BBC Introducing - four winners for Cheltenham announced

The four winning bands for the "BBC Introducing" showcase on a freestage at the Cheltenham Jazz , at 5.30pm on Sunday May 1st, have been announced:


Saltwater Samurai:
Luke Georgiou - Alto Saxophone
Alex Horky - Keyboards
Huw Bennett - Double Bass
Hugh Jones - Electronics
George Bird – Drums

Skein
Rachel Musson - Saxophones, composer (photo above)
Alcyona Mick - piano
Will Collier-bass
Javier Carmona and Josh Morrison- drums / percussion

We reviewed skein HERE

The Discordian Trio (from Edinburgh)
Jack Weir - guitar
Craig Macfadyen - bass
Richard Kass (21)- drums.
website

Trish Clowes

Trish Clowes– saxophone/ composer
Alex Munk – guitar
Calum Gourlay - bass
James Maddren - drums
Heidi Parsons – cello

Trish Clowes' CD Tangent is on Basho

The four were picked by Jez Nelson, Gilles Peterson and Jamie Cullum from a longlist selected from the public entry by Somethin' Else, producers of Jazz on 3.


Jazz on 3 will broadcast a highlights programme on Monday May 16th. The music will also air on Jamie Cullum (Radio 2), Gilles Peterson (Radio 1) and Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone (6music).

To listen to the four bands, FOLLOW THIS LINK

CD Review: Fringe Magnetic - Twistic

Fringe Magnetic - Twistic
(Loop 1012, CD Review by Chris Parker)

Impossible to describe without resorting to phrases such as 'ranges between' or 'touches bases from …', the multi-faceted music produced bytrumpeter Rory Simmons's medium-sized band Fringe Magnetic takes in everything from freeish jazz to through-composed music, from eccentric sea shanties (Andrew Plummer's 'Fire in the Galley') to touchingly intimate sung ballads (Elisabeth Nygaard's 'Awake Like This') and from folk-based melodies ('Near Morningside') to rhythmically tricksy avant-jazz ('Twistic').

In addition, those whose idea of jazz is firmly fixed on conventions such as rhythm sections and front-line horns will find even Fringe Magnetic's basic instrumentation odd (the core sextet comprises trumpet, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and drums, occasionally augmented by piano and bass). This said, many of jazz's defining qualities (unfettered imaginativeness, unpredictability, tension between improvised and composed passages, hospitality to individual quirkiness etc.) are present in abundance in this determinedly original, wholly individual programme.

Although some may find the formal restlessness and consequent slight air of fussy contrivance disquieting, those more sympathetic to post-Downtown jazz will find much to enjoy in Simmons's music – there's even a guest appearance from his most celebrated employer, Jamie Cullum.

Fast-Moving Cheltenham

Cheltenham Jazz Festival bookings are going well, with 3,000 tickets sold to festival members in the first two days. The Festival's new box office system survived its debut well. Jamie Cullum's solo gig sold out in the first three hours. Festival Executive Director Ian George, according to the Press Release says that the following concerts have already started selling well:

- Friday Night is Music Night with Michael Parkinson and Guy Barker
- Andreya Triana
- Pharaoh Sanders
- James Hunter
- Dame Cleo Laine

Bookings at cheltenhamfestivals.com. - Public booking opens on Monday 28th

Remembering Sir John, One Year On - UPDATED

Sir John Dankworth died on February 6th 2010, a year go this Sunday. He encouraged and lifted so many people in so many ways, the gratitude which our jazz community feels towards one of its own will be unmistakeable this weekend. There may be more events than these, please add a comment if I've missed one:

UPDATE Saturday 5th 10am : Dankworth Management have sent in this about a special JAZZ MATTERS at the Stables tomorrow morning at 1130am

Sir John Dankworth was not only a wonderful musician but also a kind and generous man who did much to promote Jazz in the UK. He launched JAZZ MATTERS for the amusement and education of the dedicated, curious or inquisitive jazz devotees.
It has been a year since Sir John Dankworth left us. This Jazz Matters gig is a tribute to John, who as you know was one of Britain's best-known jazz musicians, composers and commentators. The line-up features Sir John’s son (and leading bass player) Alec Dankworth and his long time associate, pianist John Horler, plus some of the great musicians who played with him during his illustrious career; Jim Hart (drums), Mark Nightingale (trombone) and Andy Panayi (reeds).
Adding a bonus to what promises to be a fantastic lunchtime performance Dame Cleo and daughter Jacqui will be putting in a guest appearance.


