For now, anyway…
I’m not going to do a complete run-down beacuse I reckon the jazz-starved masses of Bristol will find their way to live music now it’s happening again. But just to note that the number of venues who have made suitable arrangements is growing.
As well as the Widcombe Social Club in Bath (Pee Wee Ellis and Jason Rebello next week) and Lakota (outdoors there), there are some indoors gigs coming up at St Georges. And the Bebop club has cannily relocated for now to the Hen and Chicken in Southville, on Thursdays.
That’s probably a good template for what we can hope for as the pandemic drags on – small(ish) gigs in large rooms that permit social distancing. The upstairs room there is pretty big, and there’ll be a separate entrance for the gigs which, for now, are:
Andy Hague’s Double Standards Special Edition – 29 Oct
Steve Banks Quintet 5 Nov
Hopkins-Hammond Trio plus Gary Alesbrook 12 Nov
Martin Kern with Jim Blomfield Trio 19 Nov
Advance booking is required, but there’ll be refunds if anything gets cancelled because the universities have now destroyed our previous nice low regional case rate. Really hope these go well. I know there have been many great nights at the Bear – I’ve heard a few – but to be honest it’s not a venue I’ll miss…
It may even turn out that the relatively modest crowds that jazzers are accustomed to are easier to accommodate in this strange new world than some other kinds of music that are, y’know, more fashionable. At this rate there’ll be enough gigs soon to require a weekly listing again, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Oh, and if you missed the last gig at Widcombe, it was livestreamed and now lives on Youtube.
It felt very comfortable in the room, too, though, so I recommend going for the live show, then watching again!
