Mickey Hanson serenades with diverse jazz sounds

Erin Hansen, Gleaner Writer

Trumpeter Mickey Hanson headlined an evening of diverse Jazz sounds at Red Bones Café Thursday night to a packed crowd of swaying music lovers. Hanson and his group played classics such as Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island, adding extra swing to traditional beats with brief interludes into contemporary genres, capturing the attention of the mature audience.

Hanson carried the evening with his sultry streamline of trumpet and bugle horn, sitting comfortably in the lower notes by way of what appeared to be the lungs of an Olympic swimmer.

Hanson started playing trumpet when he was 16 during a time when jazz was still highly influential and visibly present in Jamaica.

"Ever since I was a youngster I was attracted to jazz because that music form demands more of you than other forms, and if you can do that form, you can do any other," said Hanson.

Musical versatility

He also told The Sunday Gleaner he appreciated the musical versatility of jazz as it had expanded his knowledge of style.

"One of the principal elements of jazz is improvisation and you have to understand all different styles to do that."

A brass-instrument enthusiast, Hanson plays a wide array of horn instruments in addition to his first love, the trumpet. When it comes to jazz though, he pays tribute to that love revealing that his favourite jazz musicians are American trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece.

Speaking about the scarcity of live Jazz music in Kingston since the heydays of the '60s, Hanson said "there has been a void, but as a group we are trying to fit".

The talent of his band, which includes keyboardist Othneil Lewis, bassist Carl Gibson, drummer, Obed Davis and percussionist Denver Smith, was introduced in an original song called Godspeed, where the group members got the chance to showcase their solo techniques.

Fusing styles

The band developed over the last two years and next year, Hanson says, they intend to make themselves more visible as a group by interjecting their own music with the jazz style.

"By adding our musical styles of Latin and reggae, we'll add our own flair to the sound," he emphasised.

Guest performances were aplenty, including a three-song set from singer, Charmaine Limonious, who accompanied Hanson for Billy Holiday's Lover Come Back to Me. Limonious also did a Latin-style song, flexing her abilities by singing the words in Spanish.

The last half of the show the stage became more crowded as a larger horn section appeared and a guest performance from violinist Jose Salgado revealed an excellent solo in the jazz fusion style.

With each song, the sound grew larger and the raspy brass section more courageous as Salgado mercifully countered Hanson's slick trumpeting with frenzied fiddling until the whole crowd was rocking back and forth in their chairs.