Another week has gone by, with many of us singing “Stormy Weather”, and with a mild feeling of surprise we have almost finished with JANUARY. Yes, 2025 has got past its starting line.

From a Hedsor Jazz point of view, I think it has gone pretty well. Our first meeting was freezing cold, but slowly we have warmed up our audience, and our experience last week of the more traditional forms of jazz was nicely filled with an appreciative audience. I think most enjoyed the change of tunes, and thank you Richard (Kellaway) for bringing almost your entire collection of reed instruments to add to the trumpet and a trombone of Lester and Phil Brown! May I ask where your baritone sax was? Can I also commend pianist Andrew Clancy, a distinctive variation on boogie and stride styles.

A fun evening, and my pictures are below.

 

Coming this week, January 30^th,we were looking forward to a session with trumpeter Bruce Adams. BUT for the very good reason that he is having his cataracts attended to and won’t be able to play his trumpet for a month he has had to cancel his return visit. He was to be paired with saxophonist Frank Walden and we have invited Frank to bring with him a newcomer to us at Hedsor Jazz, saxophonist Ollie Weston. Do check out his web page https://www.ollieweston.com/ and to have a listen click on https://www.ollieweston.com/musicvideo

 

We don’t often pair on the front line two similar musical instruments. Once upon a time I could have called this session “Two Tenors for a Fiver” as at one time our entry fee was £5, but this week it will have to be “Two Tenors for a Tenor!!

Frank Walden

 

Coming next month (February 6^th) we have a return of that fabulous pairing of trumpeter Stuart Henderson and saxophonist Alam Nathoo. How fortunate can Hedsor Jazz be to be able to put on in two consecutive months this pair. Individually  excellent, together fantastic. Modern Jazz at its best. Musical entertainment beyond price (but you still only pay £10).

Just tell your friends, if needs be buy them a train ticket. They must hear this!

 

Below is our poster for February, please print it off if you can and put it in a public place.

See you Thursday.

 

Geoff

Another drab Tuesday. Drab is a “nice” word that hides the dull. One thing I hope we don’t do at Hedsor Jazz is drab and dull.

We have had a couple of extremely un-drab (?) Thursday evening’s this year already, and this coming Thursday we have arranged for a definitely un-dull and different evening to enliven your Hedsor Jazz experience.

Last week (pictures below) was an evening of sunshine and smiles (well in musical terms anyway). Duncan Lamont Jr telling us all about the music that was being played, as well as playing it and Pete Rudeforth adding to the well know tunes with two of his own. Pete is a sunshine character, and together with his superb trumpet playing, gave an overall glow of joy to our evening. We will bring them back again before too long, as the level of jazz joy was worth turning out for, and must be presented again.

 

 

BUT we are aiming to present a different evening of joy this coming Thursday, but this time with added nostalgia!

We are going to present an evening celebrating the music of the early years of jazz. “Jazz in Tradition”. And to do this we are inviting one of our local musicians to come to Hedsor Jazz. Richard Kellaway led for many years Cookham’s Traditional Jazz Band, the Fabulous Shirtlifters. He is a fine reed player and we had hoped when planning this evening that we could have had him alongside the late Mike Wills, with whom he played on many occasions. But sadly that won’t be possible this side of the Pearly Gates. So he will be joined by another of our regular musicians, trumpeter Lester Brown. AND, as we are almost a family at Hedsor Jazz, we have asked Lester to bring his dad along too. Phil Brown is a trombone player, playing in that same traditional style that Richard is used to. So do come and see the result of “Jazz in Tradition”, our title for the evening, this Thursday (January 23^rd) at 8pm.

Lester at Hedsor 2024

 

Richard Kellaway, Shirtlifter!

 

Lester and his Dad Phil

Looking towards the end of the month, if you have yet to wake from the slumbers of the seasons festivities, January 30^th should start a greater awareness of life! On trumpet, that stunning and exciting player, Bruce Adams is coming to rouse us all. And to ensure he doesn’t get too carried away, he will be accompanied by another regular guest at Hedsor, saxophonist Frank Waldon. And all of this stimulation is yours for only £10 per head.

Bruce Adams and Frank Walden

 

Hedsor Jazz is EVERY WEEK on Thursdays, and had been presenting high quality jazz for over 20 years. If you have been recently and enjoyed your evening do come again, and bring a friend. We are one of the very few jazz “clubs” that play every week and with the quality of players in the “Best in Britain” class. They enjoy coming to play for us, but we need an audience to enable this to carry on into the future.

 

We will be there at the Hedsor Bar, Hedsor Rd, Bourne End, Bucks. SL8 5ES this Thursday, so I look forward to seeing you there.

 

Geoff C

Hi Readers, another blog presaging another outing to Hedsor Jazz.

