One of the special features of each concert is that it starts quite early – at 7PM – and each concert starts with a spotlight concert by young local musicians either performing solo or in small groups. The second part of the concert featuring professional players then carries on at 8PM with the concert finishing around 9PM, not too late for the younger players who performed earlier to stay and watch.

Lots of styles of music are featured in the concerts with at least one Jazz-related concert in the season.

The first half spotlight concert tonight featured several young pianists, a trombonist, an alto saxophonist, a singer, a drummer and then concluded with a performance by the Love Music Trust Senior Jazz Band led by Rob Cope and bassist Stan Scott playing a blues by Stanley Turrentine.

The second half of the concert featured Rob Cope’s band ‘Gemini’, a quartet with Rob playing soprano sax and bass clarinet, Andy Scott on tenor sax, Liam Noble on piano and Paul Clarvis on drums.

Rob referred to the fact that it had been a long term ambition to play with both Liam and Paul having been inspired by their album ‘Starry Starry Night’ from 2008. Liam has a very wide variety of Jazz styles at his disposal on piano from stride and swing through to Monk and more contemporary players. He’s always interesting to listen to. Paul Clarvis plays with a minimum amount of drum kit and brings all kinds of influences into his playing from early Jazz drummers like Baby Dodds through to more modern players. Both instinctively react to the soloist playing at the time.

The program mainly consisted of tunes from the album ‘Gemini’ released earlier this year on the Ubuntu label. This follows on from Rob’s previous album from 2019 ‘Gods of Apollo’. The names Apollo and Gemini being the names of space missions by NASA in the 1960s and 70s. Gemini also has an astrological connotation relating to twins and it’s no accident that the band has a duo of horn players as its front line with another duo in the rhythm section.

The first piece ‘Voices’ was a slow lyrical melody with a South African Township quality about it, written as a way to introduce each member of the band.

‘Together’ started with a fiendishly difficult written passage by the two saxophones where they start of playing closely together and then gradually diverge. The piece then developed into an improvised section over a groove underpinned by Liam and Paul. Apparently this was written by Rob to reflect the way in which the teacher influences the student to start with but then the student finds their own voice. Andy Scott had been Rob’s teacher when he was studying at the RNCM.

‘Up’ was another challenging piece influenced by a saxophone duo seen on YouTube and was reminiscent of some of Chick Corea’s Latin American based tunes.

‘Across’ had a minimalist type structure to it where the tenor sax and bass clarinet lines weaved in and out of each other the piano joining in and then some improvisation taking place over the continuing figures.

Two pieces which reflected the Gemini theme of space were ‘The Dance’ and ‘Laika’. ‘The Dance’ is inspired by Gemini VI and VII which had the first crewed rendezvous in space 30cm apart. ‘Laika’ was an upbeat blues dedicated to dogs but in particular Laika the first dog in space.

The final piece was ‘Mr Mustafa’ from the film ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ written by Alexandre Desplat. Rob related the fact that when bringing the piece to the band he asked Paul if he could play like the drummer on the original recording. It turns out that the original drummer on the recording was Paul Clarvis.

A nice evening of music firstly by the young local players and then by four top jazz musicians at the height of their powers playing difficult original music.

LINE-UP

First half: Spotlight Concert : Charlotte Blake, Felix Dean, Izzy Landon, James Landon, Maiya Metcalfe, Daisy Millward, Tilly Pailthorpe, Niamh Wilson
Love Music Trust Senior Jazz Band

Second Half: Gemini: Rob Cope and Andy Scott (saxophones and bass clarinet) with Liam Noble and Paul Clarvis (piano and percussion)

The post Rob Cope’s ‘Gemini’ at Sandbach Concert Series first appeared on UK Jazz News.

For the 2024 Swansea International Jazz Festival – which coincides with Sir Karl Jenkins’ 80^th birthday year – Festival Director Dave Cottle and Sir Karl got together with Laurence Cottle and hatched a great idea, billed in the festival programme as Sir Karl “returning to jazz for the first time in fifty years.” As he told John Fordham in THIS INTERVIEW: “We got to thinking about my 80th birthday and connection with the festival, and came up with the idea of some new arrangements for tunes I’d written for Graham Collier, Nucleus and Soft Machine, with Laurie’s big band playing them.”

