Autumn is traditionally a time of announcements in the world of showbiz, to which jazz finds itself attached, often with a certain reluctance, in our late-stage capitalist society. Music biz executives return to their artfully dressed-down offices after their August holidays – promoters and agents re-group after the summer festival season – arts centres ponder their funding applications and launch their winter schedules. There’s some exciting autumn tours headed for Brighton – this month sees The Impossible Gentlemen return to The Old Market, with Mike Walker and Gwilym Simcock now joined in the frontline by multi-reedsman Iain Dixon; the welcome return masterminded by self-effacing supremo David Forman, who’s also managed to lure seldom-heard international star Jason Rebello to The Verdict for a one-off intimate show in November. Indefatigable guitar hero Nigel Price includes the same venue in his record-breaking 56-date tour, while the next month sees the debut of Laura Jurd’s eagerly anticipated new ensemble and transatlantic collaborations from Andrew Bain and Jay Phelps, among many other delights. This column has always promoted an ecumenical approach to jazz appreciation, so we’re pleased to record the arrival of two new regular promotions under The Verdict roof – the free-improv crew behind Safe House, and the all-acoustic swing classicists of Smalls jazz bring their very different but, one hopes, not mutually exclusive interpretations of the tradition to our favourite basement. South Coast Jazz Festival gets busy as well, widening its remit to bring Incognito to The Old Market in December for kind of warm-up show for the 2017 main event. In the wider picture, the EFG London Jazz Festival has announced its line-up, Serious have announced a slew of autumn tours, Neil Cowley has enjoyed a surprise Spotify hit with his new release (more on this in next month’s column), and the planet’s most swinging Scientologist Chick Corea is celebrating his 75th birthday by performing no less than 177 gigs in 26 different ensembles with some 60 different musicians.
This September also marks an anniversary – it’s a year since New Generation Jazz was launched at the Verdict. The project was conceived by your columnist and trumpeter/bandleader Jack Kendon with the intention of providing a platform for the next generation of young jazz musicians to make themselves heard in Brighton, and equally to foster and encourage interest and engagement in the music amongst the burgeoning community of young musicians in the town. It’s hard for unknown players to get a gig outside London, as promoters are understandably unwilling to take a risk on someone that their regular punters won’t have heard of – as we’ve noted before, jazz audiences can tend towards conservatism in musical taste if not in general sociopolitical outlook. Equally, for young players, the jazz world can seem like an intimidatingly closed shop, its players remote an inaccessible and its practice too complex to pick up by ear alone. New Generation was fortunate to secure Arts Council funding to underwrite the gigs and provide extra promotion to reach beyond the usual audience, and also to draw upon the goodwill of the musicians involve to pair each gig with a free workshop to make their knowledge and enthusiasm accessible to our young musicians, with the hope of inspiring them to pursue their interest further and feed into the local scene.
Inspired by the long-established success of Tomorrow’s Warriors as a breeding ground for new talent, we started the series last October with a storming gig from Warriors leader Gary Crosby, plus an inspirational workshop delivered with Empirical’s Nathaniel Facey to an audience of enraptured BIMM students – only slightly delayed when Gary’s satnav mysteriously re-routed him in the direction of Ditchling. Thanks to support from the local community, especially Andy Lavender and John Easterby at The Verdict, the profile has continued to grow, enjoying regular sell-outs and attracting fresh faces each time. We’ve also had the pleasure of being able to feature some of our favourite bands at the Love Supreme festival thanks to our collaboration with organisers Neapolitan. We’ve brought workshops into local schools like Dorothy Stringer and BHASVIC as well as running open sessions at The Verdict. And we’ve had the privilege of working with some of the finest young players in the UK today, and the satisfaction of seeing sell-out crowds respond with the same enthusiasm we’ve felt when we booked them.
Anyway, this month’s gig by the mighty Tom Green Septet is the last in the current series – but the story’s not over. Thanks to continuing support from all our partners, and especially Arts Council England, we’ll be returning after an October break with another 14 months worth of gigs, to run right through to the end of 2017. We can’t wait for the next chapter to begin!
Bees Mouth - September 2016
28th September
As Jeremy ascends serenely heavenwards riding upon a gigantic golden mandate, and his hapless opponents cower together, hooting and gibbering like terrified chimpanzees, upon whatever shrinking patches of centre ground still remain above the rising floodwaters of intransigent online optimism, are you struggling ever so slightly to maintain the necessary enthusiastic or despairing opinions in front of your peer group? JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH may hold the Way Forward, cos we’ve got the continually re-selected team of Luke “Clause IV” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “One Member, One Vote” (drms) on hand to lay down a musical manifesto guaranteed to bring the people together, aided by me somewhere on bass, with the consistently poll-topping Bee’s Team on hand to dispense healing libations of the finest liquors known to humanity, while the oracular Spinning Head is ready to dispense political wisdom as valid as anything else you’ll read on social media today .... kick back for the night and let the politicos take the strain, it’s what they claim their expenses for after all, let the music refresh your weary senses, heal your poor over-stimulated mind, and make you feel clean again, you dig? Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
19th September
After the non-stop thrills and spills of that showbiz extravaganza known to us enticingly as ‘The Annual TUC Conference’, there can be scarcely a citizen amongst us who isn’t secretly yearning for the Lib Dem Conference to kick off next week and bring the party with full effect...but do the intervening days leave you feeling flat, yearning for more cheap thrills? Plug that gap in your funseeker’s calendar by tearing off your conference nametag and shimmying over to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH, where the tireless team of Luke ‘Akon’ Rattenbury’ (gtr) and Loz ‘Pitbull’ Thomas (drms) will be tearing into the customary hot licks and cool grooves, aided by me on bass, while the peerless Bee’s team will be lending their otherwordly beauty to entice you from across the well-stocked bar, like the sirens of ancient myth but with more respect for customer’s ongoing wellbeing... it’s going to go off like a well-engineered and financially viable nuclear power station, so don’t miss the fun, daddi-o, get full of that healing feeling before the darkness returns... Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
12th September
Spent a frustrating weekend? Perhaps you were stuck in the iPod an ignominious few yards above the ground watching as your co-travellers relieved themselves of excess complimentary sparkling wine into a low-tech bucket? Maybe you were hoping the rains would come and wash the smug looks off the faces of the self-employed on monday morning? Maybe you tried to catch a train or park a car somewhere in Brighton? Whatever, it’s pay-off time now, cos JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is rolling your way on the well-oiled wheels of musical creativity, with those captains of swing Luke “Lightning” Rattenbury (gtr) ad Loz “The Speed Demon” Thomas (drms) at the controls ready to take you on a ride to a world of mystery and imagination where the words ‘replacement bus service’ hold no terror, while I play something or other on bass and the Bee’s Team’s aetherial flight attendants stand by with libations of the finest liquors known to humanity... don’t waste your time chasing mirages across the glimmering sands of cyberspace, don’tsit there aghast as ‘Cruella’ May works through the entire Tory wish-list from Brexit to grammar schools to military service and public flogging, let’s live in the now, the swallows are not yet fled nor the vine withered, come and join us, join us. Bee’s Mouth Western Raod 9pm-late
13th September
Sure, you worked hard, played hard, and now you’re a big-shot high-flyer, cutting deals before breakfast, running with the high rollers and playing to win, feared and envied by all who know you, up on the penthouse suite gaming the gamers... but what will you do when it comes for you, in the unquiet night or in the merciless height of noon, the icy grip of fear that presages the slow, inevitable moment when you’re forced to confront the howling void at the heart of everything you do, the futility of all your schemes in the face of your impending extinction? Lighten up, mate, get down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where those fearless warriors of light Luke ‘Good Times” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Mr Party’ Thomas (drms) will be laying down enough good grooves and hot licks to quell the most chronicexistential angst, aided by me on bass, while the mystic sylphs and mermen of the Bee’s team will be dispensing quality liquors and simple humanity from deep within the scented shadows of the well-stocked bar, and the night will be alive with good vibrations to keep the darkness at bay.... don’t resort to stuffing your aging carcass with horrible drugs or trying ever more unsavoury expedients to keep your flagging carnal appetites alive, don’t grind your fellow humans underfoot in your desperate haste to run away from who you are and what awaits you at the end of the night or in the pitiless glare of morning, embrace the light, join us, join us. Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm - late.