SUNDAY 6th: Frank Griffith's Nonet at JAGZ in Ascot

In his last years, when John was answering questions in public, he would often say. "I'm pretty sure there's someone in the room who knows my life story better than I do." Frank Griffith always did know the answers. On the day itself, Frank's nonet will be doing the lunchtime slot at Jagz in Ascot, a frequent haunt of close JD collaborator, the late Allan Ganley.

On the programme are Dankworth compositions: Why don’t you tell me why, It happens quietly and the love theme from the 1963 film, The Servant entitled All Gone. A top line-up including: Henry Lowther, Paul Clarvis, Mick Foster, Adrian Fry (who arranged many of JD’s pieces) and Frank Griffith .

http://www.jagz.co.uk/

MONDAY February 7th: Dankworth Memorial gig, 606 Club

At the 606 they are raising funds for Sir John and Cleo Laine's Wavedon Foundation, which "benefits both individual artists in need of financial aid, and organisations seeking support for music education projects."


On the bill are Alec Dankworth, John Horler, and special guests.

http://www.606club.co.uk/

TUESDAY February 7th, Radio 2, 7pm

Jamie Cullum 's show will be a tribute to JD, in the company of trombonist/ arranger/ close JD associate Bill Geldard. Geldard will: "speak about working with Sir John Dankworth. The show will include archive recording of one of his performances from the 1950s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r86v

Jamie Cullum Interview

In advance of this Friday's benefit for the Vortex in Margate, we interviewed Jamie Cullum(Photo BBC)

Are you looking forward to this Friday’s Vortex Benefit in Margate?

Truthfully it's my first time in Margate! It was David Mossman who called me up and asked if I would be interested in helping the festival and the Vortex. David is a tireless and important figure for British Jazz and I would never be able to turn him down. I love the Vortex and without it the British Jazz scene would be much poorer. It is a fearless music venue and hub for the best we have here.


Have you worked with Ian (Shaw) and Liane (Carroll) before?

I know and love both Ian and Liane very well. I would also call them influences on me. Both musicians are singers who go way beyond singing the song, though if called upon they can "torch" it up with the best of them. Ian, Liane and Claire Martin showed me early on that choosing a repertoire as a singer was of the utmost importance. Turning up with the same tired arrangements of the usual standards is no way to make your mark. Through them I learned the importance of crate digging for great songs and then putting your big muddy footprint all over them. They are incredible world class singers. I've shared the stage with them many times and its always an education for me. Come Saturday after the gig I shall be scuttling back to the woodshed.............spanked and inspired!


What’s coming up in your Tuesday BBC Radio 2 show?

The radio show has really become a part of my life. It is an honour to have a such a big platform to play jazz. Credit to BBC Radio 2 for not messing with the playlists. They are totally open and supportive. We have Kurt Elling in session in a couple of weeks which is so exciting for me. Also we are trying to get other shows to start injecting a little jazz into their playlists - The Bad Plus, Gregory Porter and Sara Mitra could end up getting air time elsewhere on R2.

At the Cheltenham Jazz Festival I’ve heard you’re doing a solo performance ? Is that true? What are the challenges?

I always like to do some solo shows when I'm between albums. It really helps me think differently about what I'm doing. At the moment I'm effectively staring in front of a blank sheet that needs new songs on it for album no.6. Playing solo is a huge challenge for me and that can only be a good thing!

Thanks, and enjoy Margate on Friday.

BOOKINGS FOR FRIDAY's SHOW

Re-living moments from the year's gigs

So here it is. Happy Christmas. Everybody’s having fun? Here's one more piece.

I'm just going to take a minute to re-live a few of the moments from the past year of listening to jazz which have brought that unique variety of joy and completeness which only live music can bring. We all keep going to hear live music because we know that when the transformative power, the alchemy in the room works, you’re going to remember it. Maybe forever.

No, these are emphatically not LondonJazz’s “top gigs.” The gaps may be bigger than the wall. This is just a few of the moments which still remain in this listener’s heart and mind.

* * * * *

January had a Jazzon3 celebration at Ronnie Scott’s where the sheer energy and verve of Django Bates’ Human Chain blew away all before it. Django's 50th birthday year has had other great events in it. He's also written for us.

