A Tuesday Blog, and I have been writing a weekly blog since the summer of 2005. One of the first contained my thoughts on the Brecon Jazz Festival in August that year.

What I have been writing most weeks these past few years has been to tell you who is coming to play at Hedsor Jazz.

This one is no exception. For the past few years we have tried to introduce you to new players, some that you may not have listened to before. Named guests have been part of the Hedsor Jazz experience for many years. One of the earliest was saxophonist Al Nichols, and you will still see him at Hedsor now and again.

 Someone we introduced you all to is trumpeter Stuart Henderson, now a regular at Hedsor, and he will be with us this week on Thursday 30^th March. Earlier in the month he partnered Vasilis Xenopoulos, who first came to Hedsor in 2007. This week he will be partnering another young saxophonist, Alam Nathoo.

 

Alam at Hedsor in 2022

 

Alam has been with us 2 or 3 times before, and is one of those young saxophonists who will carry live jazz forward for fresh ears with innovative playing not a million miles away from how Vasilis was first received at Hedsor.

 

Alam is a graduate of The Trinity College of Music, and was a prize winner in 2009, see https://londonjazznews.com/2009/09/18/alam-nathoo-one-prize-won-and-up-for-another/

So the prospect of hearing Stuart and Alam together is quite exciting as I don’t think they have played together before. Come and experience jazz on the edge!

As usual, the front line will be backed by The Martin Hart Trio, which usually includes as our regular pianist, Ken McCarthy. If you have never done so, look him up on the web as well as Alam

http://www.barisons.co.uk/music-KenMcCarthy.html

AS a matter of interest when I showed Vasilis a photo taken of him playing at Hedsor in the days of jazz in the bar I said I thought it was 2009. He looked and said, “no, It couldn’t have been that late, I stopped playing that saxophone in 2007!”

Last weeks Hedsor Jazz celebrated the music of the big bands, with Sue Greenway and Mike Wills playing a variety of reed instruments on arrangements of those tunes more often played back in the 1940’s. The clever arrangements shrinking the 18 piece band sound down to 5 were by Mike. 

A couple of pictures are below

 

It was great to hear tunes like “I’m Getting Sentimental Over you” and “Stealing Apples” again. Such music was almost implanted DNA for people born before WWII. Many jazz fans are probably a bit like me, having come to jazz through the big bands of the 1940’s and the trad era of the late 1950’s.

 

Some of those trad bands got left behind, and even though they carried our interest in to more modern (1950’s modern!) jazz their playing technique was often fairly basic, and their harmonies safe in the three part front line of trumpet clarinet and trombone. When I come a cross a youthful band playing tunes like “Wild Man Blues” and “Oh Didn’t He Ramble” I usually do a double take. So when I came across a CD by a band called “The Dixie Ticklers” I had to take a listen. Oh what a music college education does for players of traditional tunes! A whole new way of using the traditional New Orleans tunes with modern counterpoint and harmony. A really refreshing and well played CD called “Standing Pat”. Go have a listen. Artwork below

 

By the way, it is a British band! The only comment I would make about the CD cover artwork is “it could have been bigger for us old chaps to read”! 

PS I have NO IDEA why Blogger, the software being used for this blog, is so difficult to control its line justification. It does not seem to obey any logical rules, and writing and viewing are completely different!!