Hedsor Jazz this Thursday (September 15^th) sees a return of “our” Lester Brown on trumpet alongside saxophonist Mark Aston. They will be “propelled” by our usual rhythm section with Ken McCarthy on keyboard and Martin Hart on drums. As is also usual, we will have a surprise bass player! So why not venture forth and enjoy some fine jazz, all for the cost of a £10 entry, and possibly a little sustenance from the club priced bar.

Last week's session (pictures below from both myself and Geoff Swaffield) came from that fine trombonist Nick Mills who this time had saxophonist  Alam Nathoo alongside him. A superb demonstration of musicianship and jazz. Yes, m and j, both in the same sentence! Once upon a time (another fairy story?) I used to play the trumpet (not very well), and I used to be able to read the dots (those round black things that tell you to go up a bit or down a bit), but the musicianship displayed by all last week was exceptional and left me in awe. All of last week arrangements were provided by Nick Mills, and he handed them round to the guys in the band for each tune. The band then had to sight read them and they did this almost without fault. Even Alam managed to play the harmonies without having read the sheets before! Jaw dropping! In the front line there is nowhere to hide!

Last week of course Thursday was a sad day, the announcement of the Queens passing was only announced about 2 hours before the first music was played. Some people were surprised that we did open that night, but it would have caused chaos if we had tried to cancel with such short a notice. We carried on in the best spirit of the show going on, and I think everyone appreciated this. We don’t plan any future cancellations, our respect for Her Majesty and her long reign is in no way diminished by this. Maybe at some point we will get the band to play “God Save the King”. When I first learnt about jazz that is what was played!

More about Hedsor Jazz next week, but I sadly have to go to a funeral this pm and I am therefore running short on time. Someone else who ran out of time last week was drummer Trevor Tomkins who lost his battle with cancer also on Thursday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Tomkins . A sad loss to British Jazz, and to jazz at The Milford Arms in Isleworth.