Review: Terry Lyne Carrington – hot jazz on a cold winter’s night

Terri Lyne Carrington was pleased to be back in Hong Kong. She announced from the stage, as visiting performers often do, that she was particularly enjoying the food, and also that it was now a full 30 years since her last visit.

On that occasion – before her debut CD as a leader – she came with Wayne Shorter’s band, appearing in one of the Live Under the Sky touring jazz festivals of the late 1980s which featured such major names as Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, and Herbie Hancock.

As she ruefully observed you don’t get all-star touring bills like that anymore, although she didn’t mention that the reason for that is that tobacco company sponsorship for those tours is now off limits.

The Arts Festival’s budget presumably didn’t quite run to some of the stars who appeared on Carrington’s most recent Mosaic Project album, Love and Soul, but she still managed to assemble quite a band.

The first Mosaic Project album, which came out in 2011, featured an all female line-up of instrumentalists and vocalists, but its 2015 sequel involved some male participation, and the band assembled for this gig was mixed. Josh Hari doubled on acoustic and electric bass while Ben Eunson played electric guitar.