Good afternoon everyone

A late posting, but a reminder none the less that we have another Hedsor jazz session tomorrow, Thursday, at 8.30pm

It is always difficult after Christmas and New Year to get back into ones regular pattern (no, nothing to do with AllBran!), and even more difficult with this years pernicious cold virus doing the rounds. Hopefully I will be over mine enough to actually get to Hedsor myself tomorrow.

One does miss the friendships as well as the music. The missed pint of Rebellion also needs catching up with!

Tomorrow should be the regular Clive Burton Quintet, so don't forget to get your requests ready, you know how Clive always like to get them, (and likes it even more after he has forgotten to play them!).

The only commercial jazz recording I have listened to this past few weeks (I have tried to catch up with some classical orchestral recordings over the holiday period, and also some unpublished recordings by the Alex Welsh Band I was prompted to revisit after Roy Williams session with us at Christmas), but one jazz issue that I know Alex would have loved has come my way.

It is simply called "BIX" and is by the band "Echoes of Swing". 

This is a double album, and very bravely they have put some original Bix (Beiderbecke of course) recordings on a disk to accompany their version of his music. I will hasten to add that they have not copied the arrangements at all, but have brought new thinking to the familiar tunes, and it is VERY GOOD new thinking. 

There are 14 tunes newly recorded by "Echoes" and 10 beautifully remastered recordings from Bix from the 1920's. The old recordings have come up beautifully, and I have heard worse recorded sound from British 1950's Trad recordings (one in particular I can remember, a recording of Cy Laurie's band recorded in mono from a microphone hung from a club ceiling, actually issued on LP "to bring you all the atmosphere of a live club session"!).

Echoes of Swing themselves are Bernd Lhotzky piano, Chris Hopkins alto sax, Colin T Dawson cornet and Oliver Mewes drums. They are augmented by other guests including Australian Shannon Barnett on trombone and vocals. And she can really play the trombone!! 

It can all be found on the ACT label as 2 CD-Set 9826-2, BUT saxophone purists may well hate it, for their is, on some of the tracks, a c-melody saxophone!! Now I wonder if our regular sax section has got one of them!! 

Maybe tomorrow we will find out.

TTFN

Geoff C