Last weeks blog effort was a large one, and I think this weeks will be shorter to compensate.

Those of us who braved the cold (both outside the club and sadly inside too) had another jazz treat, with Stuart Henderson and Alam Nathoo sparkling together like the frost outside! There are very few places in the UK where you can listen to such jazz quality and at such a small outlay. Tell your friends, because as they say at sale time, when its gone, its gone!

My photos are below.

 

Don’t think that all the excitement for the month was last week, we have plans (and ways!!) to excite you. This Thursday, January 16^th) Duncan Lamont Jr returns, this time paired with that superb trumpet player Peter Rudeforth.

 

AND the following week we are ringing a change into the Hedsor Bar, and we will be paying tribute to an older form of jazz, with ex Shirtlifter Richard Kellaway joining Lester Brown on trumpet and Phil Brown on trombone to play some of the tunes from the earlier days of jazz. That’s on January 23^rd.

 

We finish the month with a second visit to Hedsor Jazz from Scottish trumpet player supremo Bruce Adams. You cannot miss him twice!! January 30^th is the date.

 

THEN YOU HAVE ALL OF FEBRUARY

Happy New Year to ALL Readers of Jazz from Geoff

And I do hope you all had a great Christmas time, with perhaps some space to listen to jazz, both live and recorded.

Our pre Christmas Party on December 19^th was a very enjoyable gathering, a nicely filled room, and at half time nicely filled plates to go with it. Thanks to all who took part, and all who provisioned the plates.

My pictures of the musicians are below

 

 

2025! 

How did 2024 manage to escape so quickly?

But we do have plans for this New Year, and Hedsor Jazz’s first month on 2025 is listed below for you to print and place, both for your memory and for others to see.

 

One or two notes about Jazz at Hedsor.

We do plan to keep going weekly during 2025, and we will be booking The Hedsor Bar every Thursday for 3 months ahead at a time. We are also aiming to charge just £10 per person per entry, and if you actually become a Hedsor Bar member you will get a discount on your bar bill as well.

We also plan to have just as many named artists as before, and one or two familiar favourites on a more regular basis.

The pairing of Stuart Henderson with Alam Nathoo appears to be a stroke of genius (well, they both are really), so we hope to pair them together around once a month. Thursday 9^th Jan is the first this year.

We are also going to introduce one or two innovations to broaden the appreciation of the word “JAZZ”. January will see an evening celebrating the Tradition tunes of jazz. To do this we are inviting clarinettist (and recent Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead) Richard Kellaway to join us. He used to co lead “Cookham’s Fabulous Shirtlifters” and we hope that maybe some of their fans will join us for an evening of “nostalgia”.

Richard with "Our" late Mike Wills

We plan to feature one evening this year of the more French guitar led jazz, perhaps you could call it “Montmatre” style jazz, with a selection of musicians led by Nigel Price. We are in discussion with him at the moment about this.

We will also be continuing with the suggestion of an evening or two of sponsored jazz, where YOU  can put your money into hearing the musician you want to have at Hedsor. Look out in August for saxophonist Alan Barnes dueting with pianist David Newton. An example of sponsorship. 

We continue to plan to present at Hedsor Jazz the musicians and styles of jazz in the future that have gained everyone’s respect in the past. We will ALWAYS determine to keep the quality of the musical content at Hedsor Jazz as high as we can be achieved. 

We will be helped in this aim in 2025 by Ken McCarthy and Mike Jeffries who are both taking on a more active roll in booking our weekly cast of musicians.

But the biggest help pf all will come from you, our audience. May you ever grow in numbers!

Recorded Jazz

With the long Christmas break many of us have turned to doing more listening at home, and I have discovered a couple of things, one new to me, and one from Times Past.

I have listened many times to Alan Barnes and David Newton dueting, but my first experience of just two jazz instruments playing like this was in fact the trumpet of Alex Welsh with pianist Fred Hunt. That was back in the days when I played jazz (badly) on the trumpet and rehearsed regularly with just a pianist. I realised how difficult it was with no banjo chunking alongside to hide the errors or gaps! 

Then came my experience of hearing Alan Barnes and Dave Newton dueting late at night in the Castle Hotel, Brecon. Something I’m looking forward to hearing again in August but this time here at Hedsor.

Over recent years I have come to appreciate another sax/piano pairing, that of Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock. I have not heard them together in real life, having only heard Brian live once of twice. They are both Scottish musicians of high calibre, and I was surprised to discover that I had missed a CD released by them in 2002 from a live session at The Edinburgh Jazz Festival.

 

Bezique is that recording, of a superb paring of gifted musicians, both combining and competing without a safety net. I highly recommend it.

