Tired out at the Red Lion, Isleworth.

I must admit I'm fairly stressed out at the moment - still trying to organise our wedding (or at least watching Robyn do it!) with only two weeks to go.

We were able to get to The Red Lion, Isleworth for some Jazz but I was tired out.

Here are Quentin Collins on trumpet, and Nick Weldon very expressive on bass;

I really enjoy Dave O'Higgins on sax as well as Leon greening on keyboards who was hiding like Trevor Tomkins on drums.

The Music was great - 'Hackensack' by Thelonious Monk, for example, is always a favourite of mine and Robyn won a CD in the raffle.

But boy was I tired!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Taking a chance on a Monday night.

I'm still ill but we decided to go to our Jazz club anyway.

It may not be sensible (it's getting colder) but it's therapy, in a way.

We aren't having a great week - the TV broke. It's a huge and heavy old fashioned monster of a set and we've no idea how we are going to get rid of it.

It's just sitting there, looking hurt, watching us instead.

It's very unfair, it only needed to last a bit longer. So at the moment I'm sulking and watching a tiny old portable.

I think my laptop has a bigger screen.

Even the pub where we go to see Jazz is under threat from developers. It means a lot to us; it's where we met.

For me there have been whole periods when I've had to fight to get there, to snatch a short while away from caring from my Mum or struggling in when I've been ill.

Always an achievement to get there.

Once again, it only needs to keep going a bit longer!

Last night was fabulous, a great quintet.

Trevor Tomkins on drums was backed up by Alec Dankworth on bass - I wasn't agile enough to catch them.

This is Quentin Collins on trumpet and Dave O'Higgins on sax, both in full flight;

Meanwhile Robyn was getting fed up with me because I always fail to get a picture of Leon Greening who plays tends to hide, hunched over the keyboard in a corner.

He's one of our favourite keyboard players so she borrowed my camera for this shot as I'd given up;

 

 

Leon has his own band and we keep promising ourselves we'll catch him in the limelight.

 

Meanwhile, we spent an evening enjoying some of the finest sounds of Modern Jazz - Ronnie Scotts regulars at pub prices!

 

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

 

home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

 

Contact me, go on why don't you;

 

neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

 

 

That's Jazz.

Monday night, what better way to forget about a bad day coming up than to be enjoying the company of Martin Shaw playing his trumpet here with a mute (love that) and Dave O'Higgins on Saxophone at my Jazz Club at The Red Lion down in Isleworth.

 

There in the back row is Nick Weldon taking the bass somewhere extreme while this is the exceptional Leon Greening on keyboards.

 

I had to stretch to get this shot - it's at the start of the evening but as the night goes on he gets more and more hunched over the keys until there's a point when his hair and the ivory meets.

 

And that's Jazz.

 

 

 



You are just missing a shot of the great Trevor Tomkins on drums but I am going to do a special on him later!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Right place, right time.

So I’m a little late with Monday’s Jazz review……

I thought I’d take a look from a different view – the view from the side;

 

On the left, firmly in the zone, is Trevor Tomkins on drums and musical organiser of the club. Next to him, also in the same zone is the celebrated pianist Nicky Weldon playing the bass tonight.

Then on keyboards is the magnificent Leon Greening. It’s early in the evening. As the night goes on he usually gets more and more hunched over the keys until his hair is almost touching them. Leon plays Jazz on the blues side and has his own group which I aim to see when I get my act together.

Saxophone – that’s Karen Sharp.

There should have been a fifth player but she wasn’t able to make it but that was my good luck because I prefer a quartet to five.

It also helped that there was a tension in the air that you could feel and I’m afraid Jazz thrives when it has an edge to it.

Best of all Leon Greening had the time he needs to get into the groove and Karen Sharp is often too polite – this time she held the sax by the throat.

It was a special evening – one of those nights when you know that you happened to be at the right place.

I’m posting this the night before I normally do – I have a little medical appointment rather too early Friday morning.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Cobwebs.

By the end of Monday I was a bit depressed.  I’m facing an army of carers and social workers on Wednesday and I’ve got a day to clear up the house and clean it.

At the moment it looks like an adolescent has been ‘Home Alone’ (don’t say it).

I could do with a break, just when it’s all going to get really hard.

This evening I had to escape – from everything, even though I didn’t feel like it.

I haven’t been to the Jazz Club at the Red Lion, Isleworth since last year – luckily tonight was hard and fast enough to blow the cobwebs away.

Mark Armstrong on Trumpet;

 

Was doing his best for me

 

As was Simon Allen on Sax.

Both did solo ballads as part of a quartet, and I prefer quartets, although I could have done without ‘Stardust’ which always depresses me.

