Jazz Co-op @ The Globe: The Weekend Workshop And Other Matters

The workshops got off to an inauspicious start – a drummer got stuck in the lift!  Someone remarked that it would be even better if it had been a banjo player!  Once he’d been rescued, a great weekend of learning, music-making and sheer fun began.  We can’t wait until next year, but we’ll have to, so that the hard-working tutors, Judith Thompson and James Birkett, can have a well earned rest, and the organisers, Dave Parker and Elton Ritchie, can put their feet up for a while.

We were divided into two groups according to previous experience, so that we could study scales and chords, which we did, based on the tune Lady Be Good.  Don’t know quite what the more experienced group did with Jim, but it must have been complicated, judging by the papers with circles of keys etc lying around in their room upstairs.  I must have learned something as I can now play Lester Leaps In on my tin whistle, complete with a solo, and I was attending as a vocalist!

In the afternoons, following an excellent buffet lunch from Waitrose no less, we divided into bands of more or less equally balanced instruments, except that we had the only vocalist and pianist and the others had the double bass. It was our chance to be arrangers of 2 tunes, I’ve Got Rhythm and There’ll  Never Be Another You. And a chance to do things that we’d never done before, such as singing a walking bass and doing 4’s with the drums.  We loved it!

Then we came back on Sunday and did it all again, in more depth.

We rounded off the whole proceedings with each band playing their pieces for the others.  Jim’s band had actually composed an original work, (sorry the title escapes me) which sounded very skilled and exciting, with plenty of interesting solos.  Then we did our 2 songs with great enthusiasm and aplomb.  I must say that there’s nothing quite like working with a band when you know everyone has contributed of their best.  It sounded good to me.

We could have done with more horn players, so be ready for next year, all ye saxes out there!  And I’d recommend this for vocalists – it’s good to find out what instrumentalists get up to and what they expect of us singers.  A singer in each band would have been handy.  

I should have taken my bed to the Globe for the weekend, because I was actually there on Friday night as well.  This was the first of the monthly Blues Jams, to be held on the final Friday of each month. The house band (sorry I don’t know their names yet) was lead by bluesman and drummer Adam Featherstone and although the audience was small, this event promises good times ahead.  I enjoyed hearing how different blues is from jazz.  Contributors included Barry Keatings, Keith Barrett, Steve Glendinning and myself. Pieces played and sung were Work Song; Stairway To Heaven; Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out and many others.  Why not come along next time?

Ann Alex