The MSG Trio play at 11am to 1pm

Twynham School Band – UT Funk  play 2.30 to 3.30

The gigs are free for all.

John Wiseman (Tr) Loz Garfield (Cl) Cuff Billett (T) Chris Tilley (Bjo) Ray Goold (B) Pete Jackman (D)

The six piece band, consisting of Trumpet, Trombone, Clarinet & Tenor Sax, Bass, Banjo and Drums, was formed in 1970 and remained virtually unchanged until very recently, with the loss of the piano-player, John Clarke.

The aim of the band is to produce a free-wheeling style, playing less well-known tunes of the 1920s and 1930s, and hopefully to introduce these refreshingly interesting melodies to a wider audience.

The band has played in previous years at the Ascona and Arosa Jazz Festivals in Switzerland, also frequently in Germany and Belgium to enthusiastic audiences.

Cuff Billett
Cuff ran the “Vieux Carre Jazz Band” in Portsmouth from 1956 to 1960. He then joined Barry “Kid ” Martyn’s band based in London until 1967. During this time he toured and recorded with New Orleans musicians, George Lewis, Albert Nicholas , John Handy, Harold Dejan, Louis Nelson and Kid Sheik Cola. Also during this period he recorded Beatles’ tunes with Chris Barber. He spent some time in New Orleans in 1963.

In 1967 he formed a band with Bill Greenow, “Cuff Billet-Bill Greenow Quintet”, which recorded in 1968 for Dobells’ Swift label. Dave Holland, the bass player, left to join Miles Davis in the USA.
In 1972 Cuff formed his own band, Cuff Billett’s “New Europa Jazz Band”, which has been running virtually unchanged to the present day. From 1985 through to 1994 he was also part of Butch Thompson’s “King Oliver Centennial Band” touring the UK and Europe and broadcasting in New York in 1993.
He appeared on unofficial recordings with Bud Freeman, Bill Coleman, “Peanuts” Hucko, Al Casey, Johnny Varro, Benny Waters and the Harlem Jazz and Blues Band. Since the time with Barry Martyn there have been issued recordings with the New Europa Jazz Band, Ralph Sutton and Alton Purnell.
Most recently (January 1998) he visited New Orleans for the first time in 35 years and recorded with Sammy Rimington and New Orleans musicians, which has been issued on 504 label.
For the last 4 years he has guested with Rudi Balliu Society Serenaders for the Ghent festival week.
Cuff also is a long term member of the “Excelsior Brass Band” with recordings in 1983 and 1995.

Paul Eddis (kb) Mark Williams (g) Graeme Wilson (ts, bs) Andy Champion (b) Adrian Tilbrook (d)

Bassist Andy Champion launched his quintet ACV in 2009, to play compositions reflecting his wide musical interests, drawing on influences as diverse as prog rock and free improvisation, but with jazz always at the heart. The result is a distinctive band sound and identity, where tight arrangements are peppered with insistent, rhythmic unison passages and ferocity but also with more introspective moments, always melodic and direct.

ACV have performed at prestigious festivals and venues across the UK, including the Gateshead International Jazz Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival, Stockton International Riverside Festival and the Vortex jazz club. They have also been featured on BBC Radio’s Jazz On 3, UK Jazz Radio and Sine FM.

In 2010, ACV released their debut album, “Fail In Wood”, on the Jazzaction label.
“…showing a terrific variety of approaches that joins the dots between current developments, Maiden Voyage-era Herbie Hancock and even prog rock.” – Jazz UK

“…a distinctive group sound and identity…ACV are looking for something altogether darker and more organic and they succeed brilliantly.” – Ian Mann thejazzman.com

“…there’s much to enjoy in the nicely varied approaches that the band employs collectively, from What’s For Breakfast’s cunning balance of hectic improvisation and strict discipline to Dust Red’s relaxed, implied Latin feel to Fail In Wood’s determinedly tough tunefulness, and in their individual skills.” – Herald Scotland

“…a fusion of ferocity, free expression but most of all a great feeling for experimental music…One moment you can be listening to a tender embrace and then be transported into a flurrying frenzy culminating in a musical mastermindand this can happen just within one track.” – Leeds Guide

www.acvband.co.uk

Tony Woods

Tony Woods (saxes, fls) Mike Outram (eg) Rob Millett (vib) Dave Mannington (b) Chris Nickolls (d)

The Tony Woods Project has been in existence since the mid 90′s and plays its own brand of melodic folk/world/rock-inspired jazz compositions of Tony Woods.