The Recording Angel
In jazz history, the period hailed as the Golden Era is rather a moveable feast – Dixieland purists and similar mouldy figs may insist that the title cannot be accorded any later than the onset of the Great Depression, William P Gottlieb appropriated it for his riveting collection of photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, but for many today it’s the post-Parker years of the 1950s and 1960s that define the seminal phase of the music’s development. Albums such as Thelonious Monk’s Genius of Modern Music, Miles Davis’ Bags Groove, and his Prestige series Walkin’/Cookin’/Relaxin’/Steamin’, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, Horace Silver’s Jazz Messengers, Art Blakey’s Moanin’ and Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else shaped the way that the bop experiments of the 40s became the new hip mainstream – to be followed by a bifurcated pathway as players gravitated towards the funk epitomised by Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder, or set off into uncharted waters, returning with such glorious discoveries as Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador, Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch, and the universally acknowledged masterpiece that is Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. All the above works taken together, diverse as they are, could form the cornerstone of a good, comprehensive modern jazz collection – and remarkably all were recorded by the same man, in suburban New Jersey, in his own studio originally located in the living room of his parent’s house. Rudy Van Gelder passed away this week at the age of 93, one of the lone survivors from a mythical age when musical giants walked the earth, leaving behind him a discography that runs into the thousands and defines the sound of a crucial era of the music’s history. As the number one choice of recording technician for both Blue Note and Prestige records he played a pivotal role in defining the sound of those labels at the time when they themselves were defining the sound of jazz, and later work for Impulse! and Verve was equally trendsetting; his later work for CTI was as broadly influential, if not as well-loved by the critics. He oversaw every aspect of the recording process, meticulously positioning each microphone with white-gloved hands, tracking and mixing everything himself and even cutting the final LP masters on his own lathes. By today’s standards, his methods were very simple – many of his seminal recordings were made directly to two-track tape with a minimum of signal processing – yet his sound is instantly recognisable, even as fans and critics struggle to define it exactly – ‘naturalism’ and ‘warmth’ are adjectives often employed. He excelled in using scientifically precise microphone placement to capture both the individual tone of the player and the collective sound of the group, so that his recordings have a sense of space and clarity, with each instrument clearly audible in its proper place, and you’re given the illusion of being in the room, sat right in front of the band. This was a perfect match for the new, small-group sound of the time – the era abounded with distinct, individual voices on horns and piano, while new innovations in drum kits and cymbals gave drummers the opportunity to play a greater role in shaping dynamics and timbre, and improved microphone and equalisation technology allowed bassists to be heard clearly enough to start exploring subtler melodic and rhythmic possibilities than in the ‘grab it and whack it’ days of Wellman Braud. A modest man in his rare interviews, Van Gelder would be the first to avow that the primary creative genius resided with the musicians, but his ability to capture the music’s intent surely helped to shape it’s successful realisation.
Jazz music’s existence runs nearly exactly contemporaneously with the existence of recorded music, and has been shaped by the technology, as it has helped to shape it. To those far from the epicentres in Storyville, 52nd Street or Lenox Avenue, jazz was spread to its devotees via the medium of rare, highly-prized records, especially in the post-war UK, as the Musicians’ Union placed restrictions on US players touring. Many jazz musicians insist that records never capture more than a snapshot of their art – just the sound of one day in their endless musical progression – but to the fans it’s often the records that are the defining documents, and when the players are no more it is the recordings that constitute the legacy; oral memories of legendary gigs are simply tantalising if you weren’t there.
In the 1930s and 1940s the cream of the sound engineers aspired to work with symphony orchestras or in movies; jazz was still widely seen as a throwaway medium unworthy of the best equipment, and magnetic tape recording didn’t become common ’til the early 1950s. Charlie Parker’s brilliant Savoy and Dial sides have an excitement and immediacy that transcends that hiss and crackle of the shellac 78 played with an iron needle; the genius is clearly audible, but the drums and bass are often not, and the sound often manages to seem shrill and muffled at the same time, so that protracted listening can become something of a chore for those who aren’t aspiring players themselves. Rudy Van Gelder set a benchmark for high fidelity in jazz recording, and a standard of care and respect for the musician’s intent (though Mingus refused to use him, claiming ‘he ruined my bass sound’), and much of the jazz we hear today bears traces of his subtle, indirect influence. In his later years, he was occupied in an extensive programme of re-mastering his back catalogue for digital re-release – interestingly, given the importance of the Blue Note LP as artefacts in the cult of analogue, Van Gelder himself had no sentimental attachment to vinyl as a medium, declaring “The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I’ve made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I’m glad to see the LP go. As far as I’m concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don’t like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That’s why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I’m not denying that they do, but don’t blame the medium”. He also continued to be involved in recording new artists, notably Christian Scott’s groundbreaking 2010 release Jenacide. There’s several further articles to be written about the relationship between the recording and the performance, how jazz musicians and fans alike interact with the record industry, and how technology and music aid, abet and afflict each other; let’s leave those for another time and salute the achievements of the backroom boy from Hackensack.
Bees Mouth - July 2016
31st July
As the weather changes quicker than a resigning Tory, but low temperatures remain as stubbornly as a defiantly dishevelled Socialist leader, how’s your summer going? Where’s the sunburn and barbecue stink we were promised, to distract us from the dreadful yawning chasm offreshly unshackled insania brewing up in the lowering future? Let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE”S MOUTH be your beacon of joy in an uncertain world, where the replacement bus service of uncertainty seems to have permanently replaced the full working timetable of fulfilment ... watch as Luke “Break Point” Rattenbury (gtr) matches Andy Murray in unrestrained emotional exuberance, and Loz “Game Set And Match” Thomas (drms) smashes them to the back of the court like a don, thrill to the torrent of good soulful swinging sounds, marvel as I plough along on bass, sigh as the ever-verdant Bee’s Team beckon mysteriously from the scented shadows, gaze in awestruck rapture as the top predator of the jazz world* swims in from distant seas, take a drink, take a break, feel mighty real..... ....Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
*Steve Salkind
25th July
The Russian Olympic team pull out of Rio and head for Secret Garden Party - Boris pioneers the use of limericks in diplomatic negotiations- “Sir” Phil green’s yacht grows wings and flies off to a secret base on Mars with him laughing like a maniac at the controls - Pokemons start fighting back, imprison puny humans in 2-dimensional dream world - thank god for JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH as it continues to provide a haven of good grooves, hot solos and cool meditations for you to come and seek refuge from the ever-increasing vortex of howling idiocy swirling around our weary heads, as the Prolonged Period Of Uncertainty gathers momentum, Hillary has yet more e-mail trouble and wishes she’d stuck to Snapchat and Trump awaits the moment to reveal his true Decepticon nature and morph into an orange Dodge Charger .... tireless warriors of soulful swing Luke “Luke” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Loz” Thomas (drms) will be delivering the goods, I’ll be backing up on bass, the miraculously sylphs and mermaids of the Bee’s team will be poised waiting in the fragrant shadows to serve up libations of the finest liquors known to humanity... good life good life good life good life it’s a ..... good life, good life. Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
18th July
With a single beat of it’s shimmering scented wings summer lifts itself effortlessly into the lambent azure reaches, alive with the indefatigable tremulous cries of lark, swift and marten, exhaling it’s warm breath like a fire-escape vaping enthusiast to break into a million million glittering butterflies of light refracted off the glassy sea... JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is back, clad in raiment of deepest purple, smiling the inscrutable smile of timeless aeons as the ageless skills of Luke “Mandrake” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Lord Summerisle” Thomas (drms) unite to celebrate the eternal rolling of the seasons towards this glorious balmy eye of the hurricane, aided as ever by me (sweatily) on bass and the mystic sylphs and oracles of the Bee’s team as they toil in languorous enslavement behind the well-stocked bar..... don’t get stuck in crowded meeting rooms waiting for your democratic vote to be annulled, don’t linger bitterly on the platform adding up train cancellations, tear yourself away from the 1980s re-enactment society that is contemporary parliamentary politics, desist from smashing each other over the head with real or metaphorical brickbats, avert your fascinated gaze from Mrs ‘G4s” May and her cabinet of horrors, stick up a defiant finger at the Prolonged Period Of Uncertainty and come and join us, join us..... it’s a stone groove and all you cats are welcome, what are you waiting for? Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
4th July
As Love Supreme trundles off into the golden twilight like a splendid chariot full of musical wonders, we’re left with the tidal wave of bullshit continuing to swill messily around our ankles, as the resurgent 70s-style Alf Garnetts begin to hoot together like Icelandic football fans, as various toad-faced or straw-headed politicos slither back under their rocks, as the i-Doughnut climbs jerkily to the top of it’s pole and everyone suddenly remembers that the tennis is on.... we here at JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BBE’S MOUTH are committed as ever to delivering on thegood grooves regardless of wind, rain, pollsters or market fluctuations thanks to the limitless talents of Luke “The Seer” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘The Golden One” Thomas (drms) plus me on bass, while in the mysterious shadows behind the bar the scented naiads and dryads recruited into the Bee’s team will be on hand to deliver up welcome libations of the finest international euro-beers, in defiance of the stupid zeitgeist, and who can say if some top oceanic predator* may not waft in on the night breeze with his tenor sax to nice up the area.... don’t let them grind you down, come join us, come join us... Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm - late.
