The main man behind Kings Bromley Jazz Club is village resident Jonathan Nason. I asked him how and why the idea for the club came about.

“Way back in 1978, the Sanyo Jazz Festival had entertained me in Chichester; it would also do so the following year. From the festival, I put on my bucket list introducing a band at my own concert. And, there it stayed, through visits to Gas Street and Martin Hone’s Opposite Lock Club in Birmingham, as well as Ronnie Scott’s, mainly in London.  

“That is until a landmark birthday was approaching last year and asked by Rob, my son, how I would celebrate I suggested resurrecting that long-awaited wish. September saw the plans become reality with the Nick Dewhurst Band playing to 80 guests in the village hall. Little did I know then what I had sown by way of an idea. Several weeks later a neighbour, John Bowman, made a surprise proposition. ‘How about launching a jazz club in the village?’

“I admit it hadn’t exactly crossed my mind, but the thought of promoting live music, essentially jazz, along with encouraging and nurturing local bands, really did appeal. I had worked at Sony on the eponymously named Radio Awards in the 1980s and could put some of that experience to good use.

“There were certain parameters John and I could agree on without much discussion. Our club had to have an authentic jazz club ambience, being dimly lit and presented in a way that mimicked what you could expect from an established jazz setting. It would also serve to provide the musicians with the correct mood and atmosphere. “

How did the launch gig in March go?

“We gave ourselves several months to check out locals bands before our first booking for our inaugural gig of four planned for the first year. Lichfield Jazz Club gave us a superb starting point as well as serving to promote our venture. As well as making our own short list, several bands approached me and we choose New Vintage to kick-start our programme.

“Seeing our tickets sell out in four days bore testament to our good fortune with our timing and plans for the club. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration, but we could have entertained an even larger audience had the room been equipped with elastic walls and rafters. The room was buzzing with anticipation, long before New Vintage took to the stage. 

“Their varied programme thoroughly entertained the packed room, with guests being encouraged to dance in the foyer. The post-gig feedback showed the event to be an overwhelming success. Particularly favourable comments were made about the band, the seating at candle-lit tables and the atmosphere from the wide-ranging age group forming the audience.”

Next up in Kings Bromley’s programme is Latin Heat II, led by John Watson, a man more familiar to UK Jazz News readers as a photographer, but when he isn’t behind a camera he’s behind a saxophone!

How did it all start for John, I wondered.

“I got hooked on jazz at the age of eight when I heard traditional jazz records at a neighbour’s house in our East Yorkshire village. Then my Dad, though not a jazz fan, took me to see Louis Armstrong’s All Stars at Bridlington when I was 10.

“My ambition was to become a jazz journalist. I wasn’t supposed to become a musician, and there were no music lessons at my senior school, but when I got a newspaper job on Merseyside I started interviewing visiting American jazz players and blues stars. One of them was singer and harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson, backstage at the Cavern Club, and –pushing a Hohner Super Vamper in my direction – he said: ‘I’ll show you how to play.’

“Within a few weeks I joined an R&B band called The Earthlings, but I later switched to saxophone and moved to the Midlands, studying first with session player Joe Paterson and later in London with the great Don Rendell, a wonderful teacher.

“I was working full time as a news journalist, with music writing as a sideline, and doing occasional gigs. A chance came up to tour with the stupendous trumpeter Harry Beckett and pioneering singer Maggie Nicols in a band called Pulse. Although Maggie is a very original free improviser, she sang ‘straight’ in Pulse – a wonderful, earthy voice. Pulse did short tours almost every year for 15 years, made one album, Stormy Weather (Spotlite Records), and did some broadcasts, with drummer Tony Richards, bass guitarist Fred T Baker, and pianists Brian Waite, who sadly died young, and later Lewis Riley.

“My work as a music photographer later took off, but I did occasional gigs and then was invited to join a funky jazz group, Heliopolis, where I first played alongside Chris Gumbley, a fabulous saxophonist. Chris has been trying for years to organise a reunion of that band, but then we were offered the Kings Bromley gig for a new outfit, Latin Heat II.”

That suggests it’s not the first Latin Heat band?

John explained: “The original Latin Heat band is based in Suffolk, and formed three years ago. My music teacher son Ben started a jam session at the King’s Head Pub in Woodbridge, and we decided it would be fun to start a latin jazz band there with some really superb East Anglian musicians: the line-up is trumpeter Ian Buzer, me on tenor, guitarist Tomi Farkas, Ben Watson on bass guitar, drummer Mark Sewell and latin percussionist Adrian Wiggins.