Sir Karl has been the festival’s Patron for some years. Laurence’s big band have also appeared at the festival a couple of times. In 2018, for example, the band played a program of Tower Of Power repertoire.

Sir Karl and Laurence were born, nearly eighteen years apart, within 8 miles of each other in the Swansea area. They have previously worked together on some of Sir Karl’s projects, including music for adverts.

For this concert, the arranging duties were split between Sir Karl for the first half and Laurence for the second. Originally the pieces weren’t written for a big band line-up, so adaptation was needed, and since no scores for some of the pieces, these had to be transcribed from the original recordings.

The concert began by Sir Karl giving some background and context for the pieces in the programme. He mentioned the 1966 Barry Jazz Summer School which he attended as a student as being the place where he met Graham Collier, who then asked him to join his group. He also said that for him, 1966 is also inescapably associated with the Aberfan colliery disaster, an event which he later wrote a work about “Cantata Memoria: For the Children/Er Mwyn y Plant”.

The first piece was “Down Another Road” from which the concert got its title. This was originally featured on a Graham Collier group album of the same name. It’s got a funky rock type groove but is actually in 5/4 time. Solos were by Ben Waghorn on baritone sax, Nichol Thompson on trombone and Graeme Blevins on alto sax.

Another piece from the same original album “Lullaby For A Lonely Child” followed. This piece has a nice slow groove in 6 and harmonically in parts is similar to “Resolution” from John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” which had only been written a few years earlier. This featured solos by Sid Gauld on flugelhorn and Trevor Mires on trombone.

Other pieces in the first half of the concert were a nice ballad entitled “Theme For An Unmade Movie” which featured Nigel Hitchcock on alto and Mark Nightingale on trombone.

“Elastic Rock” was a piece originally recorded on a Nucleus album of the same name and this was described as being a 4/4 beat with some ‘elastic’ bars, which I guess is where the name comes from. This featured solos by Sid Gauld and Rob Fowler on tenor sax.

The first half closer was a complete contrast, an re-working of a much more modern piece “Rosa” from the “Adiemus Colores” album. This was only originally recorded in 2013 and is in the style which most people would associate with Sir Karl. It has a Samba type feel to it and featured solos by Laurence Cottle on bass, Tom Walsh on trumpet and Jim Watson on piano.

Most of the second half of the concert was taken up with “Penumbra II”, a suite which had been originally written for BBC Jazz Club broadcast in 1971.

The first movement starts off with a solo piano introduction and for this Sir Karl came out of the audience and played. The melody and harmony of this were reminiscent of a Kenny Wheeler type piece. Once the movement was established the distinctive sound of Nigel Hitchcock’s alto sax was heard to good effect plus a feature for James Copus on trumpet. The second movement which had a funk shuffle type groove featured Jim Watson, Nigel Hitchcock and Martin Williams on tenor sax, and the final movement featured Harry Maund on trombone.

The concert ended with another piece originally from the “Adiemus Colores” album “Amarilla” (meaning ‘yellow’). This piece has a sort of Mexican Mariachi type feel to it with the trumpets playing in that characteristic way. This featured Nigel Hitchcock plus a drum and percussion interlude featuring Ed Richardson and Max Mills. The sound engineering by Tony ‘Splinter’ Davis was excellent throughout.

To sum up, a really interesting and exciting concert showing the jazz repertoire from a long time ago, together with some more recent pieces by one of the world’s major living composers, and played by one of the UK’s top big bands.

Laurence Cottle Big Band

Saxophones : Nigel Hitchcock, Graeme Blevins, Rob Fowler, Martin Williams, Ben Waghorn
Trumpets: Tom Walsh, Sid Gauld. Andy Greenwood, James Copus
Trombones: Mark Nightingale, Nichol Thomson, Trevor Mires, Harry Maund

Piano: Jim Watson
Drums: Ed Richardson
Percussion: Max Mills
Bass: Laurence Cottle

The post ‘Back, Down Another Road: The Jazz Music Of Sir Karl Jenkins’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Trish and Ross have been working together for some time and the latest incarnation is as a duo of tenor saxophone and piano. Both players are highly accomplished players and improvisers, and there is a high degree of interplay between them.