In February the Storms/Nocturnes Trio had as their last number Tim Garland’s “Blues for Little Joe” at Ronnie Scott’s. Little Joe is Tim Garland’s son, who had come through very serious illness in the time since the tune was written (as against big Joe - Joe Locke). I don’t think I’ve heard playing come from anywhere as powerfully deep this year as that particular celebration. All of which bodes well for a new album which will be launched at Ronnie Scott's next April.

From March the memories are tinged with sadness. Trevor Tomkins paid a moving tribute in words at the Guildhall School tribute to Jeff Clyne. Steve Watts then honoured Clyne wordlessly through sheer bass sound and bass presence. Also unforgettable was Jacqui Dankworth and Chris Allard’s duo gig at Blackheath Hall. Just a few weeks after her father’s death, Jacqui sang Sweet Devotion. It’s a very fine song which demands to be heard again. She sang it with a depth, intensity, beauty. And courage.

From May, I remember three experiences. Fly (Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade) played the acoustic of Kings Place Hall One like the truly fine instrument it is. Then the jaw dropped on hearing Mike Walker, Gwilym Simcock, Steve Swallow and Adam Nussbaum, a band now calling itself The Impossible Gentlemen. But Mike Walker’s compositions touched the emotional bits too.

And then there was Jamie Cullum at Cheltenham Town Hall applying the extreme defrost setting to an audience as only he knows how. Cautious Gloucestersire folk found themselves pogo-ing by the end. How does he do it?

From June I treasure the memory of Wycliffe Gordon on trombone and plunger mute, and Abram Wilson (suffering a terrible flu, I learnt later) getting a crowd of uninhibited primary school children swaying in front of me like a field of corn. That was the Barbican’s Anna Rice’s education project – nice one!

From July there was a band which MUST come to London. I heard Joshua Redman’s double trio in the Jazzhus in Copenhagen. Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers provided an astonishingly powerful eight string bass engine, and the two drummers Gregory Hutchinson and Bill Stewart were positioned like a pair of lions guarding a gate.

From the hugely successful Britjazz Festival at Ronnie’s August I treasure the Colin Towns Mask Orchestra, giving the Kurt Weill Suite light, dark and yet more dark. That was an exhilarating edge-of-the seat performance.

From September, all I can think of is one note. Karin Krog's deeply warm E below middle C in Georgia Mancio's brilliantly curated singers' week at the Pizza Express.

(Stepping out of sequence I’m going to leave October till last)

From the London Jazz Festival in November I was mesmerized by the combination of Gary Burton’s quartet- leading and Scott Colley’s bass-playing; but also by Darcy James Argue’s ultra-vivid orchestration of the experience of acute pain, as played by his Secret Society big band at Café Oto. Robbie Robson’s arrangement of Bloodcount from the Strayhorn celebration needs another outing too.

And here are just three from many moments from December which stay fixed in the mind. At the Yamaha Jazz Scholars gig at the 606 I was completely transfixed by the freedom around/across the beat of Ivo Neame both accompanying and soloing. And then there was Alcyona Mick and Rachel Musson’s musical conversations in Rachel’s band “Skein” at the Vortex. And from this week I can still hear Yuri Goloubev’s astonishing bass playing at a private party ringing in my ears.

But there is a possibility, a danger, that one memory can eclipse much else. The world premieres of several new pieces from Kenny Wheeler (photo above: Pip Eastop)took place in Basingstoke in October, at the start of a national touur. I believe strongly that this music will still be getting played in 100 years’ time. In the classical world they are resorting to gimmicks at premieres to disguise how thin and disposable a lot of the music is. This outpouring of melody, a series of new compositions from Wheeler's 80th year is one of the durable musical miracles of our time.

Wheeler's 80th birthday concert in January (Music for Large and Small Ensembles at the Royal Academy was a very special occasion. But a performance of Long Suite 2005 the London Jazz Orchestra in November was also significant. It shows that his music is starting confidently to make its way in the hands of other performers. Henry Lowther, that supreme first take, first call trumpeter, and vocalist Brigitte Beraha demonstrated that this music has the presence and the depth and the interest to last.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remember a few of the extraordinary people we've lost this year. Like musicians Martin Drew, Jack Parnell, Harry Beckett and Chris Dagley. But also people who made indispensable contributions to the jazz scene like Maureen Sexton and Helen Maleed. And I have to thank the people who have written and sent in images to the site. (And thank you readers, particularly if you have read this to the end!)

