Spring happenings

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front recently so here’s a few things that have been happening in the past few months:

Wild Flower Sextet – this project has started gigging properly, with a great first performance with the full sextet back in February at 7arts. The brilliant Laura Jurd is now playing trumpet. I’ll put up some videos of this gig soon! We also have more gigs confirmed including:
17/7 – The Lescar, Sheffield
18/7 – Lit and Phil, Newcastle
24/8 – Zeffirellis, Ambleside
23/9 – Jazz at the Fields, Haslingden

Jamie Taylor Quartet ‘Outside Line’ – also in February I played on acclaimed Sheffield-based guitarist Jamie Taylor’s new album as part of his quartet ‘Outside Line’ with Garry Jackson and Dave Walsh. We did it with a great engineer and musician called Sam Hobbs who has worked with a lot of great artists including Matt Bourne and I’m really proud to be on the record – it’s going to be amazing! Upcoming performances include:
24/4 – The Lescar, Sheffield
4/7 – Seven Jazz, Leeds – part of ‘Concert for Colin’ tribute to Colin Watson.

Standard Deviation Quartet – this is a new collective project I’m a part of with Declan Forde (piano), Sam Gardner (drums) and Sam Vicary (bass) playing standard songs. To quote our official description:

The Standard Deviation Quartet is a group committed primarily to playing standard songs. With their highly melodic, song-based approach, they create fresh re-interpretations of the standard repertoire as defined by composers such as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. The quartet initially formed as part of Leeds-based guitarist Jiannis Pavlidis’ group, and after discovering a great chemistry together quickly sought to establish themselves as a band in their own right. They have appeared at many venues across the country (Splinter @ The Bridge, Newcastle; Sela Bar, Leeds) as well as appearing live on BBC Radio Leeds. 

We have some shows coming up including:
5/5 – The Bridge, Newcastle
7/5 – Sela Bar Jazz Jam
24/5 – Heritage Coast Jazz Festival, Staithes

Matt Roberts Quintet: Tribute to Lee Morgan – we have a new Matt Roberts Quintet tour booked in for June. After previous tributes to Miles Davis’ First Great Quintet and Freddie Hubbard, this time we are focusing on hard-bop hero Lee Morgan. Very much looking forward to working with Matt again, tour is below:
6/6 – Sela Bar, Leeds
7/7 – HEART cafe, Leeds
8/7 – Huddersfield Jazz
9/7 – Darlington Jazz

Another exciting thing I’m doing with Matt Roberts is the LCoM Summer School, a week-long intensive jazz course from 28th July – 3rd August at Leeds College of Music. The course includes great tuition from Matt Roberts who has a high profile as a jazz educator and was involved in the summer school last year. More details on their website here: http://www.lcm.ac.uk/courses/Short-Courses/summer-courses/summer-jazz