Jazz on a Winter's Weekend 2013 - Programme

In a casual conversation at The Spice of Life club last year between promoter (and Ronnie Scott’s booking agent) Paul Pace and our London Scout Su Williams, Laura was tipped as one of the outstanding new talents on the scene. We eventually caught up with her at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. We could only agree with the judgment and this gig was fixed there and then. Bringing together a variety of influences, the Laura Jurd Quartet is an intriguing, creative outfit, drawing upon ‘standard’ melodies and original compositions as a basis for improvisation. The band fuses together elements of European folk, jazz and classical traditions, creating a unique and distinctive soundworld. 

An SMJ club favourite and undoubtedly one of the UK’s leading jazz trumpet soloists, composers, arrangers and educators (including Professorship of Jazz Trumpet at Trinity College of Music), Steve Waterman has also worked in Cuba, Finland, Germany, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Spain and the United States. He has recorded 7 critically acclaimed CD’s under his own name, the most recent of which, “Buddy Bolden Blew It” [MST 0056], forms the basis of this concert. The music takes a ride through the history of jazz trumpet and its most celebrated and influential contributors. Steve has taken the original small band arrangements from the CD and augmented them especially for this greatly talented big band’s performance tonight.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the ongoing development of the British, particularly the London jazz scene in the last few years you will have picked up on Zara McFarlane. Emerging through a Popular Music Performance course at Thames Valley followed by Jazz Studies at The Guildhall, she has worked with Denys Baptiste, Soweto Kinch, the Jazz Jamaica All Stars and South African jazz icon Hugh Masekela. A fine original song writer as well as singer, she has included several of her own tunes on her 2011debut CD ‘Until Tomorrow’ [Brownswood Recordings] which has had excellent reviews. Her fresh and subtle interpretation of some classic jazz standards are pure joy and she has assembled a mighty fine young band for this concert, some of whom you may remember from that superb ‘Rhythmica’ gig in 2011.

“Marius Neset is increasingly regarded as a major emerging voice on the European jazz scene”. We don’t usually re-hash others’ views for this programme but for this gig it seems appropriate. We’ve managed to catch him twice, at The Band on the Wall, Manchester and The Wardrobe in Leeds; both jaw dropping gigs. With a 5 star review of his last CD in the Guardian, John Fordham said:- “Marius Neset combines Brecker’s power and Jan Garbarek’s tonal delicacy, but has a vision that makes all 11 originals on this sensational album feel indispensable, and indispensably connected to each other. Neset is on his way to being one of the biggest new draws on the circuit”

Other comments lend weight:-
“Marius Neset is just 25 years old, yet as a musician and composer he brings an astonishing maturity to all his work. It’s not just the virtuoso technique that impresses, although that is already at a level few saxophonists can live with. Nor is it just Neset’s distinctiveness as a composer. Both these aspects are part of a package that is given shape and focus by that indefinable extra factor that adds up to a unique musical personality. As a composer, Neset’s influences are similarly diverse – Django Bates (with whom he studied composition), Pat Metheny, Frank Zappa and also Bach, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. Yet already, Neset has absorbed these influences and found his own musical language for expressing their virtues”.
It’s just one hell of a quartet and a whole new jazz experience.

The seeds of this gig were sown at last year’s festival when all four participants were present playing in other bands. It was an impromptu late night jam, spontaneously organised by the two Marks and Andrew, for the pure joy of playing with their friend and world class Italian pianist Dado Moroni. No audience present, just a few of the SMJ team, mesmerised by his infectiously swinging and breathtakingly versatile piano style. We instantly determined to bring him back for a festival audience next time round.   

Dado, now back living in Genoa, was, from 1991, a resident in New York City where he played and recorded with many great jazz stars including Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Hank Jones and Ahmead Jamal. A young Mark Nightingale, now the UK’s premier jazz trombonist, was on one of the recordings. Mark Taylor was also in NYC at the time, himself playing and recording with the likes of Johnny Griffin, Lee Konitz, Kenny Barron and Mose Allison. Still a New York resident, Mark makes his annual trip ‘back home’ to enjoy some gigs with Andrew Cleyndert when he can get time off from his regular spot in Toshiko Akiyoshi’s trio and Andy from his long standing commitments to Stan Tracey’s bands and his place as one of Europe’s most sought after double bassists.

