Review roundup – Cheltenham and more

Haven’t had time to write here last few weeks, so here’s a link roundup to reviews of some of the excellent gigs we’ve heard.

Tony Benjamin’s take on Saturday at Cheltenham

Peter Bacon writing about Mike Gibbs and Gary Burton the day after.

Mary James’ reflections on Cheltenham

And Mike Collins was there too.

Mike also caught the terrific gig from The Bad Plus at Colston Hall last Saturday.

So did Tony Benjamin, who was equally enthusiastic.

And slightly further back, Charley Dunlap filed a nice piece about the John Law/Alex Hutton double trio gig at Chapel Arts in Bath

So we’ve had an outpouring of good writing as well as good music. Ready for a breather now, but the Basquiat Strings/Oriole date at St George’s next Thursday looks enticing. Basquiat’s new CD collected a rave review from John Fordham a couple of weeks ago, and Oriole seem to make friends wherever they go so hard to resist that one!

Kit Downes quintet – Colston Hall, May 9th

I first heard Kit Downes‘ regular trio augmented with sax/clarinet (James Allsopp) and cello (Lucy Railton) on the free stage at the London Jazz Festival (a couple of years ago now, was it) and was immediately intrigued. The way the cello and Allsopp’s reeds – frequently bass clarinet – blended and their fit with the ringing, minor-heavy sound Downes often favours at the keys was quite delicious.

It still is, and this date on a tour to promote the quintet’s very fine new CD showed how the expanded group has developed, filling out the trio sound and offering a vehicle for some splendid new Downes compositions. Skip James, the set closer, it still a slow-burning meditative marvel, Jan Johansson, which is placed last on the new CD as Skip James closed its predecessor, has a similar feel but is more restful over the long haul. Bleydays, a tribute to Paul Bley, is a distinctive, twisty theme which sounds as if it would meet that grouchy improviser’s approval.

Absorbing stuff throughout, and genuinely stirring at its best moments. Which isn’t to say this was an entirely satisfactory gig. Not just because the sunshine of a memorable weekend in Cheltenham was gone, on a gale-swept, damp Bristol Thursday. We missed the supporting set from Lund because…  well, lets just say we arrived late. They had about an hour it seemed, so after an interval Downe’s crew began a little before 9.30 and were done by 10.15, which seemed a slight shame for the main attraction. The substitute drummer who appeared with the quintet – didn’t catch the name – fitted in well enough but you’d have to say that regular James Maddren is so right for the band (any band) that he’s bound to be missed. Add two lots of people chatting away blithely just behind us, even though the quintet were playing acoustically, and it wasn’t quite the ideal evening.

Also annoying, I must say, is Colston Hall’s hilariously daft new policy of charging an “admin fee” to buy tickets – even if you turn up and pay cash at the box office. It is something to do with regulations about credit card charges, apparently. No, makes no sense to me, either. Note to Bristol Music Trust: we know you incur costs running a nice concert hall. My understanding is that if you run a business these are called “overheads”, and you account for them accordingly. Singling out one overhead in this way just makes us feel insulted. I look forward to paying the lighting levy and the lavatory charge at future gigs. It’s all a great way to piss off your punters before the gig has even begun. That Ryanair effect.

None of which should detract from the further progress of the estimable Downes toward realising his obvious destiny as a major figure as keyboard player, composer and bandleader. If you are reading this from a Westerly direction, you should definitely catch the quintet in Cardiff tomorrow at the Royal College. I don’t know the venue, but it is almost bound to be less irritating…

Overwhelmed with riches – Cheltenham, Saturday

We seem to be in one of those spells when geography and the calendar come together to make a space where every gig is golden. After hearing Quercus (sublime) and Marius Neset (of whom more below) a week apart at St George’s, we had plenty to reflect on. But Cheltenham beckoned with one of the strongest programme for years. And the three perfomances we caught yesterday were all quite wonderful. Some days it feels almost greedy to hear so much great music…  Almost.

First up, trumpet maestro Dave Douglas in the jazz arena, with the wind flapping the canvas like a clipper ship, and the odd siren – which happily seemed to be in the right key. Neither bothered his superbly accomplished band, with Donny McCaslin on sax making a welcome return to Cheltenham to reproduce the front line from the Douglas quintet’s memorable show in 2009 – rather than John Irabagon who joins Douglas on his two latest recordings.