“I realised that it would be impractical to bring the Suffolk band up to the Midlands, and I had been putting out feelers for gigs with a Midland version of the band when the offer came from Kings Bromley. It’s a great opportunity to reunite with Chris Gumbley, who will be on alto, Tim Amann on keyboard, Trevor Lines on bass, and the brilliant young drummer Aidan Amann. I’m hugely looking forward to it.

“As with the Suffolk band, the repertoire is a mix of classic bossa and samba compositions, plus standard jazz repertoire tunes with latin beats like Kenny Dorham’s “Blue Bossa” and Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay”.

So, back to Jonathan Nason, what hopes for the future?

“Making live jazz available to wider audiences is top of our list. Live performance is for us, what the club is all about. Joining with other venues in the area in promoting new and exciting musicians has to be good for all those involved.

“We have plans to encourage and nurture young and growing talents. Our jazz club will be a haven, where they will have a warm welcome and an enthusiastic, knowledgeable audience.

“With streaming providing bands with new ways of promotion, we are keen to provide an accessible way for them to also build their tours; and we are in touch with bands in Staffordshire, Cheshire and Yorkshire to be part of our 2025 programme.  

“Those Sanyo days did indeed provide the very essence which will continue to serve as an inspiration.”

Tickets for Latin Heat II at Kings Bromley Jazz Club on Wednesday 8 May are now on sale (link below)

The post Staffordshire village gets its own jazz club first appeared on UK Jazz News.

In an article in Philosophy Now, in which Thorsten Botz-Bornstein links Stoicism and Hip Hop, we find this: “Coolness is a nonconformist balance that manages to square circles and to personify paradoxes.” Substitute Hip for Cool and we have an indication of the conundrums and apparent contradictions that make people like Murphy, Hendricks and Fagen so interesting as subjects for Jones’ investigations and potentially so intriguing for us as readers.

To a great extent, the Steely Dan story was told perfectly adequately by Brian Sweet in Reelin’ In The Years, but this was published in 1994, shortly after Fagen had released his second solo album, Kamakiriad, and Steely Dan had just begun touring once more (an occurrence only slightly less surprising than the sight later in that decade of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson back on stage), but before the two subsequent Dan albums and two more Fagen solo efforts, plus loads more international touring.

Half of Nightfly covers the same ground as Reelin’ In The Years, and although Jones’ focus is on Fagen as an individual rather than the band which was in effect Fagen and his musical partner Walter Becker, inevitably, given that Steely Dan was so all absorbing, it’s really just a question of a tweaking of emphasis and slightly different anecdotes.

There are times when this feels a little strained. Do we really need, for example, the tale on page 53 about how Walter’s mother Joan embarrassed herself in front of Walter and his then girlfriend Audrey Thaler? And could it have something to do with the fact that Thaler is one of the few Dan/Fagen associates that Jones specifically thanks in the acknowledgements and so presumably one of the few first-hand sources he had?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the unauthorised biography (Fagen and Becker wouldn’t talk to Sweet either, and given the nature of the men, our eyebrows would have been raised if they had) but without some really strong close sources or a very well articulated personal angle on the subject matter, the results will stand or fall on the thoroughness of the research and even-handedness of the treatment.

According to these criteria, Nightfly stands pretty solidly. Jones has delved thoroughly and comments intelligently. A little disagreement with the general consensus might have added some spice, but if Jones agrees with the critics of the time and since as to which albums were the finest and which the greatest disappointments, then who am I to complain. (Yes, I am aware that my deep personal affection for the troubled Gaucho, from 1980, is at odds with the consensus, and with Jones’ view.)

So, back to squared circles and personified paradoxes. Steely Dan’s art, and Fagen’s, is jam-packed with them. There’s the contrast between music and lyrics which runs right through their output: easy-listening mellifluousness in one and acerbic irony in the other. There’s their relationship with the styles and heritage of music: they look and act like a rock band, but they really want, Fagen in particular, to be jazz musicians, and it’s often in a jazz context that their music is played today.

One of the most striking arcs which Jones identifies in the Fagen story is of Donald’s increasing obsession with perfection in the recording studio and how, in the “post-Sweet” part of the Dan/Fagen tale, that all came to be reassessed. How a musician who had grown up adoring recordings by jazz musicians made with barely any rehearsal and with time for just two or three takes, all playing together, in the studio, could end up insisting on sampled and looped bits of recorded drums so as to preserve the perfect (inhuman?) timing of the beat, and recordings painstakingly assembled from isolated musicians, is just such a paradox.