American trumpet virtuoso Jim Rotondi’s superb performance at last year’s festival demanded a return visit – this time with his own band,  a collaboration with his long time front line partner, tenorist  Eric Alexander, plus two new European colleagues, organist Renato Chicco and drummer Bernd Reiter, acquired during his Professorship at Graz University Austria.  Jim’s career has taken him through the big bands of Lionel Hampton,  Ray Charles, Toshiko Akyoshi and Bob Mintzer with small group experience via Charles Earland,  Lou Donaldson, Curtis Fuller and Joe Chambers. Eric Alexander studied jazz at Indiana University and later in New Jersey with Harold Mayburn, Joe Lovano and Rufus Reid. He cut his musical teeth with  organ trios on Chicago’s South Side and has several CD’s to his credit, including the first recording by his own sextet ‘One for All’. Other than Parker and Coltrane, Eric states George Coleman as his big influence.

TRUDY KERR has been hailed as ‘one of the country's most polished singers’ by The Times.  She moved to London in 1990 from her native Australia and, whilst continuing to gig regularly, worked during the day as secretary for the popular clarinettist Acker Bilk. She took time out to study jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and in 1995 got her musical career break when Ronnie Scott offered her a week at his club: she has performed regularly at Ronnie’s ever since. Trudy has released 10 albums to date, and has performed and toured extensively at clubs and festivals around the world.  She has performed and recorded with Acker Bilk, Georgie Fame, Jamie Cullum, Mulgrew Miller, Jan Lundgren, Bob Dorough and Michael Garrick to name a few. Trudy will be performing music from her new CD called The Rhythm of Life which is a collaboration with her husband Geoff Gascoyne ; featuring ‘Great American Songbook’ standards and lesser known gems.

Recognised as one of the UK’s outstanding jazz orchestras, the RNCM Big Band performs regularly at the college’s splendid Manchester concert rooms with a host of star soloists which recently has included Bob Mintzer and Tim Garland. Under the direction of Mike Hall, the band has generated some excellent jazz alumni, some of whom are appearing elsewhere in this year’s programme. We are delighted to welcome back the RNCM Big Band for their third appearance at this festival with a whole new generation of talent.

Many thanks to American born, London based bassist, composer, bandleader and record label owner Michael Janisch for organising the inaugural UK tour for this New York resident group of extraordinarily gifted and outstanding musicians. This festival is honoured to be included. There’s just too much written about all these guys to do justice in such a short programme preview so we’ve included their websites for further reading. All the members of this quartet play, record and teach in jazz’s best known venues and colleges, with other musicians right at the top of the profession. Suffice it to quote from Michael’s own notes about Walter Smith III.

“Musically Walter is deeply rooted in jazz. (He knows a MILLION tunes and he used to roast me at college!) His originals are highly energetic and melodic. He’s having a huge effect on jazz scenes around the world just by his albums. His improvisations are spectacular and have to be heard to be believed. He takes you on a sonic ride like hardly anyone else on his instrument. It’s really something very exciting to see live.”

The quartet will be playing music from Walter Smith III’s three latest critically acclaimed albums. This is a rare opportunity to hear one of the most important voices in jazz today.

At the age of 88, Johnny Mandel is still living and working in Los Angeles. [Gordon Sapsed took the (centre) photo at a recent workshop.] He was a trombonist (for Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Count Basie), an arranger (for Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Shirley Horn), a composer (for Woody Herman, Stan Getz, Chet Baker and many film scores). As a tunesmith he became world famous for evergreens such as ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’, ‘Emily’,’ A Time for Love’ and ‘Where Do You Start?’ His tune ‘Suicide Is Painless’ was used as the theme tune for the long running TV series M*A*S*H.

Our friend, mentor, outstanding musician and festival favourite Alan Barnes has written some arrangements to celebrate Johnny Mandel’s contribution to the world of popular music in the jazz idiom. He has chosen to use a ‘reeds only’ horn section in the band and picked three of the UK’s top saxophonists to fill those chairs. Anita Wardell, often praised as ‘the musicians’ vocalist’ for her true jazz feel, will interpret Johnny’s songs in her own inimitable way. Her regular trio form the rhythm section.

We Northern jazz fans are truly blessed by the presence of these two veritable giants of the UK jazz scene on our proverbial doorstep. Iain’s focus is his teaching job at the prestigious Chethams School of Music, and this fantastic quintet, which is just embarking on a national tour. Mike is at last accepted for the world class guitarist and composer which he is, a position enhanced by the recent success and popularity of the Anglo-American ‘Impossible Gentlemen’ for which he writes and plays with Gwilym Simcock, Steve Swallow and Adam Nussbaum. It’s been 3 years since this quintet last visited the festival and their tour organiser Jo McCallum has assured us that there are some new goodies to savour in the way of new ‘standard’ arrangements, original compositions and some tunes not generally in the jazz repertoire.