*Steve Salkind
Bees Mouth - June 2016
28th June
This should traditionally be the season for slagging off Coldplay or the England squad, moaning about the wind and rain, or panicking about what to do in the holidays - instead, the tidal wave of bullshit has descended* and now we’re blundering about screaming in fury or triumph, crashing into piles of discarded shackles and smouldering heaps of petitions as we try and take our country back off each other... it’s all a bit confusing, which is why JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE”S MOUTH is the place you wanna get to, be you Brexit, Lexit, Bremain, Tremain, Legerdemain, Cornish or just suddenly utterly terrified about the new completely unpredictable future that’s suddenly yawning right in front of your media-dazzled eyes ... come along, cos Luke ‘The Rock” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Burning Spear” will be riding high on a tide of good groove, I’ll be hammering along on bass, the imperturbable Bee’s team will be waiting in the scented shadows to answer your hesitant, stumbling request with a winsome smile and a libation of the finest liquor known to man, the nameless ones will shuffle past in the street outside, the air will be heavy with the scent of parsley, lamb and sumac from the distant exotic east via the kebab vendors on all sides, while at the dark end of the street the eternal tide will sigh and sough against the shingle, as Sophocles long ago heard on the Aegean.... we’ll be doing our own thing notwithstanding, so delete your last 25 Facebook posts, grab yer axe off the shelf, hang up your hang ups and come and join us, don’t let it get you down, don’t let them get you down. Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
*as promised in last week’s post
20th June
t’s Solstice! How will you celebrate? Maybe by sunbathing on the beach, or trying to get somewhere from Brighton by train. Or you could relax at home and enjoy a calm, reasoned EU debate on social media. Or perhaps a quiet moment to show appreciation for the England supporters’ behaviour abroad, or how the integrity of the Russian Olympic team reflects the health of it’s political body.. or, if the relentless sarcasm just gets too much, you could just pack it all in and get down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH... wash off your woad, tear off your mistletoe garland and put your clothes back on because we’ll be spinning our own timeless ritual of good swinging grooves with the arch-druid Luke “Equinox” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Force of Nature” Thomas (drms) plus me doing my own earthy thing on the bass, you dig, plus the diaphanous sylph-like dryads and naiads that comprise the fabulous Bee’s team will be handing out the good stuff from the well-stocked bar, various hipsters and feebs may sit in on this and that, both music and laughter will flow freely and all the horrendous mounting tide of bullsh*t will be kept at bay for another short while... The voice of the cuckoo may be stilled across the land, but still the cries of the fleet-winged swallows call from high up in the lambent reaches of air above the gathering dusk, reminding us, reminding us Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
13th June
Are you already festival-weary, unable to stomach another classic rock band playing to an audience of marketing execs roughing it in unimaginable glamping luxury? Are you jaded at the initially exciting sight of sports enthusiasts smashing each other’s stupid faces in? Are you still quivering from the horror of the Naked Bike Ride, your ganglia aflame with searing, unspeakable images that can never be un-seen? Modern life is doing you in, mate.... you need to get yourdown to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH and give your mind a vacation, as you tune in to the universal vibrations being manifested by Luke “Ascended Master” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Great Cthulhu is Risen” Thomas (drms) as they ride on the endless cosmic waves of good groove emanating from the giant pulsating AUM in the centre of the multiverse, crystallised in this dimension into funky bebop, while I muck about on bass, while the fragrant otherworldly sybills who make up the matchless Bee’s team beckon from the mysterious twilight behind the well-stocked bar, while the dark chthonic spaces beneath are alive with the murmur of intoxicated voices, and the nameless creatures of the night shuffle past in the echoing streets outside ... give yourself a holiday, free of 1st world guilt, un-compromised by involvement in some mega-corps shitty ‘sharing economy’ pyramid scheme, unsullied by endless check-in queues in obscure airports, and come and join us, join us, don’t leave it too late. Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
6th June
As the Brighton festival wafts coquettishly out of town and the Kemp Town Carnival retreats on a tide of cider and face paint, as the summer beckons with it’s heady bouquet of petrol fumes and oily barbecue aroma, as another the glorious sunset is reflected off the naked crimson backs of a thousand tatto-ed scaffolders, as the parks come alive to the sound of newly-awakened dreadlocked djembe drummers ... as the dark horror of the impending tidal wave of Brexit/Trump bullshit threatens to engulf us all, JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH continues to lay down the good grooves courtesy of the imperturbable majesty of Luke “No Pasaran” Rattenbury (gtr) and the deep deep pocket of Loz “The Demon Haggler” Thomas (drms), plus the customary contributions from me on bass, and the languid but attentive ministrations of the fascinatingly irresistible Bee’s team as they hover in the scented shadows ready to fulfill your unspoken hopes and desires.... gather together against the coming storm, folks, and don’t forget to register to vote... Bee’s Mouth Western Road 9pm-late.
Sussex Jazz Magazine - Festivals of Britain
As the nation descends into a period of what even the most jubilant Brexiters would have to acknowledge as extensive uncertainty, further polluted by an unwelcome residue of extremely bad feelings stirred up during the dishonest and divisive Referendum campaigns, it’s a relief to turn your weary gaze away from the news and realise that summer is still continuing, albeit in it’s usual desultory fashion, bringing with it an abundance of wonderful music as bands head out on their summer tours and the festival season gathers pace. Fans of jazz-and-related-music who also have a taste for the outdoors are especially well catered for here in the South East as Love Supreme Festival re-appears on your doorstep for the fourth time in as many years.
Theteen years of this millennium have seen an extraordinary growth in the independent music festival sector; it’sestimated that nearly 1000festivals dedicated to music and other various worldly pleasures are due to take place across the UK this year, more than 6 times as many as a decade ago. The Association Of Independent Festivals’ 6-year report from 2014 paints a buoyantly optimistic picture. Despite economic recession and the wettest run of summers since 1912, the UK’s festival sector has thrived, and estimated ticket spend at the Association’s 44-strong membership festivals alone totals 1.1 Billion GBP since 2010. As sales in recorded music continue to decline, and ‘life experiences’ come to be more sought after than material luxuries, more and more people choose to counterbalance the increasingly solitary timbre of modern life by attending communal events, and live music is at the heart of this trend.
Jazz Festivals have long been popular events, but the format has always been copied from the urban Arts Festival - Swanage, Brecon or the mighty London EFG are built around a series of discrete gig promotions, using existing venues, under the umbrella of the festival organisation. Love Supreme is unique in having used the greenfield, open-air one-ticket-for-the weekend format of the rock festival, and built it around a line-up of jazz-and-related-music artists. Director Ciro Romano has pointed to the success of open-air folk festCropredy as his inspiration to seek a similar niche market for his own favourite musical genre, and the festival’s continued return after four economically difficult years for the nation must surely vindicate his decision.