Jones does at one point draw analogies between Steely Dan and the Beatles. Early prolific output, later disenchantment with touring, an artistic peak with recordings painstakingly made following that retreat from the road… all make sense. What Jones – sensibly – avoids is any speculative comparisons as to who did what in the song-writing. While it is clear in retrospect which in the Lennon/McCartney canon is really Lennon and which McCartney, the Fagen/Becker individual contributions are more difficult to figure out.

Since he sings the vast majority it would be natural to think that Fagen was the dominant lyricist and Becker the tunesmith, but Fagen’s solo output suggests that Donald is pretty self-sufficient, and superior in both areas, especially when Becker’s solo efforts are held beside them. Were all those lyrics fixated on young girls Becker’s idea? Well, the recurrence in Fagen’s solo output would suggest not. Whatever, it’s the one and only area of their music which feels dated.

The death of Walter Becker in 2017 put paid to the partnership but Steely Dan rolls on. Nightfly ends on some bitter and ironic notes of its own, and ones all too cliched in the world of ageing, famous rock stars: lawsuits. Actions taken by early “band” members are understandable perhaps. What does leave a bad taste and feels distinctly unhip are the lawyers’ letters going back and forth between Fagen and the estate of Walter Becker.

The post Peter Jones – ‘Nightfly’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

My own familiarity with their music stems from what might be considered their rebirth at the beginning of this century and the double live album Mint Jam. By that time original members keyboardist Russell Ferrante and bassist Jimmy Haslip had been joined by saxophonist Bob Mintzer and drummer Marcus Baylor, and it was this quartet that would develop all that tricksy-timed stuff so beloved of the fusioneers into a more contemporary and inclusive electro-acoustic jazz style. Mintzer brought his big band writing and arranging skills to the party and Baylor added a funky and soulful feel.

The departure of Baylor and Haslip was bound to upset the balance a little. The return of William Kennedy to the drum chair (he had preceded Baylor in the band) was a no-brainer and Felix  Pastorius had the unenviable task of filling Haslip’s shoes. The resulting music was fine, Ferrante and Mintzer continued writing strong music and it was all beautifully played, but in retrospect it feels like a period of treading water.

The arrival of Australian whizkid Dane Alderson on six-string electric bass in 2015 has, to my ears, brought us a revitalised Yellowjackets. To draw an analogy with the arrival in Weather Report of Felix’s dad, Jaco, the effects might not have been quite as dramatic, but not only has Alderson brought a strong and highly personal sound and writing to the band, but his elders sound revitalised too by his presence.

Their first release, Cohearence, was possibly too early to feel the full Alderson effect, and the gorgeous Raising Our Voice with Luciana Souza and cinemascope reworkings of classic ‘Jackets tunes with the WDR Big Band in Jackets XL were ploughing parallel furrows, so Parallel Motion presents us with the real flowering of this particular quartet.

And it’s a thing of great strength and beauty. Ferrante’s neo-classical writing (Challenging Times) and Mintzer’s rock-solid jazz tunes (Intrigue, Resilience) are supplemented by Alderson’s clear delight in re-inventing some of that ol’ 20th century fusion in a thoroughly modern manner (Onyx Manor), and Kennedy contributes the pretty breather (Samaritan).

The performances on this album have that seamless amalgamation of masterful technique with a deeply-felt soulfulness, all overlaid by an at times almost delirious sense of joy. It all goes, for this listener anyway, to fill the chest with excitement and prompts an abiding smile of gratitude that music like this exists and has been made available to flow from my hi-fi speakers.

Parallel Motion is released today, Friday 26 August. Yellowjackets are currently touring and come to the Jazz Cafe in London on 24 October.

The post Yellowjackets – ‘Parallel Motion’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has announced it is making 20 awards of £25,000 to a range of composers through its Awards for Artists scheme. It is one of the most significant philanthropic awards for composers and visual artists in the UK, and the awards are given with no restrictions or provisos.

The recipients of this year’s awards work in many different music genres, ranging from classical and experimental to jazz and folk:

Yazz Ahmed
Auclair
Shirley Collins
Tom Coult
Jayne Dent
Tim Garland
Simon Holt
Soweto Kinch
Cassie Kinoshi
Ryan Latimer
Cassandra Miller
Aidan O’Rourke
Sophya Polevaya
Rowan Rheingans
Abel Selaocoe
Joe Snape
James B Wilson
(three recipients wished to remain anonymous)

They join a list of 20 visual artists receiving awards, totalling £1 million together.

The press release from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation continues:

Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists were launched in 1994, to give significant financial support to visual artists and composers at a pivotal moment in their careers. Since then, 347 artists have received a total of £9.3 million.

