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Bebop Spoken There

Sullivan Fortner: ''I always judge it by the bass player: If the bass player is happy, it's going to be a good night". (DownBeat, February 2025).

The Things They Say!

This is a good opportunity to say thanks to BSH for their support of the jazz scene in the North East (and beyond) - it's no exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for them many, many fine musicians, bands and projects across a huge cross section of jazz wouldn't be getting reviewed at all, because we're in the "desolate"(!) North. (M & SSBB on F/book 23/12/24)

Postage

17822(and counting) posts since we started blogging 17 years ago. 143 of them this year alone and, so far, 68 this month (Feb.25).

From This Moment On ...

February 2025

Fri 28: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free. THIS WEEK ONLY JAMES BIRKETT (guitar)!
Fri 28: Luis Verde Quartet @ The Gala, Durham. 1:00pm. £8.00. SOLD OUT!
Fri 28: Spilt Milk @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 7:00-9:00pm. Free. Nolan Brothers (vocal harmonies).
Fri 28: Castillo Nuevo Orquesta @ Pilgrim, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors). £8.00.
Fri 28: Knats @ Lubber Fiend, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £11.50. (inc bf.). Album launch gig. Support act TBC.
Fri 28: Black is the Color of My Voice @ The Gala, Durham. 7:30pm. Apphia Campbell’s one-woman show inspired by the life of Nina Simone, performed by Florence Odumosu.
Fri 28: Great North Big Band Jazz Festival: Musicians Unlimited @ Park View Community Centre, Chester-le-Street. 8:00pm. £10.00. (Weekend ticket £20.00., available on the door). Day 1/3. Musicians Unlimited in concert.
Fri 28: Redwell @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

MARCH 2025

Sat 01: Great North Big Band Jazz Festival @ Park View Community Centre, Chester-le-Street. 11:00am. £15.00. Day 2/3.
Sat 01: TJ Johnson Band @ St Augustine’s Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. £10.00.
Sat 01: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. £25.00. Tutor: Steve Glendinning. Get your funk on! Enrol at: learning@jazz.coop.
Sat 01: Shunyata Improvisation Group @ The Watch House, Cullercoats. 2:00-3:30pm. Free.
Sat 01: Ray Stubbs R&B All Stars @ Billy Bootleggers. Ouseburn, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free.
Sat 01: Lapwing Jazz Trio @ Three Sheets to the Wind, Alnwick. 5:15pm or 5:45pm (times tbc). Part of the Alnwick Story Festival's music fringe programme: Free.
Sat 01: Struggle Buggy @ The Peacock, Sunderland. 6:00pm. Blues band.
Sat 01: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Vault, Darlington 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 01: Joseph O’Brien: The Ultimate Tribute to Frank Sinatra @ Fire Station, Sunderland. 7:30pm. O’Brien & seven piece band (inc. Wendy Kirkland, Jim Corry & Pat Sprakes).
Sat 01: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 01: Jack & Jay’s Vintage Songbook @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sun 02: Great North Big Band Jazz Festival @ Park View Community Centre, Chester-le-Street. 11:00am. £10.00. Day 3/3.
Sun 02: Smokin’ Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm. £7.50.
Sun 02: Nauta @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 02: Sax Choir @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free (donations).
Sun 02: Side Café Orkestar @ Café Under the Spire, Derwentwater Road, Gateshead. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 02: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 02: Milne Glendinning Band @ The White Room, Stanley. 6:30pm.
Sun 02: Bella by Barlight @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 02: Tweed River Jazz Band @ Spittal Bowling Club, Berwick. 7:00pm. Free.
Sun 02: Ali Watson Quartet @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 03: Milne Glendinning Band @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 1:00pm. £9.00. at the door; £8.20. (inc £0.20 bf) online, in advance.
Mon 03: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.

Tue 04: Vieux Carré Hot 4 @ Victoria & Albert Inn, Seaton Delaval. Tel: 0191 237 3697. 12:30pm. £8.00. ‘Jazz ‘n’ Pancakes’.
Tue 04: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Stu Collingwood, Paul Grainger, Abbie Finn.
Tue 04: Customs House Big Band @ The Masonic Hall, North St., Ferryhill DL17 8HX. 7:30pm. Free.