Not everyone has been entirely happy, of course. For some, the festival line-up hasn’t been sufficiently, authentically jazz for their taste - and the ambience of a large tent on a sunny day, and the level of amplification required, hasn’t always suited every artist. Some modern jazz is quite an indoor kind of sound, and the staging requirements can be quite different from those of other, less complex but perhaps more robust musical forms. The addition of the Bandstand stage has proved enormously popular with audiences and musicians alike, providing a gateway through which the local musical community can access the festival, participate, contribute and take the opportunity to check out some of their international peers; but the expenses-only deal offered to performers in the first year was predictably, and rightly, the subject of debate. The festival has taken on board the criticism; acoustic plans have been drawn up and budgets allocated, but any event of this size and ambition will always need to be alert to possibilities of improvement.
Of course, what constitutes ‘real’ jazz is a subject of endless controversy, as the music itself encompasses so much in it’s legacy, from it’s disreputable roots to the popular dance bands and crooners of the thirties, and from the hip angularity of be-bop, the thunder and flash of fusion, and the esoteric artistic endeavours of the avant-garde. Fortunately, the welcome return of the South Coast Jazz Festival, and the Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival demonstrate that jazz can survive, even in it’s most uncompromisingly free-improv incarnation, as long as there’s an audience, a dedicated promoter and their team, and the continuing availability of deserved funding from the taxpayer - let us hope that recent political developments do not jeopardise this important source of artistic nourishment.
Love Supreme is, of course, an entirely commercially funded festival, and the pressures upon these events are enormous. According to research carried out, improbably enough, by delivery company ParcelHero, “A mid-size festival can run on a financial knife-edge, with one quarter of ticket prices typically taken up by VAT and royalty fees to songwriters. The logistical costs are big too: water, electricity, waste management, while security must police the event. The cost of powering alone for a 10,000 capacity festival for a weekend can be 100,000 GBP - policing the Isle Of Wight festival costs nearly 1 Million GBP.” Mid-size festivals typically need to sell 80% of tickets to cover costs, and 80% of tickets are sold on the strength of the headline acts, so it’s perhaps no surprise that even the irrepressibly optimistic Association of Independent Festivals notes ruefully that the fees charged by headline acts have risen by up to 400% between 2004 and 2014. Asjazz fans arerelatively small in number, though correspondingly great in passionate devotion, a balance must be struck between the demands of art and commerce if the event is to thrive.
And thrive it has - after all, it’s a simple matter of friendly, generally well-behaved people enjoying good music in beautiful surroundings. As you would hope, there’s a real appreciation of quality and high musical standards that is common to all the artists, however stylistically disparate. There’s also some more unexpected aspects - Love Supreme features more female headline artists across all it’s stages than most others, and there’s a far higher proportion of people from the BAME community, both as performers and punters, than is usual at a UK greenfield festival. This year, the Bandstand now runs on Friday as well, and also is responsible for programming theFriday Arena line-up; over the weekend, we’ll be hosting everything from the hip-hop inflections of Sumo Chief and J-Felix, the driving bop of Peter Fraize or Chris Coull’s Brownie Speaks, the epic big band explorations of Terry Pack’s Trees, the latin-flavoured delicacy of Paul Richards‘ Trio, the retro swing of Harry’s Tricks and Grimaldi Quartet, the high-octane salsa of Duende, the gnarly fusionof Vels Trio, the afrobeat to dub-jazz of Ezra Collective and the horn-heavy Barnacles, the varied vocal delights of the Kendon/Ryall, Maira Chiara and Leeming/Dankworth bands, and the concluding fury of Simon Spillet - not to mention my own efforts with the wonderful musicians who have consented to join me in the Eddie Myer 5tet. It’s a snapshot of how varied the output of today’s jazz-loving musicians can be, and how much talent resides in our area. In an age increasingly characterised by hostility and division, let’s reach out across our different stylistic affiliations and discover what unites us! All we need now is the weather to hold.
Association of Independent Festivals Six Year Report (2014)
Bees Mouth - May 2016
May 23rd
You’ve spent this whole wonderful day huddled inside at your filthy screen, trying to manage your endless list of e-petitions, while outside in the so-called real world pubic figures are shouting themselves hoarse by trying to compare things to Hitler, and the streets of our town are rendered impassable by a thousand multi-media immersive happenings, spreading dread and despair among the population - time for JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH to come riding to the rescue on it’s shining silver charger, driven on by the endless stream of good grooves and solid soulful licks courtesy of Luke “Lord Invader” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Lozinator” Thomas (drms), plus the matchless hospitality of the Bee’s team and their libations of delight, and any number of freaks, monsters, heroes, zeros, dweebs, gonzos, drongos, gypsies*, lovers and thieves .... time to throw your tethered device into the sea, tear your hungry eyes from FB’s algorthymically curated attempts to CONTROL YOUR WORLDVIEW, grab your axe down off the shelf and come and join us.... really, what’s to lose?
*probably not actual gypsies.
May 16th
It’s such a strain keeping up.. should you join the tatto’ed, bearded Great Escape throng as they tryto trade up the Wristband Of Hope for the Lanyard Of Success, and avoid the Guest List Of Despair? Should you catch something reassuringly arty and taxpayer-funded dangling off the side of a building at the Festival? Should you just stay in a darkened room and tremble at the impending Trump/Boris/Brexit clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks? Here at JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH we’ll be carrying on with our own sweet stone groove, daddi-o, so if it all gets too much just come on over and let the healing vibes pour over you courtesy of the imperturbable brilliance of Luke “Iron Man” Rattenbury (gtr) and the volcanic explosions of rhythm and grace erupting endlessly forth from the fiend in human shape that is Loz “The Lozinator” Thomas , plus me on bass, while the fragrant and mysterious Bee’s team beckon from the scented shadows with promises of the finest liquors known to humanity, and the warm promise of summer blows in on the salt air from the where the darkling street meets the black gulf of night, studded with stars, alive with the endless ebb and flow upon the shingle... you’d like it, so why not try it?
May 10th
So you’ll never get to ride on the big wheel, or figure out who won the local elections by puzzling irritably over all those conflicting graphs, or go and see you mate’s cutting edgecomedy night/soundscape creation for the Fringe in a sweaty tent surrounded by street drinkers... assuage your chagrin and get along to JAZZ NGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where we’re getting the old gang back together again, featuring those towering monsters of musical magic Luke “Godzilla” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Driller Killer” Thomas (drms) locked into the god grooves, aided by me on bass, while the otherworldly denizens of the Bee’s team beckon mysteriously from the scented twilight that wraps it’s intoxicating effulgent miasma around the well-stocked bar, the severed mannikin head spins eternally, cult movies play in the fungal basement, and the warm breath of summer blows down the darkling streets outside past the ragged flotsam and jetsam of humanity, washed here from who knows what inland tempest of misery and intemperance? It’ll be a stone groove, y’all.
May 2nd
Alright now, that’s enough! As Labour struggle with the persistent problem of anti-labourism in the Labour party and the Tories continue to fail at absolutely everything except staying in government, we at JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH have other fish to fry... like how to contain the awesome talent monster that is this week’s special guest PAUL RICHARDS (gtr) without the whole joint going buck wild til they call the private ‘protection enforcement officers’..... plus the regular earth-shaking shenanigans from the unstoppable force that is Loz “The Id’ Thomas (drms), and the fabulous Bee’s team ready at their stations to serve you endless libations of the finest liquors known to humanity.. I’ll be there on bass back from continental excursions, and who knows what raindrenched funseekers may straggle in, all worn out from a long weekend’s gruelling hedonsim? Get yer axe down off the shelf and come and sit in with us, it’ll be immense.