This time, though, we had the phenomenal Linda Oh on bass and a singer – Heather Masse – presenting some of the hymns and folk songs on Douglas’s “Be Still” set, although the best of all was perhaps a song whose title I didn’t catch which was a new offering. It was solidly in the folk story-telling tradition, and combined a traditional ballad feel with some great soloing – imagine Fairport Convention with the personnel transformed into jazz virtuosi and you’d be close. An altogether fine show.

The time for an annual catch-up with Cheltenham friends (hi Nick, even though you think blogs are rubbish) before Sons of Kemet in the Parabola. Shabaka Hutchings’ little band has two fine drummers – Seb Rochford and Tom Skinner – telepathically linked, and evoking a deep African dance/trance feel. The astonishing Oren Marshall dances on his feet while punching out tuba lines which interweave with Hutchings’ sax and clarinet figures – the clarinet particularly affecting. The general effect is mesmerising, the drums providing a rolling rhythmic river, as they do in Joe Lovano’s two drummer quintet but with the paired percussion more in lockstep here than playing for contrast as they do in Lovano’s concept. In some bands the others would float over rhythm like this, but Marshall and Hutchings are both deep in the swim, with the inherently blurry sound of the tuba, even when played with his athletic precision, smoothing out the choppiness of a two drummer sound rather pleasingly. The single horn at the top exposes the sax and clarinet vividly, and the leader rose to this well, keeping us absorbed for a generous hour’s set. A band to revisit in a year or so to see how they have developed, but already a very satisfying musical offering. I fancy them in a double bill with Dhakla, whose riffier approach would complement Sons of Kemet’s more stretched out concept beautifully.

Finally, saving the best ’til last, back to the Parabola for the Edition Quartet. The unostentatious name, from the record label, denotes the combination of two remarkable duos already seen live – Dave Stapleton and Neil Yates on piano/trumpet and Marius Neset and Daniel Herskedal on sax/tuba. A relief, incidentally, to hear Neil Yates back in action after his accident at St Georges earlier this year, when he finished the gig after making hard contact with the gallery timbers, but had a seriously compromised embouchure afterwards.

This is an inspired foursome who delivered a spellbinding 90 minutes. Stapleton presided unobtrusively, and furnished several pieces from his Flight suite, Herskedal and Yates were matching marvels on their high and low horns, and Neset was simply heart-rending. He was recognisably the same player who presented a set at St George’s with the kind of scalding intensity that has people talking of what it must have been like to hear Charlie Parker  - and, said the buzz, in Cheltenham the night before. But the music he plays with Herskedal and Stapledon brings out his lyrical side, wringing the emotion from every phrase of a ballad, evoking folk dance, pastoral landscapes and the beauty of emotion recollected in tranquillity more than fired in the heat of the moment. And yet, the intensity is still there, and while he is playing you simply cannot take your eyes off the man with the saxophone. Different music: the same total commitment. For all the several beauties of this gig, I felt wrung out afterwards, in the best possible way. A good day.

Did I say greedy? Well, maybe a little. We’re off back up the road today to hear the great Michael Gibbs and then Gary Burton, who I have been listening to since approximately forever. There are still tickets left for both for any late deciders…

Coming up – Marius Neset, St George’s, May 2

There is so much stuff to read/watch/hear that saying anything is unmissable nowadays is asinine – but this one is as close as it gets. There are plenty of virtuoso saxophone players – though Neset is obviously already one of the best. There are fewer striking jazz composers, and he’s one of those, too (with a distinct, and distinctly welcome Django Bates influence). His career is already ascending, and I wouldn’t expect him to visit Bristol so often in years to come -he’s already debuted at Colston 2 and played St George’s in duet with Daniel Herskedal and in Dave Stapledon’s double quartet.

Those were both memorable evenings, so the chance to hear him there with his own quartet, playing material from his really very good new recording is to be relished. My twitter timeline has already seen plenty of comments to the effect that he is on amazing form on this tour. St George’s, as usual, being the ideal venue (as June Tabor et al’s truly wonderful sets last week confirmed yet again) everything points to a superb gig. Really, if you only go to one jazz thing this half of the year, this would be the one.

