A Blog a week is no aid to sleep!

And this weeks blog is no exception! You may have had a bank holiday, but you may not have had sun, or an aeroplane to fly you to the sun, but you still have that constant nag, my blog.

Nag, yes but only to tell you of the very best jazz experience that you can find. Where? At The Hedsor Bar every Thursday of course!

This week is absolutely no exception.

Coming to us this Thursday on tenor sax is Al Nicholls. (He will more likely be coming by car, but he will bring his tenor sax with him in it!). He will be joined at the front by the guitar player from The Filthy Six, James Fenn. Both are long associates of Jazz at Hedsor and it will be good to have them back again, this time together, in front of our rhythm section, led as always by drummer Martin Hart. Keys and chords will be provided by Ken McCarthy.

Last weeks outing gave you Duncan Lamont Jr and Johnny Thirkle. These wonderfully gifted musicians never cease to amaze. The opening number was “Sandu” and straight off they appeared to be a pair, so good was the harmony of the sax and trumpet. I wondered where they had found time to rehearse this set to that level. In the interval I talked with Duncan and yes, he had worked with Johnny before, but that was 35 years ago, and they hadn’t met again until “now”!

You may also remember from a previous blog I wrote about Johnny Thirkle’s carbon fibre trumpet. I was therefore surprised that he was playing a silver one last week, so I asked why. He told me he had had to revert back to the silver one for one gig, (it was a trumpet he had played for 35 years before acquiring the carbon fibre one), and he enjoyed playing it so much that he hasn’t got back to the very valuable carbon fibre instrument since. The tone on his silver one is really more incisive and I can see why he didn’t want to go back to the “new” one.

Pictures from last week are below.

Thirkle on Flugel Horn

The filing system

Later in the week I will be putting together a poster for our October gigs so do keep an eye open for that.

Before I finish this week’s reminder of Hedsor Jazz I just want to say “thank you” to Helen for her hospitality.

Last Sunday afternoon she hosted at The Hedsor Bar a farewell event for her late husband Michael Weinblatt. It was an event full of music, laughter, spoken tribute, food and drink. It gave us all an opportunity to meet and talk (something more difficult to do sometimes at Hedsor Jazz, where the music takes pride of place over conversations) and reminisce together about Michael.

He was a great supporter of jazz in many places, but he had supported Hedsor Jazz since its inception, was always ready to help whether moving tables and chairs, running the raffle that we used to have, or offering historical comment on the music being played, and generally being a good companion. I have known Michael since the early 1970’s, and there are so many ways that I personally will miss him.

Thank you so much Helen for giving us the opportunity to mark his passing in the way that we did on Sunday.

Below is a photo of Michael taken from the booklet that was available on Sunday.