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Summer approaches, and let’s hope the sun shines reasonably consistently and that the organisers of the returning Love Supreme don’t have occasion to rue the bold decision to stage their Jazz-and-related-music festival in the great outdoors. May is a busy time for gig goers in Brighton as the town hosts the two entirely unrelated events of the unashamedly highbrow Brighton Festival on the one hand and the avowedly populist Great Escape on the other. This column has had occasion to explore the curious position in which jazz often finds itself, being somehow too populist to attract the kudos, and much of the funding, that attaches to Art with a capital A, yet not actually popular enough to pack the cheap seats. There are continuing signs of a renewed interest in jazz as a progressive music emerging from scenes of young players in London and Berlin, but no representation of anything near the form gets booked at Great Escape, although featured artists such as Eska and Laura Mvula have it in their backgrounds (and backing bands), and while the Brighton Festival put on the mighty Phronesis, triumphantly stepping up to play the Corn Exchange after their last show at the intimate Komedia Bar in 2010(really that long ago?), jazz remains peripheral rather than central to it’s programming.
We often return to the subject of live performance because it is there, as muchas through the increasingly financially challenged recording industry, that players can find the opportunity to pursue their musical visions and develop their careers. It’s a pleasure therefore to have a bagful of positive news to deliver on that front. The South Coast Jazz Festival was another across-the-board success; next Love Supreme returns with another strong line-up, unembarrassedly mixing representatives from across the broad spectrum of whatever it is that people think they mean by ‘real’ jazz with popular entertainers championing a broadly urban vision of feel good soul, and incidentally attracting a more ethnically diverse crowd than is usual at a green-field music event. While purists may still have their reservations, such genre-crossing events can surely only help in the effort to break jazz free of it’s perceived special-interest status and lure in new audiences. As a flamboyant example of the sort of crossover that can be possible, headline act Kamasi Washington has managed to take his cosmic dashiki-clad post-Pharoah Sanders extravaganza round the world, from jazz clubs to bookings in front of rock festival audiences at Coachella and Glastonbury, while playing some very fine tenor sax along the way. Filling in the gap at the more defiantly uncommercial end of things is the equally welcome return of the Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival in September - and there’s a fundraiser at the Verdict on July 7th to put in your diary as well. It’s good to see that Brighton’s only purpose-built jazz club is now hosting events by both the Smalls and Safe House promoters; old-time swing and free improv may seem worlds apart but share links to the same tradition, if not exactly the same audiences, and consolidation of the diverse strands of the scene can only lead to greater strength. Meanwhile, the grassroots continues to thrive, with a new Wednesday night gig at the Palmeira a promising addition to the scene.
Festivals are welcome summer visitors, of course, but the continuation and progression of a music scene relies upon it’s network of local players, and local promoters and landlords prepared to host them. In this context, recent comments made by MP Caroline Lucas provide a source of hope that the uncertainty that has increasingly affected venues across the country is at last receiving some official recognition. Speaking to a BHC policy panel she declared ““The live music scene is the lifeblood of Brighton and Hove. People come from far and wide to enjoy gigs at venues across the city. I’ll continue to work with the Performers All Party Group in Parliament in calling on the Government to protect pre-existing venues from being closed down because of complaints from residents in newly built accommodation.We need to find a solution which both protects venues from unnecessary closure and allows people to live in homes that aren’t affected by high noise levels.” These sentiments echo those made by the triumphantly incoming Mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, who has pledged to support the arts and the night-time as a ‘core priority’, and has made particular reference to the 35% of venues closed, often due to development pressure, under his predecessor. Let’s hope that the jazz community can position itself to reap the benefit of this offer of support.
Dark Magus
Today, April 30th, is International Jazz day. Of course for our dedicated readers, every day deserves that title - and no doubt many of you will already be physically and spiritually exhausted from celebrating Duke Ellington’s birthday the day before. If you feel minded to indulge in a little more celebration, however, the Miles Davis biopic starring Don Cheadle is currently still playing at the Komedia Picturehouse, and whether or not you actually go to see it you must surely agree that it can only serve to bolster the profile of jazz-and-related-music across the public arena.
Jazz music seems to have entered into a fruitful alliance with arthouse cinema, with theAntonio Sanchez soundtrackedBirdman, the jazz-as-sports-movie drumathon Whiplash, and a biopic of Chet Baker starring Ethan Hawke all gaining varying degrees of cinema release last year. Of course jazz has already a long-established relationship with highbrow movies - Davis’ pivotal collaboration with Louis Malle in the unforgettable Lift To The Scaffold (1958) marked an artistic high point for both men, Frank Sinatra excelled in The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) and laid down a corrosive archetype of the druggie musician at the same time, and Duke Ellington’s contributions to Otto Preminger’s Anatomy Of A Murder (1959), both musically and in an acting role, helped cement the alliance. Perhaps inevitably, the relationship faded out in a welter of smoky cliches involving breathy saxophones over moody shots of rainy mean streets, and jazz has been noticeably absent from the movie mainstream for many years, though Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 hommage Round Midnight and John Altman’s 1996 Kansas City deserve honourable mention. A widely-released biopic of one of the music’s greatest stars can only be good news for jazz - but there is perhaps an unintended irony in the fact that the movie is set at a point in Davis’s career when what little music he was making would barely have been identified as jazz by many listeners, and his own feelings towards the tradition seem to have been ambivalent.
It’s sometimes hard to remember, in these post-Marsalis, Lincoln-Centered days, how divided and at odds with itself the jazz community was in the mid 70s. Radical shifts in the cultural zeitgeist had moved the youth audience towards a host of different musical forms, from prog rock to funk. At the same time, the simultaneously iconic and iconoclastic career paths of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman had lumbered jazz with the onerous burden of having to constantly assert it’s forward-looking progressive credentials - everyone was looking for the New Thing, and a generation of master hard-bop musicians, schooled to virtuoso levels in swinging explorations of the blues and great American songbook, were left without a gig, struggling to assimilate the politically-charged avant-garde or awkwardly trying to embrace unfamiliar rock rhythms and electric instruments.
Miles famously refused to look back. His 50s quintets established a high water mark of all the jazz values currently now returned to fashion - how many of the repertoire standards are in the book because he started playing them? - and his 60s bands set the template for post-bop chromaticism, even foreshadowing the contemporary attachment to straight, unswung quaver feel. Come the 1970s though, he’d abandoned swing time, acoustic instruments, the standard repertoire, even chord changes, in a search for what he thought of as the true happening sound of the era. Abandoning the tight control that had typified his 50s bands, he gathered a team of younger players into the studio, sketched out the vaguest of musical goals , and set the tapes rolling. The heavily edited results were released with a groovy Matti Klarwein cover as Bitches Brew, and somehow became a massive seller - doubly surprising as the record, though undoubtedly exciting and original, is definitely not an easy listen, and was totally out of step with the sound of the subsequently emerging generation of fusion players. Miles followed up with a stream of increasingly peculiar-sounding records - Agharta, Live-Evil, Get Up With It, On The Corner, Big Fun - and bitterly berated commercial black radio for ignoring them. His autobiography records his disappointment when On The Corner didn’t take off amongst the Sly Stone and James Brown fans he thought it would attract. Listening to it now, it seems obvious that this record of fifteen-minute, virtually freeform jam sessions over heavy two-note ostinatos, crudely recorded and edited, and awash with heavy handed effects and all sorts of bitonality, would be a total turn off for an audience moving towards the slick, funky pop-fusion of artists like George Benson, The Crusaders or Grover Washington - all players whose musical values of concise, immaculately arranged rhythm tracks and soulful renditions of bop language were ironically much closer in intent if not in execution to the Miles bands of the 1950s. Bitches Brew is often touted as the album that created the fusion movement, on the strength of it’s personnel, but it’s ominous murky ramblings are acoustically and artistically miles away from the polished, gleaming precision of a Weather Report album.
Critics of the time were equally ambivalent - my 1978 copy of Rolling Stone Record Guide speaks cuttingly of ‘aimless soporific noodling’.As the decade progressed Davis seemed to be chasing trends rather than setting them, and what’s worse, getting it wrong; pianist/composer Donald Fagen, a longtime jazz aficionado if not exactly a practitioner, whose band Steely Dan were exemplars of super-tight studio perfectionism, remarked of Bitches Brew, with customary acidity, "To me it was just silly, and out of tune, and bad. I couldn't listen to it. It sounded like Davis was trying for a funk record, and just picked the wrong guys. They didn't understand how to play funk. They weren't steady enough."
