Musical Goodies from Bill Frisell… and Michael (Mike?) Gibbs

A few days ago, I read a post by Richard Williams on his excellent blog, The Blue Moment; he was reviewing Orchestras, the new double album by renowned guitarist-composer Bill Frisell, which I’ve subsequently listened to and certainly agree is excellent. I’ve been happy to check out Frisell’s music ever since I first heard him back in the 1980s on albums like Rambler and Lookout for Hope. But what caught my eye while reading Richard’s review was that the new album has Frisell, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston performing live on one disc with the Brussels Philharmonic, on the other with the Umbria Jazz Orchestra. In both cases, the arrangements are by Michael Gibbs. And that’s what really grabbed my attention.

You may not have heard of the composer and arranger Gibbs – sometimes billed as Michael, sometimes Mike – though many of my own generation may recall that he wrote the music for the popular ’70s TV comedy series The Goodies. If my teenage self much preferred Monty Python, I don’t hold that particular association against Gibbs, who has been creating magnificent music for more than half a century. (He’s now in his mid-80s.) Though he’s collaborated with musicians as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Marianne Faithfull, Whitney Houston, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the heavy metal band Uriah Heep (!), and has composed film scores for the likes of John Woo, Stephen Poliakoff, Bill Forsyth and Ken Russell, most of his work has been in ‘jazz’, which in Gibbs’ case is a term that also seamlessly embraces rock, funk, African music (he spent his early years in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) and – for want of a better word – ‘classical’. Since going to study in the US in 1959, he has worked with many of the finest jazz musicians around. Why is he not better known? Partly because his recorded discography is surprisingly slight given his long and illustrious career, partly because much of that discography has not remained very accessible. Still, we live in a digital era, so if you’re curious you can easily check Gibbs out for yourself.

His idol was Gil Evans, and he studied in New England with Gunter Schuller and George Russell – but his teachers also included Aaron Copland and Iannis Xenakis, which may explain Gibbs’ range of expression and achievement: sometimes one is put in mind of Evans or Carla Bley (though his dense textures, rhythmic subtlety, harmonic sophistication and signature fanfares show that Gibbs is very much his own man), at others there are darker, plusher echoes of Alban Berg or Olivier Messiaen. He came to Britain in the ’60s, and built a healthy career as a trombonist playing for the likes of Graham Collier, Mike Westbrook, John Dankworth, Stan Tracey and Buddy Rich, before establishing himself as a leader towards the end of the decade. The Goodies aside, I first encountered his music in the ’70s on albums like Tanglewood 63 (the orchestral line-up of which reads like a Who’s Who of UK jazz greats of the early ’70s), Mike Gibbs Directs The Only Chrome Waterfall Orchestra – here’s the opening track – and two terrific albums with Gary Burton: In the Public Interest and Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra. Since those years, new albums have appeared less frequently, but all of them have been worth checking out, for his own compositions or for his arrangements of works by others. Here’s a Song for You, made in 2011 with Norma Winstone and the NDR Bigband, is a lovely example of the latter, with wonderfully sensitive, subtle and imaginative settings of songs by Mitchell (Blue), Randy Newman (I Think It’s Going to Rain Today), Nick Drake (Riverman) and Sting (A Thousand Years) alongside standards by Gershwin, Ellington et al. Other fine releases included By the Way (1993), Nonsequence (2001) and In My View (2015); some favourite tracks of mine include the very early Family Joy, Oh Boy, from his 1970 debut album Michael Gibbs; Undergrowth, from Chrome Waterfall Orchestra; Bilbao Song, from Mike Gibbs + Twelve Play Gil Evans; and ‘Tis As It Should Be, from In My View.

Gibbs’ undiminished talent is immediately evident on the new Frisell album, where alongside gems by the guitarist like Throughout (fascinating to compare with Carla Bley’s 2005 version for the Liberation Music Orchestra), Monica Jane and Strange Meeting, you can find a couple of old but evergreen Gibbs compositions, Nocturne Vulgaire and Sweet Rain. If your only experience of Gibbs’ music is via The Goodies or Uriah Heep, I recommend you consider the possibility of exploring a little further. Oh, and long-time fans of Frisell, Gibbs and Gary Burton might enjoy watching this.

Bill Frisell – Orchestras was recently released by Decca. Several of Mike Gibbs’ albums can be purchased through the usual methods. Photograph of Michael Gibbs by John Watson.