It was with sadness that I heard of the passing on Friday, 6th March of the legendary pianist McCoy Tyner. I feel it an incredible privilege to have heard Mr Tyner at the Barbican back in November 2011 with Chris Potter and I’ve compiled a Vlog and playlists for you below.
Enjoy and share!
It was with great sadness that we learnt of the passing of the great Jimmy Heath on Sunday, 19th January 2020. Jimmy was a personal friend and played alongside John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. He wrote over 100 jazz compositions and appeared on over 125 albums in his life.
If you’re on Spotify or another music service please use the ‘Song Shift‘ App (I will paste the Spotify playlist into this when I can get it working)!
I was delighted to present a concert on Saturday, 8th June 2019 at Whittlesford Parish Church which featured students from Cambridge Saxophone and the Advanced Jazz Ensemble from the SCYM.
The concert was organised to raise funds for the refurbishment of the church roof, (raising over £1200) and to students, (especially adults) who wouldn’t normally get the chance to perform, the chance to do so.
The late, great Mike Brecker is regarded by many, (including myself) as probably the greatest virtuoso on the saxophone. Brecker’s contribution to the jazz cannon is well noted, but it was his work as a session musician throughout the 1970’s and 80’s the arguably allowed him to explore jazz saxophone later in his career.
Mike didn’t release a solo album under his own name until he was 37, (Charlie Parker was dead at 35 and Coltrane died at 40) and whilst we also lost Brecker too young, (Mike died aged just 57 in 2007) – his over 700 recording credits are a testament to his outstanding skill as a musician. We’ve briefly covered Brecker’s music in this Vlog post from my ‘Sax Advent Calendar‘ but here is a more focused pop music playlist.
Enjoy the playlists, share them and be inspired!
In March this year, all of Coltrane’s Prestige recordings were collected into a new 8 x LP set – click here to purchase (watch Ashley Kahn’s unboxing video below). The box-set is set out in chronological order from January to December 1958, so you can really hear Coltrane’s development during the year. 1959 was a year when Coltrane made two of the most seminal albums in jazz, his own Giant Steps and Kind of Blue for Miles Davis.
Coltrane ’58 features 37 tracks, all of which have been remastered from the original tapes, such as ‘Lush Life’, ‘Lover Come Back to Me’, ‘Stardust’, ‘Good Bait’, and ‘Little Melonae’, plus first recordings of ‘Nakatini Serenade’, ‘The Believer’, ‘Black Pearls’, ‘Theme for Ernie’, ‘Russian Lullaby’, ‘Sweet Sapphire Blues’ and ‘I Want to Talk About You’.
All of the recordings took place in New Jersey at Rudy Van Gelder’s home studio, created during a series of 3-hour sessions…
Enjoy!
So the second of my #DFBlues Challenge is now upon us!
It’s really simple to do and open for EVERYONE to enter. All you have to do is video yourself playing, (or singing) a Minor Blues, (with my backing track if you can, but hey as long as it’s a Minor Blues, you do what you want!) & then post it to Social Media using the hashtag #DFBlues
I’ll then pick my favourites at the end of May and do a follow up Vlog episode then. Make sure you are subscribing to my YouTube channel!