Artistic reputations and hindsight exist in a complex relationship, however. By the 1990s the explosion of digital sampling technology and the cut-and-paste ethos spreading out from hip-hop had lead to a widespread plundering and re-evaluation of the era’s back catalogue. In this context, music made by editing together strangely matched bits of audio over repetitive beats was now both cutting-edge and widely acceptable, and Miles’ 70s oeuvre suddenly seemed to be years ahead of it’s time. Inspired amateurism was back in vogue, and now it was the super-slick fusion kings who seemed corny and dated. Such diverse dernier cri trendsetters as Bill Laswell and Thom Yorke came out in favour, and a torrent of reissues and unreleased material followed.
Despite this rehabilitation, it’s noticeable that jazz today has returned to many of the values championed by Miles’ classic quintets of the 50s and 60s, while the effect of his 70s explorations is far harder to detect. Was he exploring a blind alley, or a wormhole to the future? It’ll be interesting to see if the movie leads to yet another re-appreciation of one of the music’s most compelling yet enigmatic figures.
Bees Mouth - January/February/March/April 2016
4th April
Spring’s sorta here, fumbling at the door like a spannered stop-out searching for their key.. in with the usual migratory avifauna we’ve got a stampede of privatisation, academisation, de-steelification, brexitification and who knows what other fuckery to contend with... if I were you I’d unplug from whatever online sinkhole of despair you’re currently polluting your mind with and get down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH while the going is good, while the wind is fresh in the east and before summer arrives with it’s usual cargo of tattoo-ed nincompoops, and while the talents of Luke “Gotham City” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Spring Break” Thomas (drms) shine eternally undimmed in their dedication to the solid soulful swing ... plus I’ll be there doing something on bass, the enigmatically enchanting Bee’s team will be dispensing libations of the good stuff from behind the well-stocked bar, all manner of fascinating characters may be swept in upon the darkling breeze from the echoing streets outside.... take a chance on life, ride on time, join us, join us.
28th March
As world politics increasingly comes to resemble a terminally unfunny episode of the Muppet show, you may well find yourself quailing in abject terror at the though of whatever grotesque caricature of humanity is about to hoist itself over the murky horizon next, and come lumbering dismally onto the centre stage beating it’s scaly breast and bellowing the latest line in abject bullshit... Luckily JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is packing more punch that Storm Kate so if the advance of the swivel eyed loons is getting to you, come and bathe your tired cerebellum in the healing current of good vibrations pouring forth from the twin cornucopias borne proudly aloft by Luke “International Man of Mystery” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Stig” Thomas (drms), plus me adding my 2 cents on bass, and the wonderful examples of finely evolved humanity that make up the Bee’s team smiling encouragingly at you from behind the well-stocked bar.... all may seem hopeless, mired in government directives, performance based targets and other forms of entirely unnecessary shittiness, but the blossom is thick upon the hawthorn and the voice of the cuckoo will soon ring out across the land, so stuff all the haters, grab your axe down off the shelf and come and join us, let’s try and set the night on fire. If Nicky Morgan’s made any new friends at the Conference centre, she should bring the along; if not she’s welcome to come and weep quietly by herself.
21st March
Poor Mr IDS, so overcome by his sensitivity to the needs of the differently abled that he found it impossible to speak out on their behalf until now.. he should have got his sorry ass down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEES MOUTH, cos it’s the place where you can be yourself and do your thing, man, as the magic team of Luke “New York, New Dorp” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Vibe” Thomas (drms) spin their web of musical enchantment to set your mojo free, aided by me on bass back from my odyssey around the nation’s IBIS hotels, while the peerless, ever-smiling Bee’s team dispense libations from their extensive array of premium liquors, and the many children of the night mill around in the chilly echoing streets outside.... leave the city’s anxious parents to plan retributive massacres over catchment areas, let the cold winds wither the crocuses, let the stock markets quiver like startled hinds as the raging Brexit monster crashes incoherently around in the surrounding thickets - we’ll be having ourselves a time, so grab your axe down off the shelf and come and join us.
15th February
Nothing lasts for ever - even the delights of the increasingly apposite application of cockney rhyming slang to our Health Secretary seem to pall as the joke simply isn’t funny any more… even Mrs Puffy’s most frantically energetic, politically empowered dance routines aren’t bringing justice to the masses - even pansexual superheroes just seem drab and needy - don’t give up, Sailor Ripley, get yourself along to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH cos those tireless underground A-listers Luke “Iron Man” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Captain America” Thomas (drms) are set and ready to revitalise your mojo with their hard swinging sound that’s contemporary AND classic, Daddio-o…. I’ll be returning on bass, picking up the baton from the transcendental maestro Nigel Thomas who’s been smashing it these last few weeks, any number of mystery cats might blow in off the streets, before you know it you’ll be feeling that the air is alive, trembling with the sheer weight of the endless immanence of causality, sending a big load of good jams your way as the stars above you spin past and the surrounding mesh of space/time flexes under the intergalactic stress of gravitational waves from a pair of waltzing black holes far far away… get a spring in yer step and come on down, join us, join us.
11th January
Modern life, eh? No sooner are the festive decorations packed away than it hits your right in the face, and you’re sat weeping on the floor trying to listen to Ace Of Spades and Ziggy Stardust simultaneously, surrounded by your pathetic attempts at a tax return... I reckon the Thin White Duke would have been happy to see you chuck it in and get on down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTHwhere you can dive headfirst into the revitalising torrent of music, springing eternally forth thanks to the untiring efforts of Luke “Black Star” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Man Who Sold The World on Gumtree” Thomas (drms) ... forget all this tiresome reshuffling of endless guff and get with the beat, baggy buddy, cos the elfin, otherwordly Bee’s team are ready and waiting with the good liquors, the lights are dim, the spinning head is dressed to impress just for you, the vibe is in the air tonight, all night, you can be the young americans. Come early to get a glimpse of the Loz 2.0 new wheels and traps combo.
4th January
Whether you’re still totally high on goofballs from your epic NYE, or staring stoically at the rain waiting for the school run, there’s no escaping the fact that another year has begun …good or bad, happy or sad, the anticipation is simply too much, which is why you should just hang up your hangups and head down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where everyone’s favourite pre-millennials Luke “New Jam” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Boomtime” Thomas will be cutting a musical rug with their hip swinging blues-to-bop-and-beyond shizzle, aided by me on bass, while the Bee’s team weave their customary skein of ageless magic from the dimly lit, half-guessed space behind the well-stocked bar, and the fearless habitués gather yet again to celebrate yet another successful cheating of Fortuna’s maleficent wheel…. it’s a good life if you don’t weaken, so come and join us, pump up the jam, this beat is techno-tronic.
It Might As Well Be...
Spring arrives, bringing it’s customary seasonal quickening, and the jazz fan’s thoughts naturally turn towards music festivals. The South Coast Jazz Festivalbraved the dead of winter to achieve another triumph with high sales, plenty of local engagement and some gratifying press attention - congratulations are due once again to the unstoppable, camera-friendly team of Julian Nicholas and Claire Martin for their perseverance in making this into a reality. Closer to the beating heart of the city, we can look forward to more from Terry Seabrook’s season at the Nightingale Rooms and Chris Coull’s promising new Wednesday night venture at the Palmeira joining the thriving regular scene. The year-long festival of outrageous new talent that isNew Generation Jazz has started to draw record audiences to the thriving Verdict club. Kemp Town Carnival is rumoured to be re-floating after a troubled period, and we can hope that it’s jazz stage will have survived it’s passage across the troubled waters of financial insecurity. Let’s also hope that transcendental multi-media personality Daniel Spicer returns with another spectacular bonanza of international quality free improv to follow on from 2015’sAlternative Jazz Festival, where only the box office could be accused of selling out. Add to this the fourth return of the mighty juggernaut that is Love Supreme, with it’s unique mix of fashionably tipped cutting-edge jazz-and-related-musics and family friendly funk and soul classics, and you’ve surely got something to please even the most dogmatically partisan fan of whatever they’ve chosen to understand by the contentious catch-all definition of jazz.