Failing that, you can catch then in Cheltenham the day after, where the Jazz Festival will be building up to its too-many-good-things-to-choose weekend. We’ve chosen Dave Douglas, Mike Gibbs, Gary Burton, Sons of Kemet and the Edition Quartet featuring… Marius Neset, this  time with Herskedal, Stapledon and Neil Yates. Intriguing combination. There’s far too much else on in Cheltenham to avoid missing really good things, so the “nothing is really unmissable rule” has been invoked again as a sanity/wallet saver on Saturday and Sunday.

World Service Project – tonight

Having signed off the last post with hopes for audiences for all the gigs on offer, looks like the last one I mentioned needs a bit of a boost. Ian Storror just tweeted that the World Service Project date at the Hen and Chicken in Southville is now “pay what you want”.

They’re a great band – well worth catching – so this is a pretty enticing offer to round of your weekend.

More details here.

And latest announcement:

MASSIVE OFFER:Pay what you want? WORLD SERVICE PROJECT Bristol tonight! Need an audience for Hi-Energy-Punk/Jazz lads
Was going to cancel gig through lack of advanced bookings but the guys are really up for it. They may be busking for a crowd in Bristol Docks this afternoon. Above and beyond the call.
Extra-ordinary assault on your senses with this powerhouse JAZZ/Punk/Funk outfit, well worth a listen, come down to the Hen & Chicken tonight from 8pm.

Coming up, John Law, Alex Hutton: two piano trios in Bath – and more!

Basic policy here is to point to John Law for gig of the week whenever he’s playing somewhere in reach of Bristol. Here’s why.

This time, the gig is extra-special as there are two trios for the price of one. As Law says,

It’s a double bill entitled The Contemporary British Jazz Piano Trio and will feature my trio and that of young, exciting pianist Alex Hutton. Both of us happen to use the same rhythm section of Yuri Goloubev (astonishing Russian bass virtuoso) and Asaf Sirkis (my sensational Israeli drummer I’ve played with now for nine years), so it’s a chance to contrast and compare two different, yet similar trios.

Sounds enticing. The gig is at Chapel Arts Centre in Bath on Weds 24th, and advance tickets, astonishingly, are only 8 quid. Box office here.

Having said which…  After what has seemed like a bit of a lull, music is breaking out all over in the next few days/weeks – it must be Spring or something. If you can’t make it to Bath, Alex Hutton‘s trio have another date on their tour at the BeBop Club (which hasn’t had big crowds lately, apparently) on Friday, the Pushy Doctors are at The Fringe, Clifton on Thursday, although I’ll be going to St George’s to marvel again at June Tabor, this time with Huw Warrern and Iain Ballamy in Quercus – really looking forward to that one! – there’s a remarkable line-up of improvisers at Colston Hall on Saturday for Mopomoso, and the World Service Project are playing for Ian (Jazz at the Albert) Storror at the Hen and Chicken on Sunday. (Pause for breath – see the venue links list on the right for details of all these). Then St George’s have another more or less compulsory gig on Thursday May 2, with Marius Neset, and the Cheltenham Festival gets under way at the same time (Dave Douglas, Gary Burton, Mike Gibbs, Ravi Coltrane, and many more…). It will be hard to keep up, and we won’t manage it, but hope all these great gigs find their audience!

Coming Up – Bruno Heinen sextet, The Cube, Sat April 6

The Cube doesn’t do jazzy things that often, but they are invariably intriguing ones when they do. I’ve not come across Bruno Heinen before, but he’s bringing a quality band. The press material says this -

Pianist and arranger, Bruno Heinen was knee-deep in Stockhausen from an early age. The luminous presence of wind-up music boxes from his childhood are at the heart of his exquisite arrangements of Tierkreis.  

Both Bruno’s parents – cellist Ulrich Heinen and violinist Jacqueline Ross – had worked with the composer & electronic music innovator Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 70′s in Germany when he composed Tierkreis (1974-5) for 12 music boxes.  Bruno’s father had acquired 4 of the music boxes, and Bruno’s fascination with the piece began in the family home.   A 5^th was recently presented to Bruno for his birthday in late December – appropriately the Aquarius box – and he returned to the studio in January this year to lay it into this recording.

Tierkreis (meaning “the signs of the Zodiac”) has 12 melodies based on tone rows, one for each star sign.  Heinen has adhered to Stockhausen’s brief instructions for the popular work, allowing for any combination of instruments, but that the performance should begin with the melody falling under the star sign of the selected date, and end with a repeat of the opening melody.  Heinen’s recording in April, begins and ends with Aires, and on which the music box has a particularly vivid presence.

