It’s Wayne Shorter’s 80th birthday this Sunday the 25th August. As he tirelessly celebrates with concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and the Blue Note Jazz Festival, we’ll be marking the event with a Wild Flower show at Zeffirellis, Ambleside this Saturday the 24th.

Details here: http://www.zeffirellis.com/livemusic/event/wild-flower-quartet.

We had a great time playing at the Lit and Phil, Newcastle with the Wild Flower Quintet featuring Laura Jurd last month.

Thanks to Russell from the bebop spoken here blog who gave us a great review, available online here: http://lance-bebopspokenhere.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/wild-flower-quintet-lit-and-phil-july-18.html

I’m also very grateful to photographer Ken Drew who managed to capture these images of the gig:

I’m excited to start working with Sam Gardner again after he has joined the Wild Flower project in the place of Dave Walsh. It will be a real shame to see Dave go after some amazing gigs that we’ve done together, but luckily I’ll still get to play with him in Jamie Taylor’s Quartet. Sam and Sam Vicary already play together a lot as a popular drum and bass team for lots of jazz artists based or appearing in Leeds, such as recently Tim Whitehead, Krzysztof Urbanski and Jiannis Pavlidis, and they also play and record together in ambient hip-hop band Ikestra.

A few new shows announced for the band:

24th Oct – Matt n’ Phreds, Manchester (Quartet)
15th Jan – Scarborough Jazz (Quintet)
17th Jan – Wakefield Jazz (Sextet)

Also we are fast approaching our dates at The Lescar, Sheffield (17 July) and the Lit and Phil, Newcastle (18 July) – Dave is doing these final two gigs with the band and we’ll be joined by Richard Iles in Sheffield and Laura Jurd in Newcastle. Can’t wait!

Jazz Yorkshire is offering a £200 bursary to under-26’s who would like to participate in the Leeds College of Music Summer School. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, get in touch with Kate Tanner at the college – k.tanner@lcm.ac.uk.

More details about the Summer School (which I’m teaching on alongside Matt Roberts) here: http://www.lcm.ac.uk/courses/Short-Courses/summer-courses/summer-jazz

Robert Laing at Splinter at The Bridge, Newcastle, has very kindly made us these two HD-quality videos of our gig there on the 5th May. The sound and video are really good quality so it’s great to have these up on YouTube.

‘Come Rain or Come Shine’:

‘All or Nothing at All’:

I’m very excited to be teaming up again this weekend with the great Matt Roberts (of Matt Roberts Big Band, Gentleman’s Dub Club and more) playing a selection of the music of trumpeter Lee Morgan.

It’s the third of these we’ve done together – previously we’ve done a Miles First Great Quintet and a Freddie Hubbard project – and it’s a lot of fun to get into playing the music of another giant of the trumpet!

We did Sela last night and coming up are HEART, Headingley tonight (7th June) 7:30pm; Huddersfield Jazz (8th June) and Darlington Jazz (9th June).

I just finished editing this video of the new standards quartet with Sam Gardner, Sam Vicary and Declan Forde playing ‘All or Nothing at All,’ from last week at the Jazz Jam at Sela, Leeds.

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

Here’s a recording of the Jimmy Van Heusen love song It Could Happen to You:

‘All I did was wonder how your arms would be… And it happened to me’

Kind review of the Jiannis Pavlidis’ appearance at Splinter @ The Bridge last Sunday by Lance Liddle of the bebopspokenhere blog – check it out here.