Lockerbie Jazz Festival October 20, 2007
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Various venues in and around Lockerbie, October 25th to 28th
The Lockerbie Jazz Festival has only been going a few years, but has quickly developed into one of Scotland’s most interesting festivals. It generally features a wide mix of fairly well known mainstream to modern names, one bigger name with potential to attract people from beyond the core jazz audience, and some interesting young local musicians.
This year is no exception. The big name is Acker Bilk; the local talent is Ben Bryden and Leah Gough Cooper; and there’s a wheen of interesting looking visitors.
One of the most intriguing looking concerts is on Saturday the 27th October, and features a sextet made up of sax players Jesse Davis and Tommy Smith, Oscar Peterson’s regular guitarist Ulf Wakenius, and Brian Kellock’s current international trio, the trendily-monickered BK3. It might work, it might not: the line-up is all the more intriguing because the player’s styles aren’t so distant from each other to suggest it is going to be an obvious mismatch, yet not so similar for there not to be the slight element of risk that they might not gel as a unit. Mind you, some of them are playing together elsewhere at the festival: the same line-up minus the horns will be playing as the Ulf Wakenius Quartet on Saturday lunchtime, and Brian Kellock’s BK3 are go on to play a lunchtime gig of their own on Sunday 28th.
On the Friday night, there’s a choice between Acker Bilk (if that’s your sort of thing), a Jesse Davis quartet gig with Paul Harrison on piano, and the highly entertaining singer Liane Carroll.
The local contribution comes from the Dumfries Youth Jazz Group on Thursday evening, the Ben Bryden Quintet at Saturday teatime, and Leah Gough Cooper’s Quartet on Sunday afternoon.
Full details of the concerts, including those I haven’t mentioned here, are available on the Lockerbie Jazz Festival web site.
Chocolate City (and its Vanilla Suburbs) October 18, 2007
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Maybe it was just the parts of town I saw, but jazz doesn’t make its presence felt in Washington DC in the way it does in Philadelphia.
That’s not to say it’s not there. There were free open-air concerts on near the Metro Center (sic) Metro station, and on the day I was in that part of town, a very good alto-plus-rhythm quartet was playing some fairly uncompromising modern jazz (see picture). I didn’t catch their name beyond the fact that the drummer was the leader. There are also several jazz clubs, with Blues Alley and the two Twins establishments being reasonably well-known, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Overall, Washington DC gave the impression of being a city which was about power and money rather than about any sort of culture. The National Mall was certainly impressive, but any truly civilised society would have removed one of the monuments to white slave-owners and replaced it with a giant statue of DC’s greatest son, Duke Ellington.
The Sound of Philadelphia October 10, 2007
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I’m recently back from holiday, my first trip to the USA, birthplace of jazz.
I had to hang around Philadelphia airport to change flights. There was a small stage set up at one end of the food court, and while I was sitting trying to work my way through a “regular” smoothie – a swimming pool with a straw in it, basically – a band came on stage and proceeded to play. A jazz group. The Freedom Jazz Quartet, who despite the name didn’t play free jazz but hard boppish jazz standards. Hanging around in an airport is never my idea of fun, but it’s a lot less dull when there’s a decent tenor player getting stuck into some Monk tunes.
Philadelphia takes its music seriously: there’s a Musicians’ Walk of Fame in the city centre, with plaques commemorating a host of musicians with Philadelphia connections. 
Among the jazz musicians were Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, the Heath Brothers, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and the Brecker Brothers. I didn’t see one for Philly Joe Jones, but I assume I just wasn’t looking hard enough. But why did Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath have to share a plaque, when Michael and Randy Brecker (or for that matter Darryl Hall and John Oates) got one each? The same street includes the Kimmell Center home of the Philadelphia Orchestra and, directly across the road from it, Gamble and Huff’s Philly International Records Studio.
It was possible to take a Philadelphia Historic African-American Trust (PHAAT, geddit) tour which included a visit to John Coltrane’s house, but I didn’t have time to do it. After Trane’s death it was apparently owned by his cousin Mary (after whom the tune is named), and after her death a few years back got placed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
I did manage a trip to Chris’s Jazz BarCafé to hear Kenny Werner playing in a trio with the fine young Philadelphia drummer Ari Hoenig, and bassist Johannes Weidenmueller. They were supported by a fine local quartet, lead by a particularly good young alto player called, I think, Dave Powell. The concert was organised differently to any I’ve been at in the UK or Europe it was very much a club, with eating and drinking seeming to play an important role in the evening’s proceedings (including some particularly tasty and particularly potent beers from microbreweries). There were two sets, one at 8.00 pm and one at 10.00 (the one I was at), and the support band came on after the main act and played until closing time. I don’t know if this is normal US practice, or just how they did things at that particular venue. There’s at least one other serious jazz venue in Philadelphia, Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus, which Rashied Ali (another Philly guy) seems to have some involvement with.