Ross was most recently previously seen in Manchester last November only metres away from this venue playing organ with Nigel Price’s band in a now defunct piano bar, having had to carry his Hammond organ and Leslie speaker down several flights of stairs.

This concert was straight through with no interval and opened with the Abdullah Ibrahim piece ‘The Wedding’ with the playing of the melody bringing to the fore Trish’s beautiful, focused sound.

Two pieces were featured from their recent album ‘Journey To Where’. These pieces were dedicated to two acknowledged influences of each of them. The tune ‘Perfectly Ripped’ written by Trish is a contrafact of the standard ‘Just In Time’ and is dedicated to Trish’s big hero Wayne Shorter. The melody is made up of bits of Wayne’s improvised lines played on the same set of changes.’ Ashford Days’ is a piece written by Ross and dedicated to the great pianist John Taylor. The title is a nod to JT’s own piece ‘Ambleside Days’.

It was interesting to hear ‘Pie Jesu’ by Lili Boulanger – the piece dictated to her sister Nadia from her deathbed – which apparently had been discovered by local pianist Les Chisnall. Trish commented on the fact it used a similar harmonic palette to Bob Brookmeyer’s writing, but that the piece had been written in 1918.

As a complete contrast Trish’s piece ‘Wake Up’ was written about the son of a close friend who is into the children’s TV show ‘Hey Duggee’.

The influence of John Taylor came up again a bit later where his arrangement of Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke’s ‘The Midnight Sun’ originally recorded with Norma Winstone on the 1988 album ‘In Concert’ was played in a medley along with two pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

‘Skin’ by American pianist Geri Allen provided more contrast. Trish pointed out that Geri Allen is one of Nikki Iles’ favourite players before playing Nikki’s piece ‘Awakenings’ which had been commissioned by Trish some years ago. The original setting was for a fairly large group including bassoon and has recently been made into a big band piece by Nikki featured on her recent album with the NDR Big Band ‘Face To Face’. The same piece played by the duo still retained the character of the original, even when pared down to just sax and piano.

The encore was a version of Rodgers and Hart’s ‘Spring Is Here’ which made reference to Bill Evans’ classic recording of the same tune.

A really nice concert by two leading figures of the U.K. Jazz scene played to an enthusiastic and attentive audience.

The post Trish Clowes and Ross Stanley at the 2024 Manchester Jazz Festival first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The concert had originally been scheduled to be in the program of the 25^th Jazz Festival in 2020, but the Pandemic took over, and in the end the festival took place as a purely online event. Instead Nikki did an interview and masterclass online explaining how her piece ‘Wild Oak’ had evolved. Now, four years later, after a few attempts in the intervening years, the concert was to actually take place.

Although now based down south, Nikki is well known and loved by North West Jazz fans and musicians as she spent many years playing gigs and teaching in the area when establishing her career. She has close links with the Manchester Jazz Festival and has appeared many times over the years with groups of various sizes so every appearance is somewhat of a homecoming. Most recently she played last year in a duo with Stan Sulzmann in the lovely setting of St Ann’s Church.

Going back to 1996 Nikki’s band was part of the first ever Manchester Jazz Festival. Other members of her band on that occasion included Mike Walker and Andy Schofield, both in the band last night.At that time as well as playing in her band they were all members of the Creative Jazz Orchestra. That band worked with likes of Kenny Wheeler, Mike Gibbs, Vince Mendoza and Anthony Braxton. The band provided great opportunities for members to work with these great figures of the music.

That very first Jazz Festival was due to take place on 15 June, but then the IRA bomb went off which meant that the festival finally took place in the August, and as a one day event. The saying goes that from tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow and this applies to Manchester Jazz Festival.

