Boston Spa nominates Boston Spa!

From Les Brown - Jazz at the Spa, Boston Spa

"Happy New Year to all at Seven Arts and Norvol.

Re your Honours list for 2015, may we blow our own trumpet (sic) at Jazz in the Spa?

“Jazz in the Spa – working to keep jazz thriving on Saturday evenings in Yorkshire with our emphasis on the Traditional and Mainstream jazz styles – 46 gigs in 2015, average attendance 89 and no subsidies!”

Kind regards

Les


(Yes, by all means! Steve)

Barney's Choice!

My highlight of 2015 would have to be the stonking gig that closed Marsden Jazz Festival 2015 - Jean Toussaint's "Roots and Herbs - The Blakey Project".

Jean Toussaint: tenor saxophone

Byron Wallen: trumpet

Dennis Rollins: trombone

Jason Rebello: piano

Daniel Casimir: bass

Shane Forbes: drums

It was pure joy from start to finish - the players were obviously really enjoying themselves. I particularly liked the rock solid and supremely tasteful underpinnings provided by Daniel Casimir and Shane Forbes on bass and drums. A wonderful gig.

Barney Stephenson

Marsden Jazz Festival 

Geoff's Southport selection!

Geoff Matthews - Southport Jazz Winter Weekend Festival and Southport Melodic Jazz Club

"Very timely- it was on 13 December!

Our Christmas Special double gig with the Matinee Swingshift Big Band with guest vocalist David Knopov celebrating Sinatra’s Centenary followed in the evening by Alan Barnes-Tony Kofi Quintet featuring John Turville, Adam King and Rod Youngs.

Both events sold out – altogether close on 300. Completely different and both very enjoyable. Nice to end the year on a high note!

A view from Leeds...

So much to choose from in 2015!!

Just three to choose so I've chosen my favourite recording by Sheffield pianist Alex Hutton released during 2015 - the folky and lyrical "Magna Carta Suite" with  Yuri Goloubev –double bass and Asaf Sirkis – drums. I had the opportunity to play the score with Alex in Sheffield in October - it is just beautiful.

I'm not sure you can say that saying farewell to old colleagues would be a highlight, but certainly the city's jazz community did themselves proud in celebrating the lives of two Leeds Jazz promoters who passed on in 2015 - Dave Hatfield in January and Barry Cooper in December

And the third would have to be the celebration of 50 years of Jazz Education at Leeds College of Music with the Alumni Big band directed by Nicki Iles on 11th October 2015 at Leeds Venue. Anniversaries are a good time to look back, to ask people to think what has been important and consider what the future might bring and Leeds College of Music's 50th anniversary celebration was just that. This was not only an anniversary for the College, but also for jazz education itself – Leeds was the first full time college jazz course in Europe, established in 1965. Jazz education is now so widespread and commonplace throughout the music curriculum that it is difficult to understand just what a big change that was at the time. It was great therefore that one of the people behind the original course at Leeds, 87-year old (and still going strong) jazz bass legend Peter Ind had travelled up from London with his wife Sue .

I've not even mentioned the successful award by the Arts Council for a NorVol International Touring Programme, nor  any of the bands that have played at our own club Seven Jazz - and we've had some beauts such as Tom Green's Septet, Trish Clowes with Gwilym Simcock and Mike Walker,  Marius Neset Quintet,  Darius Brubeck Quartet, James Hamilton's Jazz Orchestra “Covers Suite” (with all the stand out vocalists of the Leeds popular music scene) Elliot Galvin's Trio, Bad Ass Brass, Maciek Pysz Trio, Andy Sheppard Quartet, Alan Barnes Christmas Carol Octet and the ever entertaining Tom Sharp Jazz Orchestra. I could go on  - but I won't as I've already broken my own rules!!!

Steve Crocker
Seven Jazz Leeds

Jude's choice- Sheffield Jazz

John Taylor, Diana Torto, and Julian Siegel 

From Jude Sacker- Sheffield Jazz

"In January 2015 we put on pianist John Taylor’s New Group with Italian singer Diana Torto and Julian Siegel on sax and bass clarinet, in the Crucible Studio.  These three great musicians gave us a joyous evening, complementing each others energy, subtlety and musicality. Little did we know that that was our last chance to hear the very great and much loved John Taylor.  He unexpectedly died of a heart attack on 18th July 2015 and is greatly missed. This band is my highlight of the year.

