Jazz from Geoff, THE BLOG, you will appreciate, is late this week.

Late is becoming the new normal.  It is very sad to say BUT with no gig at Hedsor to advertise for the last few months, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find things to write about. No photos to colour the page with either, so this week I was really casting around for things to lift our spirits.

In a way, I have failed. One of the things this corona virus period has given us though is time at home, and I have been playing things from my collection that maybe I haven’t played in a while. In doing that this week I came a cross a recording, made at Hedsor, that you won’t have!!

Back in 2008 I ran a series of monthly Monday jazz events in the bar at Hedsor (in its scruffier days) that were concentrated on jazz led by guitar. In this I had the help of, amongst others, guitarist James Fenn. 

It was James who introduced me to Vasilis Xenopoulos, and on May 19^th 2008 Vasilis came with a Greek friend called Dimitri. Now, I don’t know his second name, and it was whilst trying to find who it might be that I came across Dimitri Vassilakis on you tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udNJCRSABvw

Do take a look and a listen, as you will find a 20 minute exploration of the structure of jazz, which is quite fun, but sadly hasn’t got enough real musical content. It IS however very well done. I will try and find more from this musician, as he sounds pretty good, and comes across well as an educator.

I don’t think that this was the Dimitri who came to Hedsor in 2008. But that session in 2008 was recorded by me onto a mini disk, and I saved the music onto CD. Playing it this week, I realise that over the years those of us who were at Hedsor Jazz in its early years had some excellent jazz to listen to. I am taking a risk now, as I am going to put those recordings into DropBox without asking permission of the players, but will take it down if they really object. I don’t think they need to be bashful of the content, as it is all pretty good jazz. James Fenn on guitar, Lisa Amato on bass guitar, Nick Maragoni on drums, Vasilis Xenopoulos on Tenor sax, and the aforementioned Dimitri on alto sax. Like I said, no photos, and no cd cover, but if you want to have a listen go to

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eoadexsaqz1se3s/AACcNnGwUs_CJSAh5bC0TgVKa?dl=0

Were YOU there? 

Do make comment via octogeoff@outlook.com

My memories of that bar were the long settle seats. You really did settle in to the ground when you sat down, but at least all the seats in the bar were comfortable enough to sit on (or even in) without bringing your own cushion!

The photo below was taken in the bar in 2011, but the décor and the seating were the same, if not the band!!

I'm sure you can name all of these!!