Black Swan Jam Session - July 12

Alan Law*, Joon Park, Alon Dagan. Dan Kabokov (keys); Paul Grainger*, John Pope (bass); Rob Walker*, Felix Parkin-Christie, Michael Mather, Kris Finney, Tom Parry-Jones (drums); Ben Davies (guitar); Johannes Dalhuitsen (tenor/sop sax); Paul Gowland (alto sax); Esther Coombes (alto sax/clarinet); Edgar Bell (cornet); David 'Showtime' Gray (trombone/vocals); Kit Giroux, Ian Dreever, Becks Tuck (vocals). *House trio. 

The heatwave showed no sign of cooling off and nor did the music at the Black Swan's fortnightly jam session. Back in the days of the old Jazz Café Keith Crombie would proudly boast of The Caff's international clientele. A glance at the names listed above suggests that quite a few of them were born far beyond the walls of the city.

Joon Park, for example, had jetted in from Arkansas for a music theory conference at Newcastle Uni taking time out to jam on keyboards. He impressed.

I could wax eloquent about all twenty players but that would take me until I'm 200 or next week whichever comes first whilst to cherry pick would be, by omission, an unintentional sleight on the rest.

I counted 18 numbers played by the ever varying combinations of musicians with at least ten working out on Blue Bossa.

As the old MGM motto went - More stars than there are in heaven! Lance.

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