Heinen brings his classical training and jazz sensibility, with traces of funk, west coast flavour and Blue Note inflexions, to his substantial reworking of the composer’s ideas. Certain movements include improvising with the melodies and music boxes, while others involve re-harmonising.  His sextet of distinctive players bring their diverse experience to their readings and improvisations.

Stockhausen was a great believer in improvisation, and his influence rubbed off on a wide array of jazz musicians during his lifetime and since, including Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor and Herbie Hancock.

It’s five years since Heinen first arranged Tierkreis  for a jazz sextet, but in 2010 he also arranged the work rather differently for cello, double bass and piano for a performance that also included his father Ulrich Heinen, the long time principal cellist of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Tierkreis recorded with Markus Stockhausen’s blessing, in April 2012 at Eastcote Studios, was produced by Philip Bagenal and Bruno Heinen. Another gem in Babel label’s commitment to experiment and excellence, the album is dedicated to Heinen’s former teacher, the pianist and composer, Pete Saberton, who died in 2012.

And here’s the band, starting with him again -

A former classical piano student at the Royal College of Music, Bruno Heinen continued his studies with a Masters in jazz performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, taught there by John Taylor, and where he now teaches Jazz Harmony to Guildhall’s classical students. He has collaborated with many leading lights of the UK scene extensively since, including Julian Siegel, who guested on Heinen’s Dialogues Trio release Twinkle Twinkle released by Babel in 2012.  Bruno leads both his trio and the sextet, and performs with Palestinian Singer Reem Kelani.  As a composer, Bruno has written for groups ranging from sextet to two pianos and percussion, and from big band to classical string trio. He also leads the King Alfred School big band, and recently led them to win the Music For Youth Competition with his arrangements.

London-based Italian trumpeter Fulvio Sigurtà jazz training has included study at Berklee in Boston, and a Masters at the Guildhall School of Music in London. With the Guildhall Big Band he appeared on Pure and Simple, an album that featured John Taylor.

Tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger is best known for his electronica-leaning post-jazz band Ma, and Dice Factory, who debuted in 2012. Challenger became involved in improvisation while still at school, and later gained a first class honours degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Bass clarinettist James Allsopp won a BBC Jazz Award for innovation in 2008, recognition in part for his groundbreaking band Fraud. More recently he has led his band The Golden Age of Steam, whose debut Raspberry Tongue was released by Babel in 2010, followed by Welcome to Bat Country” on Basho.

Andrea Di Biase studied double bass at the Milan Conservatoire, and continued with postgraduate studies in jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He leads the Oltremare quartet releasing debut album Uncommon Nonsense in 2011 on Babel, and is a member of the Dialogues trio.

Drummer Jon Scott is also a member of Dice Factory, the Oltremare quartet and Dialogues trio, and is best known for his work with the MOBO-winning Kairos 4tet.

Can’t go, as I’ll be in London, but wish I could…

Andy Sheppard/Denny Illett, Fringe Jazz

Haven’t got up to Clifton much for the consistently excellent Thursday night programming at the very nice, small-but-perfectly-formed club in the back room of the Fringe. But last week’s offering was too good to miss – a chance to hear Bristol stalwart Andy Sheppard playing with Denny Illett, along with Daisy Palmer on drums and Percy Pursglove on bass.

Three of them had rehearsed, we gathered, with Palmer stuck on the motorway at the time. And the two in the front line certainly tore up the unison lines, starting with a tricky Ornette Coleman blues (they didn’t call any tunes, so relying on memory here to ID who wrote what). Interesting to hear Sheppard, who stuck with his tenor all evening, playing in Ornette’s zone – which he did very well. Then the first of three (I think) pieces from the repertoire of the old John Scofield/Joe Lovano quartet. These sounded great, with the duo a good match for the sound of the originals. Sheppard has his own identifiable sound, but reminds one of Lovano at times, and Illett isn’t as gnarly as Scofield but has obviously studied him closely.

What else? An arrangement of Petite Fleur as a first set closer, and Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat to open the second half were both excellent. Palmer fitted in effortlessly, and Pursglove is a monstrously good bass player. He also plays superb trumpet, soloing on one number with one arm crooked nonchalantly round the bass, while another bassist – whose name I didn’t catch – took up the big fiddle on another so we suddenly had a quintet.

