last year) in the roster of members from the incredible Snowboy & The Latin Section that have performed on the Music Spoken Here stage in the last twelve months, and Paul has dep’d in their lineup on several occasions.
“Avarice”, also from the forthcoming album, had Paul switch to soprano sax and bassist Mirko Scarcia, who had seen this music for the first time that day, swap the double bass for an orange Music Man Stingray electric bass.
Unfortunately, the absent Ryan Quigley held the stock of merch, so the band were only able to scrabble together three vinyl copies of their eponymous 2020 debut album, on which the next piece “Here We Go” appears. We were treated to another feature from John on piano and Trevor on trombone.
Things calmed down momentarily with the ballad “Paseo del Amor” from the forthcoming album that featured Sid on flugelhorn, Paul on soprano sax and Mirko, back on double bass for this one. The last piece in the first set was a return to the debut album with “El Viaje El Sur”, unashamedly introduced by Trevor with his “Bexley Heath pronunciation” before passing the mic to Paul, who wrote this glorious salsa tune, for the correct pronunciation. It also gave conguero Andres an opportunity to show us his chops, before a tenor solo from Paul and another drum feature from Davide.
The second set opened with “Pasado Olvidado” and “Tres Palabras”, the sixth and seventh track from the TRYPL album. The latter featured a sombre tenor sax solo, sparsely accompanied by John’s piano, with Davide coming in with brushed snare before Trevor took a delightfully moody trombone solo followed by another double bass solo from Mirko.
Composed by Ryan Quigley and named after an essential margarita ingredient, “Trypl Sec” was a laid back bossa nova from the forthcoming album, due out in May, that featured Sid on trumpet and John on piano. Sticking with the drinks theme and also from the forthcoming album, we were treated to the band’s first ever live performance of “Its Coffee Time”, which opened with a solo from Andres on congas.
The energy in the room was channelled for some audience participation in the final piece of the set – “Palinka”, inspired by the “unofficial National drink of Hungary”. The packed house weren’t going to let it lie there, and after rapturous applause the TRYPL powerhouse fired up again with an encore of “Nodge”, a piece that may have been more familiar to some as it was used in our promotion of this fantastic event.
It really was wonderful to see so many of Worcester’s finest come through for this gig on such a cold night. Along with our many regulars, there were several groups of people there for the first time. I’m sure that most hadn’t heard of TRYPL before this event, and that will probably be the case with most of the bands that Music Spoken Here put on. One thing you can be sure of though is that they continue to present the very best from the UK jazz, funk and fusion scene in little old Worcester, a city that’s “not really known for jazz”!
By: Dave Fuller