Luckily there was Miles Davies, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins as well, although they weren't appearing in person as they were indisposed.

Instead I had Leon Greening who gets more hunched over his keyboards every time I see him; he has a feel for the blues and we got a couple of them tonight. Tim Wells on bass and Trevor Tomkins drums were as immaculate as ever.

So it helped – a bit.

Is that sour? Perhaps it is; I’ve also started a job I needed to do but I’ve been putting it off far too long and that isn’t helping either.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home:   helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

6 instead of 4.

I went out early Monday night – hoping to find a new hat on the way to the jazz club. The shop was shut as I got there, actually it was shutting, a security guard on the door keeping me out.

In any case I need a special hat and I didn’t really expect to find it. A hat with a little jaaaazzz in it, a cool hat. Somehow, although I have no idea how I am going to get away to do it, I need to get up to London. We’ll see. My current hat, well, it’s just not where it’s at. It needs to be a really baad hat.

It wasn’t a cool day; it was high summer at last. Hot n’steamy long into the evening but after last Thursday’s moonstomping, I wasn’t looking for slow ballads or introspective noodling, I was looking for some bounce. I wasn’t sure I was going to find it, but it’s always worth looking.

www.red-lion.info

Meanwhile, to celebrate the end of winter, people had rediscovered alcohol and the beer garden. Shell-shocked drinkers wandered to and from the bar. As the night went on they got more and more wasted, the conversations more surreal.  One large gentleman was carrying a poodle wherever he went. Very strange.

Every number started off quite slow, then they’d forget themselves and race away with it. My kind of night.

Leon Greening, a last minute replacement on the keyboards – each time he’d start off on a bluesy thoughtful mood, then he’d hunch, the bluenotes would hit in, then his head would get closer and closer to the keys and the race was on again.

Tonight Quentin Collins trumpet just lay back and screamed. Even the mellow, quiet flugelhorn got a hammering when it came out.

 

 Theo Travis was new to me – his Sax would be looking for a quiet ballad, a quiet stroll amongst quiet leafy lanes – moments in and the ghosts of bebop took over. Trevor Tomkins was grumbling that he’d spent all day in the studio – he’ obviously had a good time, you could hear it. Mick Hutton’s bass was hammering out an inner city rhythm. It was hot.

Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker. Jobim.

“An old standard but in 6 instead of 4”.

A hot, sultry ill-tempered sort of night. At the all night kebab shack, the handcuffs were out.

Good sounds though.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home:      helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Erf, erf, erf.

The last couple of days have been harder than they needed to be and in three days’ time it is the summer solstice – the longest day. Its downhill from then on and I could do without that. When I went out last night I could feel a cool, slow breeze that will always remind me of sitting around a campfire in wild places in June. Watching the last wisps of the sun disappear before the stars came out – far later than they should.

‘White nights’, the best there are.

Up at the Red Lion;

www.red-lion.info

 It all started with ‘Drifter’ by Herbie Hancock the trumpet, Saxophone and piano linking in together tight and disciplined, no gaps in that door.

That was followed by ‘Here’s that rainy day’, with Trevor Tomkins using one brush and one stick and pretty soon entering his ‘zone’ as you can see here;

 

 Clifford Brown’s ‘Tiny Capers’, set the scene for the evening; more head than heart. Slower and steadier rather than the fast and furious of last week – as you know I’m always in a fairly fast and furious sort of mood.

 Then, the first of many ballads – ‘Body and Soul’ – both brushes out now on the drums. Ed Jones was expressive and like me, exploring somewhere else on his sax while on ‘It could happen to you’, in complete contrast, Leon Greening’s keyboard playing got more frenetic, he got more hunched over, his hands more blurred and his hair getting closer to the keys with each chord, hammering out the rhythm of a summer night still a little streaked with light well after 10pm.

Hank Mobley’s ‘Roll Call’ got the trumpet, sax and piano close and tight again.

From then on, it was away with Henry Amberg-Jennings trumpet and out with the flugelhorn as the ballads got quieter and quieter.

 

Andrew Cleyndert’s bass, quiet and precise got more prominent as the other instruments fell back.

I could have done with a good stomping – I’ll have to find that somewhere else, but this was a long languid June night and the music was a match.

On the way home I put in my latest entry for the least appropriate music to play after a jazz gig – I put in Kraftwerk and drove into the night listening to ‘Autobahn’ as the lampposts and white lines regularly and rhythmically ticked past.

Where did summer go?

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production) 

Home:         helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact:     neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com


(All photos taken indoors from the back of the hall with the flash turned off on a 3meg camera bought in a charity shop for £11-99p. Erf, erf, erf.)