So, in its present form, the festival now runs for 10 days with Jazz music taking place all over the city. The launch this year featured a welcome speech from Mayor Andy Burnham, who talked about how important music is, and that it shouldn’t be marginalised. He also gave the news that Manchester will be setting up a music export office so that musicians from the city and the region can get out to a wider audience abroad, and set about combating the marginalising effects of Brexit.

The personnel in Nikki’s Jazz orchestra are very diverse in age from Henry Lowther well into his 80s, a legend of British Jazz to Harry Maund who only recently left music college. The band reflects many different facets of the British Jazz scene. A few of the members of the band: Andy Schofield, Julian Siegel and Gareth Lockrane are big band directors in their own right.

The concert was an opportunity for Karen Sharp the band’s baritone sax and bass clarinet player to return to the RNCM where she studied Composition back in the 1990s.

An nice addition to the Jazz Orchestra for this Manchester concert was Dave Hassell, veteran drum and percussion guru. Dave is a well known expert on Latin American percussion and has run the band Apitos for 40 years. He is a well respected teacher who has taught at most music colleges in the U.K. at some point, as well as teaching private students and has played on many sessions and in all kinds of bands including those of Tony Christie and John Cooper Clarke.

The program consisted of a variety of material with some of the charts having been written perhaps as long as 10 years ago as well as some more recent pieces. A large number of the pieces are on the album ‘Face to Face’ which Nikki recently recorded with the NDR Big Band from Hamburg as part of her role as Composer In Residence.

Nikki’s influences are wide, from Kenny Wheeler, Jim McNeely, Bob Brookmeyer, Vince Mendoza and Thad Jones to Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers and other more Pop related artists. There’s also a folky lilt to some pieces and some more Classical type sounds. Woodwind doubling is key to her sound with flutes and clarinets being frequently used by the saxophone section. As a former saxophonist and clarinettist she knows how these instruments work together and I’m sure this contributes to the sounds that she creates. She definitely now has her own voice as a writer and arranger.

The concert started with ‘Wild Oak’ dedicated to the pianist Geri Allen, one of Nikki’s favourite players and originally commissioned by NYJO. This featured solos by Tori Freestone, Andy Schofield and Mike Walker. An older piece ‘Gray Is The Morning’ was written about Steve Gray the pianist-arranger. This had solos by Gareth Lockrane, Paul Jones and Harry Maund.

The ballad ‘Face to Face’ was written to feature the flugelhorn playing of Henry Lowther which he played with an achingly beautiful tone after Nikki’s reflective piano introduction showing her distinctive touch . This was the most moving part of the concert with the performance being dedicated to a Gerry and Carol, a local couple of stalwart Jazz fans. Carol has sadly recently passed away. Other pieces in the first half were ‘The Caged Bird’, a piece written during lockdown and ‘Misfits’ a rousing piece consisting of ill fitting musical intervals.

Amongst pieces in the second half was ‘Red Ellen’ which had originally been commissioned by Tim Garland for his Northern Underground Orchestra. The Red Ellen the piece is about is Ellen Wilkinson who was an MP and political activist in the days of the Jarrow marches. This piece has a great funky groove with bass, drums, percussion and guitar all interlocking. Each solo has an amazing altered chord as a send off played by the brass. Nikki had described this in the past to me as “a Thad type bluesy everything in send off !”. Miguel Gorodi and Mike Walker both featured as soloists on this.

A new piece ‘Home At Last’ was the last piece before the encore. This featured Mark Nightingale and Andy Schofield. The name of this reflected the homecoming nature of the concert.

‘Big Sky’ a piece written to evoke the skies of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire concluded the concert and this featured Mark Nightingale.

Worthy of note was the excellent sound by Paul Sparrow. Every instrument could be heard clearly when soloing and in context with the overall ensemble. In the past in the same venue the sound hasn’t always been so good but it’s something that tends to be taken for granted.

In summary, a great night of contemporary big band music with fabulous original compositions played by some of the best Jazz players in the country.

