Album!

Very happy to say that my debut album, Golden Earrings, is being released on Fresh Sound New Talent Records on September 1st 2017. It’s a duo with the amazing New York pianist, Michael Kanan, and features compositions by the likes of Nat ‘King’ Cole, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Victor Young, Irving Berlin, plus one original…

Gig photos

Some nice pictures from a few recent gigs: This photo of Guillem Arnedo’s band was taken by Eros Alvarez with a film camera at El Refugio Jazz Club in Alicante. This one is by Tom Saunders, who regularly takes photos at Dereham Jazz Club, where I played a set of Richards Rodgers songs.   With…

Celia

Bud Powell’s solo on Celia, the pianist’s own composition named for his daughter, is one of the great bebop performances. A real one-chorus-wonder, it appears on the album Jazz Giant, which comprises two trio sessions: one recorded in 1949 with Ray Brown and Max Roach, and one from 1950 with Roach and Curley Russell.

Re-post: Early Bird

I wrote this on my old website a while ago, but thought I would repost here. I’ve been learning this Charlie Parker solo recently (transcription here). It was recorded in 1943, towards the start of Bird’s career and, although his style is plainly not yet fully formed, it is one of my favourite examples of his…