Thu 06: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, Holystone. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 06: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. Subject: The Jazz Music of Quincy Jones.
Thu 06: BBC Big Band @ The Hippodrome, Darlington. 7:30pm. £32.00., £25.00., £16.00. ‘The Sound of Cinema’ featuring Emer McPartland (vocals).
Thu 06: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 06: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesbrough. 8:30pm. Free. Guests: Dan Johnson (sax); Josh Bentham (sax); Gary Hadfield (keys); Adrian Beadnell (bass). A Tees Hot Club promotion. First Thursday in the month.

Fri 07: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 07: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 07: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 07: James Birkett & Emma Fisk @ Old Lowlight, Clifford’s Fort, North Shields NE30 1JE. 7:00pm. £15.00. + bf. www.oldlowlight.co.uk. Rescheduled from Friday 7th February.
Fri 07: Jake Leg Jug Band @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. £12.00.

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Saturday, April 07, 2018

GIJF Day 1: Big Chris Barber Band - Sage Gateshead, April 6

(Review by Russell)
Jazz festivals introduce change, the new, the hip into crowded schedules with little time to stop for breath and reflect. Sage Gateshead’s amazing three-day Gateshead International Jazz Festival is at the forefront in developing connections – particularly across Europe – and introducing the ‘new’. The opening night of this year’s GIJF exemplified this, yet, as many festival-goers made their way into Sage One, the largest performance space in the Norman Foster-designed Tyneside landmark, preparing to immerse themselves in a triple bill featuring the headlining Sun Ra Arkestra, and just across the way in the Northern Rock Foundation Hall significant numbers were keenly anticipating an evening of contemporary jazz piano, it was in Sage Two that one of the enduring figures in jazz attracted a standing-room-only crowd.

A ten-piece band playing ‘classic era’ jazz with lots of Duke Ellington, some might say such bands are ‘ten-a-penny’ and perhaps they are, but this band in the three-tiered Sage Two concert hall is, note present tense, one of the great bands. Chris Barber maintains a punishing schedule, touring across Europe returning to play a string of British dates then setting off again…Germany, Holland, the tour bus clocking up tens of thousands of miles, year in year out, filling concert halls wherever he goes. Bourbon Street Parade – what else? – set the ball rolling and from then on it was typical Barber. The legendary bumbling announcements have taken on epic proportions and reassuringly remain as incomprehensible as ever. The jazz is simply marvellous, the numbers coming thick and fast; Rent Party Blues, Jubilee Stomp, Goin’ Home, Barber’s enthusiastic commentary referencing Ellington, Clarence Williams, Ken Colyer (hurrah!), Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

The band – it’s important to get the words in the right order – is the Big Chris Barber Band and the nine, plus Barber, played straight through without an interval although Barber needed reminding of this at about the halfway point! From time to time two or three band members wandered off stage allowing a smaller combo to have a blow, variously the trumpets (Pete Rudeforth, Mike Henry), the hirsute Bob Hunt (trombone, arrangements and Barber’s right-hand man), the youthful Nick White, reeds, featured on alto playing a really modern piece titled All Blues (!), and the new face, Scot Ian Killoran, slotting into the reeds’ section, playing as if he’d been in the line-up for twenty years. Give him twenty years and he will have been in the band for that long (it’s the kind of thing Barber might say), and what’s the betting that C. Barber will still be at the helm?!

Wild Cat Blues, Black and Tan Fantasy, C Jam Blues, the Big Chris Barber Band was having fun – Bert Brandsma wielded a mean liquorice stick, the rhythm section purring, Barber was in there, all the more these days as a member of the band rather than leader of the band. It was Bob Hunt who kept the great man on track with a quiet word, a smile. Barber would have gone on ’til midnight but the younger members of the band didn’t have half his energy and it was getting past their bedtime. Sage Two’s audience rose to its feet to acclaim Chris Barber. He’ll be back, that’s for sure. 
Russell.    
Chris Barber (trombone, vocals); Bob Hunt (trombone, trumpet, arrangements); Mike Henry (trumpet, cornet); Pete Rudeforth (trumpet, vocals); Nick White (alto, soprano & baritone saxophones, clarinet); Ian Killoran (clarinet, tenor & bass saxophones); Bert Brandsma (clarinet, tenor & bass saxophones); Joe Farler (banjo, guitar); John Day (double bass); John Watson (drums).

                        

1 comment :

Patrick said...

At the age of 87 Chris Barber's energy is still there - and his sense of humour hasn't deserted him either - referring to a classic rendition of Petite Fleur by Nick White as "a medley of our hit" All in all, a superb evening's entertainment.

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