This is really a rich brew to be able to sample for eight quid in a small room in Clifton. Sheppard said in his Q&A at the Jazz Festival what a pleasure it is to play here – where all he has to do to go to work is walk down the street. He seems to be there most weeks when he’s not on tour. Lucky us!

P.S. also hearing good things about the new free (musically, but also free of charge) sessions at the same venue on Monday nights – to be sampled soon. Their whole programme is up at the website listed right, with the excellent Dave Newton featuring on Thursday next week.

The Bristol jazz scene – reposted

This ramble about what makes for a good jazz scene in Bristol has been up on the LondonJazzNews site for a while – it was written in the run up to the jazz festival. There are some comments there, too, but I’m putting it up again here ‘cos makes it easier for me to find it again, just in case I want to remind myself what I said quickly one day…

And by the way, the point is to list a few features of the milieu, not name all the names – a healthy scene has more than you can mention if you are writing a blog post rather than an encyclopedia entry

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Bristol’s first international Jazz and Blues Festival (March 1-3) is going to span an impressive range of music over two-and-a-bit days. Also impressive, I think, is the number of sets on offer from musicians based in and around the city. In various combinations, they make up more than a dozen different bands who will be fitting in sets in the Colston Hall’s splendid new landmark foyer as well as in the main concert spaces.What makes for a thriving jazz scene like this? I’ve wondered since I fetched up in Bristol from London a bit over five years ago. OK, I knew that there was jazz outside the capital, in theory. But I was worried there wouldn’t be enough good stuff. Surely, just as US jazz players gravitate toward New York, the good ones in the UK make the trek to London?I quickly learnt it ain’t so. Bristol keeps on coming up with things I really want to hear. I should have expected that in a city of nearly half a million. But perhaps there’s more to it than that. I’ve a strong impression there’s as much going on here as in much bigger conurbations like Birmingham or Manchester. Is it something in the water? No, growing a nicely working jazz scene seems to need something like this:

- A pool of good musicians. But not too many. When everyone knows everyone else, new combinations arise naturally. That’s always happened in jazz, and you can see it happening here all the time. So Dan Moore plays with Andy Sheppard’strio for local pub gigs, The Pushy Doctors, with young alto sax star James Mortonin Pork Chop, as well as joining singer Yolanda Quartey in country/soul fusion outfit Phantom Limb. The Festival’s artistic director Denny Illet also plays funk with Morton, pops up again in jazz/cabaret outfit Moscow Drug Club, and has his own trio. Trumpeter Pete Judge is half the horn section in avant rock/jazz favourites Get the Blessing, but can also be heard playing wistfully beautiful acoustic tunes (and lots of other instruments) in Three Cane Whale in the free-spirited duo with drummer Pete Wigens, Eyebrow,and weaving dancing lines into the horn tapestry of Dakhla.

- Reliable rhythm sections. Bassists, pianists, drummers get to play with more people on the whole, so a few key players make a huge contribution to keeping a scene ticking over. Many bands rely on the drum skills of Mark Whitlam, and the keys of the country’s best undiscovered piano player, Jim Blomfield. Bass player about town Will Harris is probably the busiest of all, playing in two or three bands alongside Emily Wright, appearing regularly with trumpeter Andy Hague’s quintet, and popping up with any number of bands at the weekly sessions at the bebop club down in Hotwells. Which brings us to…

- Organisers. Andy Hague, as well as leading a long-running, all-star boppish quintet has run the bebop club for many years, and frequently convenes ad hoc ensembles to play new arrangements he has worked up from the many jazz composers whose work he loves and knows inside out. Jim Barr, bassist with Get the Blessing and the (slightly more famous) Portishead has his own studio, which helps get recordings organised, too.

- Venues, and plenty of them. A few have gone on long enough to be heard of out of town, like the aforementioned bebop club at the Bear in Hotwells or the Old Duke in the city centre. But there is hardly a pub, bar or café that hasn’t tried the odd jazz night. I’ve seen good music in at least eight venues I can walk to from my house. There’s certainly no lack of places to try out your new band on a live audience.