The item listened to from times past was from an LP of the Johnny Dankworth Band from 1964, appropriately playing a suite of music written by JD on Dickensian Themes.

 

Yes, the cast included Tony Coe AND Ronnie Scott AND Tubby Hayes.

I have been very fortunate in hearing musicians like that for real.

Just look up the latest list for Hedsor Jazz and come and build your own memories of superb music played by talented jazz musicians!

 

GC

 The Hedsor Jazz Blog is Little Bit Earlier than Usual

and it will be the last blog for 2024. 

So just to start, a Christmas Greeting to you all

DO HAVE A SPLENDID CHRISTMAS TIME

and 

an invitation to our last gig of the year, our famous Christmas Party

AND ALL FOR JUST £10 per head

Next year we start on JANUARY 9th, 

and the 4 weeks of our music for January 2025 are set out for you below

AS you can see from our January program we are starting 2025 as we mean to go on, with wonderful players and a variety of musical styles all under that overall banner word JAZZ

Throughout the year we aim to bring you, on occasions, a evening in a changed style to the 1950's MODERN jazz that has been our mainstay for the past 20 years. We want to illustrate the many variations that can go under that word JAZZ.

To some extent last weeks session with Al Nicholls and Titch Walker did just that and kind of prefaced our January 23rd evening. Booting Texas style tenor playing from Al, with some Dixieland style trumpet from Titch, even playing tunes like "Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans" and "Back Home Again in Indiana". Great fun, but a complete contrast to the week before where Stuart Henderson and Alam Nathoo played as one charts that they had never seen before.

My pictures from last week are below.

Finally can I thank all of you for the support you have offered to us at Hedsor Jazz in 2024. You have turned out on dark days, windy days, election days, closed bridge days and you have all helped in that task of Keeping Live Jazz ALIVE

May Christmas bring you all the gifts you desire, and the refreshment, physical and emotional, that will lead you into 2025 with a fresh resolve. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Geoff

Tuesday, Blog Day, every week! BUT I will be taking a break over the Christmas period, as Frank Sinatra used to sing, “It’s nice to go travelling” and our family is somewhat “dispersed”!

One or two things to highlight.

Our jazz at The Hedsor Bar is every Thursday, except for our Christmas Holiday Period. Our last Thursday before our break will be December 19^th for our Christmas Party, and we will recommence after our holidays on January 9^th. Our start time remains at 8pm, and I am pleased to see that the Hedsor Bar web site has now got the correct start time.

Our last two gigs for 2024 will have, this week, December 12^th, Al Nicholls on tenor sax and Titch Walker on trumpet with as usual the Hedsor Jazz trio backing all that they do! Al and Titch make up the heart of “Blue Harlem” so come and enjoy some bootingly good jazz.

Al with us in September

The musical side of our Christmas party on December 19^th will have Duncan Lamont Jr on reeds, Lester Brown on trumpet and they will be joined by that lovely singer Sarah Jane Eveleigh. A light buffet will be available at half time.

I do hope we all have an enjoyable and happy Christmas time, and safe journeys for all of us who have to do that.

Next year one of our innovation evenings is coming on January 23^rd. We will be emphasising the more traditional of jazz tunes and we will be joined for that by special guest Richard Kellaway on Reeds, with Lester Brown on Trumpet, Phil Brown on Trombone, Andrew Clancy on Piano, Al Pirrie on Bass and Martin Hart on Drums.

Richard with Cookhams "Shirtlifters"

With the coming of a new year it is time to thank Martin Hart for all the work he has done over the past few years in booking the musicians who come and play for us at Hedsor. Martin has decided that a rest is as good as a cure and for 2025 this roll will be taken over by Mike Jeffries, with assistance in the planning and booking from Ken McCarthy and Tracy Georgiades . Martin took over the role when Clive passed away and has moved our jazz musical experience higher every year. We do plan to carry on at Hedsor, and will be booking musicians of like quality into the future months. This can only really continue if we can increase our numbers (bums on seats) AND our notoriety as a jazz club. If anyone would like to help with this please let me know.

Last week.

My photos are below.

We had feared that Stuart Henderson might not be with us following on from the death of his father, but he was happy to come and do what he does best, play jazz. He was joined at short notice by that guy who can walk to us from home, Alam Nathoo, on reeds. With the rhythm section of Ken McCarthy, Al Pirrie and Mike Jeffries we had great expectations, and we were NOT disappointed. It was probably THE best evening of jazz I have heard this year. The standard of sight reading and timing was astonishing. Well done to all the players for delivering such an amazing evening. These are the sort of evenings that Hedsor Jazz wants to lay down into the future, and we have plans afoot!

Enjoy the rest of 2024, but remember in order to keep live jazz alive we need an AUDIENCE.

 

Geoff