I’d also like to add these other memorable bands who played in Sheffield this year from a long list of possibles - Larry Bartley’s ‘Just Us’, Phil Donkins ‘The Gate’, Liam Noble piano solo,  Jean Toussaint’s Blakey Project, New York Standards Quartet and Chris Biscoe’s Mingus Profiles band. So it’s been a good year!

Paul Bream's 2015 highlights..

Joe Morris

From Paul Bream, Jazz North East Newcastle

"With so much variety, how on earth to select just three memorable gigs? The answer is, I can’t, but here’s a selection that perhaps illustrates that variety (although almost any other three would have done just as well).

Joe Morris Quartet - at the Bridge Hotel Newcastle

An astonishing performance in so many ways, starting with the fact that the band was in Newcastle at all, having flown in for just 24 hours to play the only UK date of their European tour. Joe Morris is an astounding guitarist, possessed of the kind of fleet fingered technique that in too many other cases manifests itself in flashy pyrotechnics, but which in Joe’s case is at the service of an equally agile imagination. His partnership with violist Mat Maneri goes back decades, and it shows; they seem almost like two sides of the same brain, firing ideas across the synapses to charge up music that feels pre-ordained in its perfection, and then moves on. With Chris Lightcap on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums - both of them also old sparring partners for Joe and Mat - this was free improvisation of the highest empathetic order.

Jazz North East recorded the gig, and Joe was so pleased with how the whole thing went that he’s talking about issuing this as the quartet’s first ever live recording. So that’s all next year’s Xmas presents sorted out.

Linda Sharrock Group at the Black Swan, Newcastle

A triumph of a different nature. An iconic figure in the New York free jazz revolution of the 1960s, vocalist Linda Sharrock suffered a major stroke in 2009, leaving her largely paralysed and without the power of speech. But her ability to listen closely hadn’t left her and, with the support of sympathetic friends in her adopted home of Vienna, she has rebuilt the ability to find a place in the music and to create near cathartic improvisations of whoops and yells and repeated phrases. She came to Newcastle with one of her closest supporters, saxophonist Maria Richter, and the Sheffield-based improv trio of Derek Saw, John Jasnoch and Charlie Collins, and gave a performance of almost overwhelming intensity. This was music as an enduring state of mind, deploying remembered skills to brilliant effect.

OZMA at the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle

Jazz North East’s love affair with French jazz continues, and the quintet OXYD could very well have made their way into this selection, But OZMA just get the nod because their gig was a remarkable game of two halves. For the first set they played an accompaniment to the Buster Keaton movie ‘Three Ages’. This format of live music to silent film isn’t unusual, but almost invariably the musicians seem to feel obliged to play in ‘period style’ . . . which in this case would have meant a kind of pastiche 1920s jazz. But no, OZMA’s music was up to the minute contemporary, yet was brilliantly matched to Keaton’s deadpan screen imagery. Then, for the second set, the quartet let rip with jazz that has been described as having “enough raw energy to power a small city” - it certainly lit up Newcastle!

Three from Jez ...

Christian McBride 

Jez Matthews (promoter of Sheffield's Jazz at the Lescar)

"Here’s my top three gigs - I seem to remember it was three you asked for last year, and I provided a stack more, undecided as usual….. Anyway this time I’ve tried to keep to three!

Vula Viel at The Lescar in April. Bex Burch’s incredible energy and skill on the Dagaare Gyil, a type of xylophone from Ghana, mixed with a group of London’s finest jazz musicians had the backroom of the Lescar literally bouncing.

Christian McBride Trio at The Band on the Wall, Manchester, in June. Just the best swinging jazz from an incredible world class trio, and like all the best gigs, enjoyed with friends in a great, and packed, buzzing venue.

Metamorphic & Røyst Trio at The Lescar in November. Including in their ranks two musicians originally from Sheffield, Laura Cole and Seth Bennett, plus a trio of vocalists expanded to four in the final full ensemble, ten musicians in total. They produced powerful music with emotional impact, visibly and strongly felt by everyone in the room.