The Sage Gateshead International Jazz Festival - This and That

Sometimes the best moments at The Festival - indeed any festival - are not the big time headlining acts but the feeling you get just hanging-out and meeting up with friends old and new for a drink a chat and an exchange of views.

There's also the various local bands who turn up and the non local bands who don't turn up!

Christine Tobin's Tapestry Unravelled was a case in point. As the throng gathered outside of the Jazz Lounge the word came through that her train was running an hour late and the concert would have to be put back. When the train was still running late at the re-scheduled time the organisers, sadly, had to cancel the concert.

Earlier Nick Pride and the Pimptones (see photo by Adrian Tilbrook) had had to curtail their set owing to the late arrival - through no fault of his own I hasten to add - of trombonist Chris Hibbard. Apparently he was stuck in traffic which was held up because some guy was threatening to jump off the Tyne Bridge.

This may have been a saxophone player bedazzled and driven to suicide by the virtuoso display by Claude Werner who, with his quartet, had given a mind-blowing performance in the Jazz Lounge! We shall hear more of this and the other acts from Russell. As for 'The Pimps' they played a non-stop quickfire sett of funk and soul with a new (to me) singer Susan Hamilton. She Laid It on The Line - and laid it good!

Out on the Concourse I heard a fine version of St Thomas by a college band known as Arthur's Henchmen.

Later came the Schmazz Factor award winners Hannabiel and Midnight Blue who stripped the paint from the walls.

Nothing could follow that...

...except Horn Dogs!

They raised the ante in front of a deseervedly full house.

Festival photos.

Lance.