This column has touched repeatedly, perhaps contentiously or maybe only cantankerously on the (to our mind) wholly unnecessary conflict that can sometimes be seen erupting across our already battle-scarred social media whenever the subject of ‘real’ jazz is brought up. While it’s now universally agreed that Charlie Parker, whatever his personal shortcomings, definitely always played real jazz even when encumbered by string sections, this was by no means apparent to all his contemporaries; go back to the journalists of the swing era to see how many of them found Bebop to be a desecration of the all values they thought central to jazz, by polluting it with elements stolen from 20th century symphonic highbrows like Stravinsky.
Nowadays the musical descendants of Armstrong andEllington are so numerous and diverse that it’s really impossible to like them all equally, and equally unnecessary to expend energy on attacking the forms you dislike. It’s so much easier to define what isn’t jazz, but lets’ try and pin it down anyway, just for fun- it’s an awareness of the Afro-American tradition, even if you can only follow it in your own way- it’s a sense of freedom and adventure - it’s a dedication to music, and to your instrument, if you’re a player, or to the art of listening, whether you are one or not. And it’s an identification with a community, or a family, however you like to think of it. Let’s leave the last word to the eloquent Mr Walter Blanding, tenorist with the Jazz at the Lincoln Centre Orchestra, captured on vid addressing a class of high school kids as they alternate between rapt attention and inconsequential mucking about, and dispensing a philosophy that is a relevant for listeners as it is for players.. “Jazz is ... about how to work together with a group of people, even if they think differently from you ... you can say, here we are, we’re all different, but we’re going to work together in harmony, we’re going to make an idea become a reality... we can take pride in saying that each one of us is different and we can still come together... that’s what jazz is about....” .
Emporor's New Clothes
I recently had the good fortune to participate in a recording session with Mark Edwards, noted keyboard supremo, studio whiz and mysterious mastermind behind the uncategoriseable and irrepressible Cloggz project. During the downtime he shared his reminiscences of playing with the Tommy Chase Quartet. It reminded me that, although you don’t hear so much about his high-powered, hard-swinging outfit these days, Mr Chase deserves a chapter of his own in the history of British jazz-and-related-musics.
This column has previously explored, albeit superficially, the changing fortunes of jazz in that mysterious period of the mid 80s when it suddenly found itself fashionable again. Perhaps punk and it’s offshoots had come to seem like rather dreary old hat, and the wider public discovered an appetite for a slicker, more glamourous vision of the zeitgeist that found it’s musical evocation through embracing such previously shunned cultural tropes as saxophones, conga drums and extended chords played on the Fender Rhodes. In the more commercial arena, the public’s engagement with jazz wasn’t much deeper than that - artists like Sade, Curiosity Killed the Cat et al employed jazzy devices as a sort of garnish on what remained basically pop-soul. One imagines the older, radically committed jazz generation balking at the dilution of their musical and political identities, but a younger crowd of players took advantage of the newly prevailing winds to launch careers that have lasted in some cases to this day - Courtney Pine is perhaps the best known example of someone who’s appeared on Top of The Pops and emerged with his jazz credentials untarnished.
Tommy Chase rode this wave, but also stood distinct from it, in that his quartet dealt exclusively in hard bop of the old school, complete with upright bass, acoustic piano, and a total dedication to swing. His belief in the music was unshakeable; he saw no reason why a 1950s style jazz quartet couldn’t be as commercially viablea part of the contemporary music scene as anything else; and for a while, he got a lot of people to agree with him, partly it seems through sheer force of character. The band appeared in the press, played sell-out gigs in regular, non-jazz venues around the country, made records with hot young producers and even got some of those records into the charts. What’s all the more remarkable is that they did it without diluting the leader’s maniacally unswerving dedication to the artistic verities codified by Blue Note Records thirty years previously. Some of our most celebrated current torchbearers of the tradition passed through the band - notables such as Alan Barnes and Andy Cleyndert. It didn’t seem to be stretching a point too far to see a lineage stretching back to the Jazz Couriers of 60s Soho, or even across the Atlantic to the Jazz Messengers and the irascible Mr Blakey himself.
Tommy was undoubtedly assisted by the wider public’s continuing willingness to buy into the Mod aesthetic in it’s various forms. 198 was the year of an ambitious, swinging-Londonmovie adaptation of Colin McInnes’ seminal youth-culture novel, Absolute Beginners - the book’s un-named protagonist is a streetwise London teen who combines a disaffected attitude and a hustler’s irreverent ambition with a love of Italian suits and the Modern Jazz Quartet. The fact that he lives in a Notting Hill of cheap rents and impoverished immigrants makes him seem today even more like a creature from a fabulous distant past, but the cultural gap was narrower then, and figures as diverse and influential as David Bowie and the Modfather himself, Paul Weller, adopted aspects of the cultural package that the book and it’s spectacularly unsuccessful film adaptation tried to embody.
Presentation was everything; Tommy was not only evangelical about his ( at the time still-unreissued) 60s Blue Note platters, but about the dictates of Mod fashion, which led to him prescribing every aspect of his musicians’ appearance from socks to haircuts. Not only did the band rehearse with military regularity - they rehearsed in suits and ties. This may seem a bit much today - Mr Chase by all accounts was an extremely difficult man to deal with, whose emulation of the methods and self-belief of the Jazz Greats extended to include some of their most challenging character traits. But on a professional level it was pure showmanship; and it seems an inescapable fact that this kind of showmanship is rather absent for the scene today, and the scene seems the poorer for it. Today’s players often opt for a non-committal jeans-and-suit-jacket look, like academics on sabbatical (which to an extent is what many of them are), or at worst embody the unfortunate paradigm of unkempt men in wrinkled casual wear hunched morosely over their instruments which has done so much to alienate the uncommitted public from the music. This is in stark contrast to previous generations - Miles in particular believed that a radical musical vision was best presented in snazzy threads. We’re not suggesting that a wholesale return to the Dark Magus’ shell-suit-and-hair-weave look of later years would be an effective cure; but a re-examination of the legacy of the Tommy Chase Quartet is surely overdue - both for the music itself, and for it’s leader’s belief that jazz had as much right to a place in the mainstream as anything else.
New Grass
As the Sussex Jazz Magazine enters it’s third year, it’s gratifying to see how the scene thatinspired it’s inception is still busy enough to keep it supplied with copy. 2015 was a great year for jazz-and-related-musics in the Sussex area, and 2016 promises a range of delights to come.
Sadly but inevitably, the chill winds of economic unviability have taken their toll to some extent. The popular In Session Wednesday nights at the Verdict have been discontinued, though the search is on for a more financially self-sufficient formula to enable them to be re-established. The Park View’s excellent series of gigs have also come to an end, as have the Friday night late sessions at the Brunswick. Still, where one door closes another opens, and the newly refurbished Nightingale Room in Grand Central has lent it’s luxurious surroundings to a series of gigs promoted by the tireless Terry Seabrook. As far as the grassroots goes, the good news far outweighs the bad. Notable among the many continuing casual pub sessions is the Bristol Bar’s Thursday slot, which has recently featured Simon Spillet and John Donaldson as well as showcasing a plethora of local players; Tuesday’s Brunswick Jam, which continues to pack the house, and the same night’s Three Little Bops at the Mesmerist presenting a mix of local and London players; and the Hand In Hand and the Bee’s Mouth sessions, both vying for the title of the South east’s smallest music venues. Add to this the continuing popularity of the Gypsy Jazz format which keeps establishing itself in a range of venues across town, and Brighton is still acity where there’s a free-admission jazz gig or two happening virtually every night of the week - see the gig listings at the end of this publication for proof. Small’s Jazz at the Caxton keeps the flame of mainstream alive with it’s consistently high-quality seasons of unplugged gigs. Over in Lewes, the Snowdrop’s Monday nights have been keeping up their high standard.
In addition, the Swing juggernaught continues to keep rolling on, with nights like White Mink demonstrating Brightonians’ endless appetite for dressing up to have Roaring 20s-themed fun, while providing gainful employment for many jazz players.
