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Nick and Simon discuss four newish (one Jewish) holiday offerings. 
1. Snowbound- Emma Smith
2. Louis Wishes you a Cool Yule - Louis Armstrong
3. On Christmas Day- Paul Edis and Friends
4. Big Band Holidays- JLCO with Wynton Marsalis

Frabjous Nicktide from us! 


 

Nick and Simon discuss a record label that started in the USA and continues now in the UK.
A label which represented many jazz greats as well as new and emerging talent.

We discuss 'enclosures' one of the cornerstone concepts in making jazz sound like jazz - particularly post-bebop jazz.  We talk about the idea of 'enclosure' with regard to the melodic line and play some examples.

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In many ways the life of The Bass Clef jazz club is a story that echoes in ripples from the centre to the outskirts of London.  Jazz is a tough music to make a profit from and as such clubs spring up in low rent areas, they thrive, bring character to a district and then that district gentrifies.  Hoxton is now a far cry from the run down weekend ghost town it once was. Buisness is booming and the prices of the properties soaring. Many new venues have emerged further out from the centre, and the pattern continues as East London becomes next in the wave of development and gentrification. Nick and Simon discuss Peter Ind's 10 year tenure in this episode

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We discuss the book Arranging the Score by the Canadian jazz critic and musician Gene Lees.
in the book Lees paints portraits of some of the great jazz arrangers including Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans Kenny Wheeler and Billy May

Nick and Simon talk about Jazz Cello, like you do... 

Chris Hodgkins has been an integral part of the UK jazz scene since the early seventies. As a trumpet player he performed with the Icon Jazzmen and toured Europe and the US with various bands. In 1974 he co-founded the Welsh Jazz Festival which later became the Brecon Jazz Festival and in 1985 became director of Jazz Services for which he is perhaps best known. In this wide-ranging conversation Chris talks about his early musical life and later involvement with the Welsh Jazz festival and Jazz Services, he also considers the state of jazz funding in the present climate, marketing for musicians and his recent work with the All Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group.

The 'Review of Jazz' Chris talks about in the podcast can be found here:
www.appjag.org
and Chris's website including the Jazz Services archives he mentioned  are here:
https://www.chrishodgkins.co.uk/

Musician, composer, and conductor Andre Previn had a long and varied career career.  Simon and Nick discuss his life and his work in the jazz, film and classical music worlds 

Nick and Simon discuss the biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.  Author Robin D. Kelley grew up in Harlem in a house where modern jazz was the soundtrack to family life.His PhD was on Social Movements, but through a series of posts at top American universities he moved more towards writing about music...

The Fillmore district of San Francisco was known as " The Harlem of the West" in the 1940s and there were many clubs that flourished there for a decade or more.  Live recordings of top artists bear the names of some of them. There are currently several jazz clubs and a specialised Jazz Centre in San Fransisco so  in the words of Frank Zappa,  in Fog City " jazz isn't dead it just smells funny"