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 of mine. Michael will also be coming over to the UK for an album release tour in September, with an album launch gig at the Vortex Jazz Club on 13th September. More info to follow on all…

Born in 1928, Hampton Hawes was a pianist from Los Angeles who played with Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Wardell Gray and Art Pepper. I just finished reading his autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, written with Don Asher, himself a jazz pianist as well as an author. I’d rate it as perhaps my favourite book about jazz: it’s written in an honest, conversational tone and features stories about Miles, Monk and Billie Holliday, as well as serious discussions about race alongside entertaining stuff on his time abroad with the army during the Korean…

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 Jorge Rossy/Phelan Burgoyne Quintet at the Vortex. (Photo from Facebook – not actually sure who took it.)  

Very much looking forward to playing some gigs this month with an international quintet put together by young London drummer Phelan Burgoyne and featuring the great Jorge Rossy on vibraphone. Best known as a drummer (and particularly for his role  in Brad Mehldau’s trio from the mid ’90s to the mid ’00s), Jorge has, in more recent years, concentrated on the vibraphone. He also plays piano but is an amazing melodic improviser, regardlessof which instrument he plays. Here is his band with Mark Turner, Peter Bernstein, Doug Weiss and Al Foster playing Benny…

I have recently been listening to and reading about the work of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, one of the great writing partnerships of the American Songbook. This is largely in preparation for a gig I have coming with Will Arnold-Forster and Calum Gourlay on 17th November as part of Bopfest (Alison Neale and Nat Steele’s mini festival within the EFG London Jazz Festival. Our gig is a double bill with Freddie Gavita’s tribute to Clifford Brown). But it also feeds into a general desire, on my part, to learn more about…