Pulling back the camera for a reveal of the bigger picture, 2015 saw no less than three jazz festivals touching down in the area. Love Supreme returned for the third year, bigger and better than ever as the promoters continue to refine the cutting-edge-plus-commercial formula (and their luck with the weather continues to hold). Atopposite ends of the musical spectrum, two new festivals also. appeared - Dan Spicer’s Alternative Jazz Festival at the Old Market provided two nights of Improv at it’s most defiantly uncommercial, which paradoxically and gratifyingly sold out completely. Over at the Ropetackle in Shoreham, Claire Martin and Julian Nicholas presented a programme of classic British jazz at the South Coast Jazz festival, again to sell-out audiences. These three events did a fair job of covering the whole spectrum of jazz-and-related-musics as it stands in the UK today, but in case anyone felt they were missing something out, the Brighton Jazz Club was on hand to present Marius Neset and John Taylor in what was sadly to be one of his last appearances, and further gigs by such diverse acts as Polar Bear, The Impossible Gentlemen, Courtney Pine, Louis Moholo, Snarky Puppy and Bill Laurence demonstrate how local promoter’s willingness to take a risk on jazz is more often then not rewarded.
Brighton’s dedicated jazz club, the Verdict, continues to thrive and attract an ever-increasing range of top British andinternational talent. This tiny space has increasingly grown it’s reputation amongst players as a great space to perform in, and names such as Andy Sheppard, Tommy Smith, Julian Argüelles and Michale Janisch are choosing to include it on their busy international itineraries. Special mention as well goes to the New Generation Jazz project running there on the last Friday of every month, with Arts Council assistance enabling a host of bright, up-and-coming UK musicians to put on a series of gigs and free workshops that are set to continue up till September.
Let’s end with a wish-list. It would be nice to see a return of the Alternative jazz Festival, and a continuation of sunny skies for Love Supreme. An increasing focus on education, bringing jazz-and-related-musics into the city’s many schools and colleges, is as essential component in maintaining thecontinuation of the scene. Finally, there’s no live music scene without an audience - the simplest, and best, way to ensure the music you love continues to thrive is to get out and see it any chance you get!
What's in a Name?
Love Supreme returns to Firle Place this weekend for it’s second attempt at presenting a high-production greenfield festival programmed entirely with Jazz-and -related-musics. One can only admire their courage. Glastonbury Festival introduced a Jazz Stage once upon a time, but that was long long ago in the distant 80s, when Jazz and World Music (of which more later) enjoyed a brief surge of commercial visibility. Since 2010 it’s been renamed “West Holts”. Now we hear thatJazzFm have reduced their broadcasting to DAB in the London are only, while the venerable Jazz Services have just announced that they will cease to be a National Portfolio Organisation from 2015, effectively ending their existence as a subsidised body. You can sign a petition opposing this: HERE . Neither of these unwelcome changes indicate a widespread media support for Jazz, whatever people understand by the label. The greenfield festival market is a notoriously crowded and treacherous one, the Jazz audience demographic not traditionally associated with the rigours of the campsite and the chemical toilet, and the very definition of Jazz is the subject of furious and often ill-tempered debate. It’s the last issue that this article will attempt to address.
Last year’s Love Supreme attracted many glowing reviews, but complete unanimity of opinion is no more attainable or desirable in music than anywhere else. Journalist Daniel Spicer wrote a spectacularly splenetic article for The Wire in which he accused the event’s organisers of blasphemy, on the grounds that they were betraying the very spirit of Jazz as epitomised by John Coltrane. Spicer at least nailed his colours to the mast - for him, Jazz means“ the walls of Jericho thunder of hard bop, the deep trance dream of modal Jazz or even the superhuman sports jams of fusion.” As all these musical forms were abundantly represented at Love Supreme, it is apparent that Spicer didn’t actually attend the festival himself or speak to anyone who did before penning his attack, but no matter - his particular ire was reserved for the headliners, Jools Holland and Bryan Ferry, because they weren’t Jazz enough for his liking, though he also seemed irritated by his own assumption that the festival’s clientele would be entirely middle class, which is a curious attitude for a contributor the The Wire, not a publication noted for it’s demotic appeal.
Are the Jools Holland Orchestra jazz? Is Bryan Ferry, even in an incarnation assisted by Alan Barnes and the Cole Porter songbook? Or is the spirit of jazz best epitomised by “a mind blowing double bill of The Anthony Braxton Quintet followed by Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley” at the Festival Hall, which is Daniel Spicer’s notion of what it should be? Many people have thedefinite notion that the word “Jazz” means something, and that must include you or you wouldn’t be reading this magazine. And it’s certainly easier to agree on what it’s not - it would be perverse to insist that Metallica were a jazz act, though they do feature solo improvisations, polyrhythms and natty facial hair. However, as fast as you may try to define key attributes of jazz- like swing time, conscious awareness of the tradition, saxophones, blues licks and harmony, syncopation- you become inconveniently aware that there are artists and performances that incorporate none of these elements yet still are classed as jazz. How can a single genre include Hiromi, Evan Parker and Ken Peplowski and still hold together in any meaningful way? Then there’s a whole political dimension as to what does or does not qualify, somewhat beyond the scope of this piece, though interested readers are directed to wrathful trumpet maestro Nicholas Peyton’s “Why Jazz Isn’t Hip Any More” series on his blog as a starting point. Petyon would like us to refer to his chosen metier as ‘Post-Modern New Orleans Music”, and we can only wish him luck with this ambition.
To the music commissioner for an advertising firm trawling through library music catalogues, “Jazz” has definite but limited connotations, which mostwould understand, probably best epitomised by Miles’ “Kind Of Blue”- abstract, mellow, cool, saxophones, ride cymbals and pianos, well suited to selling premium products. To the indie-rock purist, “Jazz” just means the enemy - a byword for aggravating, elitist musical self-indulgence. To an older generation, “Jazz” meant dance music, and to a still older one, a crude and vulgar form with a dangerously anarchic undercurrent. To Wire readers, “Jazz” implies a questing, challenging musical form divorced from the pressures of commercial conformity, but to JazzFm it implies a slick, conservative sound implying a lifestyle probably out of reach of many of it’s actual practitioners. Let’s see if the dictionaries can help; the OED declares it to be “a type of music of black American origin characterised by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century” and Webster’s seems to go along, pronouncing it, with an old-time charm, to be “American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre”, though in it’s more slapdash moments it simply alleges that it’s “a type of American music with lively rhythms and melodies that are often made up by musicians as they play”. Macmillan feebly offers that it’s “a type of music that developed in the late 19th century in which there is a strong lively beat and the players often improvise” , and provides a laughable musical link to back up it’s claim. Collins falls into step by providing thatit’s “a kind of music of African-American origin, characterised by syncopated rhythms, solo and group improvisation, and a variety of harmonic idioms and instrumental techniques”, but goes on to admit that “it exists in a number of styles” which one may feel is the least it could say.
It’s pretty well established that there can be demonstrated to be a distinct, apostolic tradition of Jazz music, deriving from those early African-American musicians of the New Orleans days that continue to excite people as diverse as Acker Bilk and Nicholas Peyton, and that any music that is created with some kind of awareness of that tradition, however much the musicians themselves may attempt to deny it, can be classed as a part of Jazz. ABarry Guy record typically shares more elements with Penderecki than it does with Paul Chambers , while Dave Holland’s Prism may sound closer to prog rock than Prez and Neil Cowley’s trio sound as close to his previous employer Adele as it does to Ahmad Jahmal. All three can be identified as belonging to the Jazz tradition in part because of the history of the people playing, and the kind of music they have listened to and absorbed. And all three demonstrate how creative artists can use the freedom implicit in any understanding of Jazz to push and pull the form into a variety of new shapes. There’s room for all this, as there is for the classic format of acoustic quartets playing swinging versions of the Great American Songbook. In it’s classic period in the middle of the 20th century, Jazz was a populist, commercial enterprise; it now extends into the farthest, most forbidding reaches of Art Music. It’s all valid. Those who see their favoured version of Jazz as the only true one, and everything else as a distortion or dilution, should lighten up. The greatest Jazz musicians always kept open ears and minds. We don’t have to dig it all equally, but we should recognise that in this era of funding cuts the music we love has to adapt and expand to survive.