Band Line-up

Nikki Iles piano
Mike Walker guitar
Steve Watts bass
Ian Thomas drums
Dave Hassell percussion

Trumpets: Noel Langley, James Copus, Henry Lowther, Miguel Gorodi

Saxes: Andy Schofield alto/sop/flute, Julian Siegel tenor/clari, Tori Freestone tenor/flute, Paul Jones alto/sop/flute, Karen Sharp baritone, bass clarinet, Gareth Lockrane flute/alto flute/bass flute/piccolo

Trombones: Mark Nightingale, Harry Maund, Olli Martin, Richard Henry

The post Nikki Iles Jazz Orchestra at the 2024 Manchester Jazz Festival first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Doncaster Jazz Alumni is big band and are all past members of Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra and now established in the music industry as professional players. They are directed by the founder of the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association John Ellis MBE who set it all up back in the 1970s, and for whom many of the alumni got together and recorded an album “50 years” to mark the occasion. (Link to feature/interview below).

Sunday’s concert featured quite a few of the tracks from that album, although the core of the program was the music of Bob Florence. John Ellis related that the Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra had performed with Bob Florence in a concert in the USA back in 1985 and that Bob Florence’s music had been widely played by the band during its history. Other American big band writers were featured as well, but it was also interesting to hear charts by Al Wood, Kenny Graham and Allen Ganley, all from this country, showing our own, strong big band and writing traditions.

The first piece on the program was Bob Florence’s arrangement of “Body and Soul” which featured pianist Ralph Brown with a whole chorus of the melody unaccompanied up front then a solo later on. This was followed by Chuck Mangione’s “Children Of Sanchez” featuring solos by Damian Bell on flugelhorn/trumpet and Sarah Potts on tenor sax.

The third piece was specially commissioned for the album and written by Tom Kubis entitled “You Know It Makes Sense”. It’s dedicated to John Ellis and the title apparently is one of his catch phrases. The arrangement has lots of figures in it that are characteristic of Tom Kubis’ writing. Featured soloists were Ralph Brown, Dan Jones on trombone and Simon Dennis on trumpet. Next came the first of two charts by Tom Dossett, “Starscape” and featured Rob McGrath on tenor sax and Jordan Hume on guitar.

The band was co-directed by veteran multi-instrumentalist Al Wood. Al started his career back in 1959 and plays all the saxophones, trumpet and trombone. He was a member of Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band back in the 1970s. For many years he also taught at Leeds College of Music.

At this point in the concert Al came onto the stage to direct the band in three Bob Florence pieces. The first was “Carmello’s By The Freeway” which featured Mike King on trumpet and Sarah Potts, then “Tell Your Story” a nice Bossa Nova feature for Gareth Smith on flugelhorn, and to finish the first half was “Bebop Charlie” which featured Rob McGrath and Lee Hallam on trombone.

Al Wood came back to lead the band for the second set in his own arrangement of a rousing swinger entitled “Over The Top”. This featured Sarah Potts. The second Tom Dossett chart “Never Ending Ending Blues” gave lots of soloists too numerous to mention a chance to take a solo. Next was “Mandeville” by Patrick Williams, a Latin American piece which heavily featured the brass, the soloist was Lee Hallam. John Ellis commented that the next piece “Show Me The Way To Go Home” arranged by Sammy Nestico might be the piece that some audiences would recognise. This arrangement featured Gareth Smith and Ralph Brown.

The final Bob Florence piece of the day was “Lonely Carousel” which featured Damian Bell plus some nice piano work by Ralph Brown. It was quite unusual to hear the drum feature “King’s Cross Climax” written by Kenny Graham originally for the Ted Heath band. Drummer Joe Sykes was heard to good effect on this. The encore of the show was an arrangement by Allen Ganley dedicated to the great Victor Feldman entitled “Victor”. This featured Myvanwy Smith on baritone sax, Mike King on flugelhorn and Dan Jones.

A really good afternoon of big band music played to a big and enthusiastic audience. I was really struck by the quality of the ensemble playing and the soloists.

Full band listing (with thanks to John Ellis):

The post Doncaster Jazz Alumni – “50 years” at Sheffield Jazz Club first appeared on UK Jazz News.