Scumbles

Gina Southgate and The People Band The Vortex London, UK May 11, 2013 On a Saturday evening in the heart of Dalston, East London, The People Band once again graced The Vortex with its free form and improvised style of jazz. As the group played, artist Gina Southgate, with the help of a ...

The People Band Café Oto London, UK March 6, 2013 Café Oto, Dalston, London was the setting for a performance by legendary free form group, The People Band. Formed in the 1960s and led by drummer Terry Day and pianist/multi-instrumentalist Mel Davis, the group has played on and off right through to the ...

Late at night while walking recently through Covent Garden, London, I was stopped in my tracks by the sweetest voice I had heard in a long while. Signaling my friend, we set off to find the source. All we could see was a crowd of dancing people but we managed to squeeze in and found the ...

It is a funny thing but when you are young, you expect things to be short- lived and to fade almost as quickly as they become popular, like the crazes of deely boppers, leg warmers and clackers, which at the time, were must-haves. It was the same with music--the teenage idols in the '70s were The ...

Jazz has influenced many other genres of music and, likewise, many other genres have influenced jazz from its very beginning. What is really exciting about the scene at the moment is just how much enrichment it is getting from the rest of the world. It works both ways, of course; jazz musicians from countries which have, ...

Courtney Pine Suffolk, UK September 20, 2012 Courtney Pine is not so much a musician as an experience. The event was the opening night of the Ipswich Music Festival and the venue was the grand hall of Ipswich High School-grander than most school halls granted but not the sort of venue Pine would normally ...

The People Band Vortex Outdoor The Vortex London, England September 22, 2012 The Vortex Club in Dalston, north London, recently celebrated 25 years as a jazz venue. For a quarter of a century, first in Stoke Newington and later Dalston, The Vortex has offered jazz of all genres to the world. ...

There are just a few bands that can fill a jazz venue as easily as they fill one more used to contemporary pop music, and it seems right to acknowledge one of the best jazz-influenced, long-lived and popular groups from the late '70s to the present day, The Blockheads. This band filled Ronnie Scott's and The ...

Scumbling is a process in art whereby the artist experiments with glaze or other medium. The reason I chose it as the name for this column was that it allows me to include many topics related to jazz. One of those is writing. Many people are put off writing about music because they either think they ...

Andy Sheppard is pleased to be back; not back, as in making a return to music--he has never left--but back in Suffolk and, more particularly, back in Snape. Snape was where Trio Libero--consisting of French double bassist Michel Benita, drummer Sebastian Rochford and saxophonist Sheppard--was born. The trio released its self-titled debut earlier in 2012 on ...

Italy is steeped in culture. It has been the seat of awesome and terrible power and fallen into deep poverty; it is the country which saw the expansion of arts, opera and composition. Theories of the origins of the Universe have been developed by its scholars and its architecture shows the influence of many different hands, ...

Saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard was asked, a couple of years ago, to come up with an idea for the 200th anniversary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In particular, Bristol City Council wanted an event to start fundraising for lights for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Being a saxophonist, Sheppard suggested 200 saxophones somehow get together in one ...