HAPPY CHRISTMAS. And feel free to add the things which are missing....

Jamie Cullum: "I found that my voice would hurt..."

I would never have guessed: I reviewed Jamie Cullum at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and at the Proms (photo credit: Sisi Burn) , and found his performance energy astonishing. But, he writes today - with quite some honesty and candour - that he's been really going through it with voice troubles:

"I got very sick in the first tour in the USA of last year. In an effort to get through the schedule I pushed my voice in new ways which, though I was managing to make the necessary sounds, left my vocal chords ravaged and raw. I found that I constantly had a sore throat and that my voice would hurt when I sang. A combination of never really studying the mechanics of how my voice worked, dealing with a persistent form of the flu and general exhaustion had left my singing voice in a precarious place that I had never experienced before.

"It was a scary time ...."

The full story - and how he plans to put it right - are on Jamie Cullum's Terrified Studios blog

It's Brubeck Week!

Dave Brubeck will be 90 on Saturday. And there's LOADS going on.

-Dave Brubeck's sons (Darius, Chris and Dan) are on tour with Dave O'Higgins, and that hits Birmingham tonight, as curtain-raised by Peter Bacon with an interview at the Jazz Breakfast Blog

-Tomorrow the action is on the radio. There's the first half of a two -part interview Jamie Cullum did with Dave Brubeck at the Newport Jazz Festival, being broadcast on Radio 2 at 7pm. I've heard the beginning, and Brubeck tells his story really engagingly. E.g. he was being pushed into vetinary studies, until his professor said to him : "Your mind is not here with these frogs and formaldehyde..."

-On Thursday at 11 30am on BBC Radio 4, Paul Gambaccini interviews Brubeck, recorded at Brubeck's home in Connecticut.

- There is a 90-minute Arena TV documentary by and with Clint Eastwood on BBC4 this Friday. More on this in our previous post

-There's a 2-CD retrospective of tracks chosen by Dave Brubeck on Columbia Legacy

And a sad note. The designer of Time Out (above), just a few months younger than Brubeck, died a few weeks ago. A Guardian obituary of Neil Fujita is HERE

Where Jamie Cullum is tonight

There are concert halls. And then there is the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona.

But for the rest of us, oh well, there's always this gig on February 4th.

Vortex Fundraiser - Jamie Cullum in Margate - New Date Feb 4 2011

SEE OUR INTERVIEW WITH JAMIE CULLUM PREVIEWING THE MARGATE GIG

UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST: "Due to unforeseen circumstances the Vortex Fundraiser at The Winter Gardens in Margate has been postponed until 4th February 2011. Jamie Cullum is extremely sorry about this and promises to make the show extra special in the new year.

All original tickets for the show, now called ‘Jamie Cullum and friends’ will remain valid for the new date but if you wish to receive a refund on a ticket you have already purchased you must contact the box office by 10th December on 01843 296111.

Tickets £27.50, £25.00. Call: 01843 292795 or 296111.

(I'm wondering if they'll do the song Kurt Weill wrote about Margate....)

Note: The Vortex , which Jamie is supporting through this gig, is a dedicated arts venue in Dalston staffed almost entirely by volunteers. It puts on adventurous programming every night of the week, has a maximum capacity of only 100. Despite its international renown, it has only ever got on to Arts Council England's radar once: ACE paid for half the cost of the club's piano.

Dave Brubeck/Jamie Cullum/Clint Eastwood

Some of us are going to be singing "In Your Own Sweet Way" for the next month. A new Arena documentary entitled "In His Own Sweet Way," in which Clint Eastwood will pay tribute to Dave Brubeck, will be screened on the BBC at the beginning of December.

Lots of Monterey, Steinbeck, ranching and all that, an area of California which both Eastwood and Brubeck have as their heritage.

No definite timings - yet. But they're telling me "Friday 3 December, BBC Four TBC"

Credits: Producer / Director, Bruce Ricker; Executive Producers Clint Eastwood (Malpaso) & Anthony Wall (Arena)

NB also Jamie Cullum's BBC R2 shows on 30th November and 7th December will also feature a 2-part special interview with Brubeck and his sons.