- Regular new blood. Infusion in Bristol comes on occasion from Dartington in Devon, and from an excellent jazz course at the Royal Welsh College of Music across the Severn in Cardiff. Some Bristolians like up and coming vocalist Emily Wright (Moonlight Saving Time) finish their musical education there. Other players, like recent Cardiff graduate Dan Messore shift to Bristol because it means they can still keep links forged in Wales, play around the South West, but also make a date in London when they come up. Because…

- It’s not London, but not so far away. Plenty of Bristolians stay in close touch with the local scene while studying in London (young sax exponents James Gardiner-Bateman and Josh Arcoleo come to mind). Others, like the superbly gifted trumpeter Nick Malcolm take the London plunge but keep coming back here to play (in Moonlight Saving Time again).

- Mentors. As well as the newcomers, a healthy scene needs its inspiring elders. Bristol, of course, has one bona-fide international jazz star in Andy Sheppard, who plays regularly in the city when not on tour. He has taken a close interest in James Morton’s career. Josh Arcoleo got his early tips from Frome resident and sax legendPee Wee Ellis. It’s another fine jazz tradition. You learn from more experienced players: you pass it on. Iain Ballamy, Jason Rebello, and the great Keith Tippettall live in the South West as well.

- Add all that up, and stir in a little Kevin Figes (saxes), guitarists Jerry Crozier-Cole and Adrian Utley, and keyboard player Mike Willox (a London refugee, plays with everyone),and you account for a very healthy proportion of the festival. That’s a pretty healthy scene.

- Oh, and it needs one more thing: someone to tell everyone what all these people are up to that’s good, and where to find them playing. That would be Tony Benjamin, Festival trustee, jazz reviewer for the former Venue magazine, and now for theVenue website and the Bristol Post. Tony had a fine 60th birthday party a couple of months back. Who turned out to play? Just Moonlight Saving Time. AndSmith and Willox. And Sheelanagig. And Get the Blessing. And an 11-piece Afro-Jazz big band to finish. It was the best possible showcase for a city bursting with jazz talent. All it lacked was an after hours jam session. But the Festival is putting that right, with three of them running after the main evening gigs. I’ll be there, hoping to spot the our best local players discovering the germ of a new idea, or a new band, somewhere Round about midnight…

Local heroes: Jim Blomfield Trio, BeBop Club, March 22

Bristol has a splendid jazz scene, as I’ve gone on about at length elsewhere - a scene in the sense that there is a pool of excellent players who combine and recombine in lots of different ensembles.

A jazz obsessive enthusiast gets used to some faces. You know that if Jim Blomfield is at the keyboard- in Andy Hague’s quintet, Kevin Figes’ Quartet, at one of the rare sightings of the Resonation Big Band, or a bunch of other bands – it’s in safe hands.

Too easy, maybe, to take that for granted. So it was a treat to hear him leading his own trio, and have a full evening’s reminder what a very good player he is.

Two sets at the BeBop club, with a well-rehearsed Mark Whitlam on drums and Roshan “Tosh” Wijetunge on bass, covered an impressive range. There was a Wayne Shorter tune, a Mingus piece, a Schumann arrangement, and a big helping of his own compositions. Like Brad Mehldau, he has a well-developed classical technique, but he also returns often to latin grooves, draws heavily on bop, and (on Pier Pressure) rock.

The Schumann intermezzo turned into a ballad, and there were some nice contemplative moments on another Blomfield composition, Now and Zen, “looking for a quiet place amid the chaos”, as he put it. The more typical Blomfield solo, though, has a nice, bustling urgency, a mood echoed by the drummer, with occasional pauses to savour a simpler figure or a couple of chords soon giving way to a renewed flow of notes. There’s  an appealing swagger about quite a few of his tunes (Return of the Easton Walk) and a touch of dry humour (it’s the walk you adopt in Easton to reduce the chance of getting mugged, apparently). It’s a good combination. And the closer, a bluesy swinger “dedicated to Saturday night” whose title I didn’t catch, put new heart into a decent BeBop club crowd who had come down on the most dismal Friday night of the year so far. First day of Spring – ha!

Music like this, happily, confers immunity to weather. Couldn’t take it home because the trio CD which features many of these tunes wasn’t quite ready – seem to have heard that before on these premises this year. It’ll be well worth getting hold of when it is available though.If  in Bristol, you’re in luck, because it will be easy to hear Jim playing again and pick up a copy. If not, I think it will bring this particular local treasure some national attention. It really should. (Samples here, for now. Do have a listen.)