Club Inégales, Euston, London
By Sam Pryce
Nestled beneath the street, yards away from Euston Station, lies a very different kind of club. It’s not exactly a jazz club or a new music venue, nor is it merely a quirky underground bar; it’s all of these things, all at once. Club Inégales, now in its fifth year, experiments with the boundaries between musical genres and other art forms. Its name refers to a performance practice from the Baroque era called notes inégales (‘unequal notes’) in which equally timed notes were played for unequal durations – ‘the closest classical music ever got to jazz,’ as club director Peter Wiegold said in his introduction. With his accomplished house band Notes Inégales, Wiegold invites musicians and poets to perform their work and, later, to play and improvise alongside the band.
The night began with a short but sweet set from Peter Wiegold and the house band, performing some Spanish-inflected jazz pieces he had recently composed. Consisting of loose melodies, shifting textures and a section of free improvisation, Wiegold’s music and orchestration managed to be freely experimental as well as accessible.
The second set introduced us to the guest artist for the evening: Uzbek percussionist Abbos Kosimov, accompanied brilliantly by Sardor Mirzakhojaev. Kosimov’s specialist instrument, the doyra, is a frame drum with jingles surrounding its interior (imagine an inverted tambourine). With his cheeky stage presence, Abbos gave an explosive and entertaining performance, playing multiple drums at once, initiating call-and-response rhythms with the audience, and even tossing his doyra into the air while, bewilderingly, keeping time. When we expected an interview, Kosimov let his doyra do the talking, drumming out his answers in a manner that proved surprisingly articulate.
However, it was in the final set, when Kosimov and Mirzakhojaev collaborated with Wiegold and the house band, that the most unique music arose. It was here that the best qualities of both Wiegold’s and Kosimov’s music came together, creating a compelling musical dialogue between two diverse cultures. What emerged blurred the line between backgrounds and genres, providing a throttling start to Club Inégales’ ‘Unequal Times’ season. 