The pandemic has substantially impacted how artists are able to produce, present and perform their work, threatening many artists’ livelihoods and their ability to continue with their creative practice. Visual artists and composers have been particularly hard hit by the lack of income, with a third of musicians considering leaving the industry (UK Music).

Jane Hamlyn, Chair, Paul Hamlyn Foundation said: “In the face of this ongoing crisis, we decided to remove the competitive element of the awards and support a larger number of artists. The result is an incredibly diverse group which we are delighted to be supporting, helping to provide some financial stability and allowing them to thrive during one of the toughest years for the arts.”

Joanna MacGregor CBE, Chair of the composers judging panel said: “This was a wonderful opportunity to support creative musicians through a desperate and difficult time, when venues have been shut, and commissions lost. Our composers are drawn from the worlds of jazz, classical, folk and experimental music; all of them are influential, and inspirational.”

Composers who have previously received Paul Hamlyn Awards include Sally Beamish (1994), Janek Schaefer (2008), Eliza Carthy (2012), Shabaka Hutchings (2014), Daniel Kidane (2016), Serafina Steer (2017) and Laura Jurd (2019).

The post 20 composers share £½ million Paul Hamlyn awards first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The first sounds are natural ones, bird calls and possibly the flow of water, or the blowing of wind in trees. The instruments are every bit as elemental when they enter in quiet conversation. There is a lot of fresh air in Maridalen, it seems, and the horn players channel much of it through their breath and timbre. Sometimes, so close are the instruments to the microphones, the tone of the trumpet or saxophone and the accompanying breath flowing through the brass sound like two separate sounds, perfectly in sync with each other.

And perfectly in sync between the horns too. For example, track four, Inga, finds Hefre and Vemøy in absolute accord on the stately head, with Haga giving a perfectly simple grounding by rocking back and forth between a pair of richly strummed notes.

According to the press release, the trio share “a common predilection for Swedish jazz (Jan Johansson, Bernt Rosengren and Lars Gullin), minimalist film music and French Impressionism”. The Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker quartet could easily be another reference point – there is in the Maridalen trio that same affection for melody and relatively unadorned harmony, with special attention to instrumental blend and interaction. It’s as if the horizontal and vertical elements of harmony – and the endless subtleties of rhythm, for that matter – have been stripped back to show their internal workings, like the clock with the face and numbers removed to reveal the far more interesting cogs and wheels within.

There is the occasional bit of piano from Hefre (on Midt På Natten Et Sted – meaning ‘in the middle of the night somewhere’ – a repeated, jittering single note acting as a background to the improvisation) and he sometimes tongues a percussion element via the saxophone reed, while Vemoy sings his harmony at one point. Mostly, the trio is happy to let saxophone, trumpet and bass ring out and intertwine in what must surely be a magical space to have provided the source location for such a clearly distilled, quietly contained, intimate and exquisitely beautiful 42 minutes 38 seconds of music.

Maridalen is released today and is available as CD, LP or Download.  

The post Maridalen – ‘Maridalen’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Kornstad says in the short liner note: “My own music will always thrive best in concerts, and I miss playing and singing for you all.” While it is true that he is at his best in live performance – I first heard him engaged in a bravura performance of his jazz saxophone/operatic “tenor battle” at the Victoria Nasjonal Jazzscene in Oslo – he can be seen as already well-prepared for solo creation, having worked before with just his saxophone, his voice and electronic looping devices.

It is those raw materials, along with flute, flutonet – a flute with a saxophone mouthpiece – and sansula, that he uses on these eight tracks.

The overall tone, again inevitably, is one of quiet reflection. Looped long tones from a tenor saxophone do lend themselves to the evocation of a trance-like state and to the impression of a world suspended in a kind of enforced stasis, holding its breath and waiting.

But Kornstad is adept at adding rhythm and groove to his loops with tongue slap on reed and a touch of sandpaper grain in the timbre. Bremen and the opener, Waking Arp, show this side of the recording. 

Apart from some possible background harmonies – it is hard to distinguish tenor voice from tenor saxophone – he restricts his vocal input to one track, Sibelius, which is a saxophone improvisation over his singing of Jean Sibelius’ Demanten på Marssnön (The Diamond on the March Snow – Op36 No6) and forms the outstanding centrepiece of the album.

Strut has an atmospheric blend of saxophone and flute sounds, Nakai is a perfectly-judged tenor saxophone solo with minimal looped harmonies at the end, and the former librarian in me was delighted to find a track called Dewey Number. If I am slightly disappointed in the album it is only that there are not more examples of the split-tenor personality, epitomised here in Sibelius, that makes Håkon Kornstad such a unique and fascinating musician.

The post Håkon Kornstad – ‘Out Of The Loop’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.