Things To Come

Still housebound and consequently unable to get my weekly fix at Rosie Malone's I've taken time out from coughing and sneezing to look at a couple of gigs coming up this month.

The Creole Choir of Cuba play The Sage on Jan 27 and it promises to be, as Mark Lamarr described it on BBC2, "A mesmerising experience...astonishing stuff...I'm lost for words...absolutely extraordinary."

They were also, I'm told, a sensation at the London Jazz Festival and a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival. Within the confines of Hall Two it should be mindblowing.

Milestones: The Music of Miles Davis is the next Jazz North East presentation Saturday Jan 15 at Gateshead Old Town Hall and it features pieces associated with Miles in the 1950s/'60s including the Kind of Blue compositions as well as others from in and around the same period.

The stellar line-up is Alan Barnes (alt); Ian Price (ten); Graeme Flowers (tpt); Terry Seabrook (pno); Paul Whitten (bs); Spike Wells (dms).

On the subject of future gigs Derrick Cogger - The Doctor Jazz of Belford - has suggested the Cannonball Adderley inspired Scottish Quintet Mercy, Mercy, Mercy would be a group he'd like to hear in the not too distant future - hear, hear, hear or even here, here, here.

More immediately, Alter Ego re-start Splinter's Sunday evening sessions at the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle this Sunday Jan 9.

In the meantime to get fit for these happenings I'm going to try a time honoured Scottish potion handed down through the ages: Eye of newt, toe of frog, fillet of a fenny snake, wool of bat, tongue of dog... er perhaps I'd best stick with that other Scottish remedy - that of Mr Johnny Walker!

Lance.