Cover image: James Morrison. Supplied

James Morrison can fill concert halls, so it was a pleasure to see him perform at close range in such a warm and intimate venue. From the moment his smooth-as-silk trumpet crooned out over the room, the audience knew they were in for a special show.

Many touring jazz artists come to Perth alone and perform with a pick-up band of local sidemen. Not Morrison. His quartet includes two of his sons, the regally-named William (guitar and vocals) and Harry (upright bass). With drummer Tim Firth they make for an organic unit, effortless in their casual delivery of top-shelf jazz.

Not only the bond of blood but having performed together so many times fired their on-stage rapport. Each show in the Perth season was different, the repertoire chosen on the fly as the mood took them. Sunday night’s season finale ran for some seventy minutes without an interval. The only original they played was Harry Morrison’s Invader Zim, an ode to his beloved but mischievous cat. The rest was taken from the better- and lesser-known pages of the classic jazz songbook with the odd dip into bossa nova and pop. An eclectic mix, each tune was filtered through a sublime jazz sensibility that brought them vividly and individually alive.

Known mainly for his trumpet, Morrison is also an impeccable keys player and master of both the trombone and flugel horn. Each instrument featured in the rep—though the trumpet was the only horn to be aired twice.

While the other musicians were soloing, Morrison would move over to the grand and gently play some counterpointing chords. When it came to their extended version of Duke Ellington’s Take The A Train, he followed the master band-leader and sat at the grand throughout.

For someone who abandoned the piano as a lad after a few years’ lessons (he hated Für Elise), Morrison has come a long way. His playing was superb—understated during the solos to allow his band mates to shine, sensational when it was his turn. His extended rendition of The A Train was a masterclass in jazz piano.

With more than forty years on-stage experience, Morrison is beyond relaxed in front of an audience, so it’s little wonder that he is also a great raconteur. He breaks the tunes with entertaining and informative tales about the music, the artists and anything else that takes his fancy. One story Sunday was about his various instruments.

Morrison has his horns custom made by a master-crafts-company in Vienna. Every player who does so asks for something special—a burnished gold finish, a mother of pearl inlay. Morrison’s trumpet has a Dizzy Gillespie kink, but his flugelhorn, dubbed by the makers ‘Ulysses’ after the butterfly weave of its bore, is a complete one-off. Instead of the usual B flat, Morrison wanted one in E flat—he figured it would make for a unique sound. A stretch (literally), the craftsmen rose to the challenge and worked out how to accommodate the extra feet of piping (the butterfly weave). The only one in the world in that key, it has a rich and mellow sound that dips down shiveringly into the lower register. It looked beautiful too with its burnished black and gold patina.

Just when you realized there wouldn’t be a break, Morrison announced that they would end the show with a tune by legendary American songwriter, Stevland Hardaway Judkins. After the audience drew the expected blank, Morrison told the story of the evolving names of Motown artists and how important it was to get them right. Judkins was first changed to Morris but it was only when they abbreviated Stevland to Stevie and changed Morris to Wonder that this trailblazing artist’s fortunes took off.

With William on lead vocals and his father mellow on his beloved trumpet, the quartet rounded out the show with a jazz version of Wonder’s 1976 hit Isn’t She Lovely. And wasn’t it lovely, like everything else all evening, smooth-as-silk.