Born in Southampton, Tony Woods grew up in Chilworth Old Village and began playing folk music with his father at the age of five. A graduate of Keele University, Leeds College of Music and The Guildhall School of Music Tony received awards for saxophone, outstanding performance and the soloist’s prize at the Dunkirk International Jazz Festival.  Tony’s first band, Within the Word, played at the second Swanage Jazz Festival in 1991.

In the mid 90’s, Tony Woods Project was formed.  It has recorded three highly acclaimed albums of original, folk inspired compositions: High Seas (1997), Lowlands (2004), and Wind Shadows (2009).  The band has attracted airplay on BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM, and UK Jazz Radio and received a South East Music Schemes Award in 2007.  Tony has toured the UK extensively and performed at festivals and venues across the country including Manchester Jazz Festival, the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Ronnie Scott’s. He has worked as a session musician in many of London’s studios including Lansdowne Studios, Angel Studio, Abbey Road and Maidavale.
He worked frequently with Michael Garrick, both live and on disc, in large and small ensembles, often with his wife: singer Nette Robinson. In 2010 Nette’s Little Big Band released its debut CD “The Little Big Band Plays” and in 2011 the Avalon Trio released its debut CD “Forlana”.

“Exquisite…an album of vivid moments” (John Fordham, the Guardian)

“…altogether this is a deeply satisfying album” (Brian Blain, Jazz UK)

“…the album proves that jazz and folk, intelligently combined, can produce powerful and affecting music.” (Chris Parker, www.vortexjazz.co.uk )

“A quiet masterpiece of colourful, eloquent music making” (Ian Mann, www.thejazzmann.com)

“…the writing in general feeds as much off expressive non-specific “pure” music as it does off jazz. Woods is clearly a master saxophonist but always directs his technique towards expression and emotion and evocation, which is just as we like it.” (Peter Bacon, www.thejazzbreakfast.wordpress.com)

“A wonderful recording by one of the most interesting and thoughtful groups on the British jazz scene…beautiful – highly recommended” (Kyle Horch, Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine)

“The resulting CD is already one of my albums of the year.” (Tony Augarde, Music Web.)

” …And what I like above all about Woods’ music are those
moments when a door is suddenly opened, and unexpected fresh air, the
outdoors, nature, or even anarchy get invited in.” (Sebastian Scotney, www.londonjazz.blogspot.com)

www.tonywoods1.wordpress.com

Abram Wilson (t) Peter King (as) Jean Toussaint (ts) Winston Rollins (tr) Reuben James (p) Alex Davis (b) Dave Hamblett (d)

Award winning New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist, Abram Wilson, has become one of the fastest rising stars in the UK. To date he has recorded three albums; Jazz Warrior (2004), Ride! Ferris Wheel to the Modern Day Delta (2006), and Life Paintings (2009). He has won awards such as the International Songwriting Competition, the British Jazz Award for Best New CD, and BBC Jazz Award for Best Band. Wilson maintains himself as one of the leading jazz trumpeters in the UK. With a trumpet style reminiscent of a Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, and Wynton Marsalis and vocals reminding one of Sammy Davis Jr. and Chet Baker, Wilson has managed to create a style of melodic compositions that swing and groove.

Abram is touring the UK with an incredible septet featuring special guest artists Jean Toussaint, Pete King and Winston Rollins celebrating the London 2012 Olympic Games.  In the ‘Running With the Flame’ tour, Wilson presents traditional folk songs in a jazz style while emphasising the themes of spirituality, injustice, and love – the three subjects understood throughout our five inhabited continents.  In addition to melody, rhythmic concepts, and the use of various harmonic scales, the representation of well-known instruments within certain cultures will be explored. The music will inspire the audience to search for their own heritage while at the same time experiencing the culture of others.

www.abramwilson.com

Matt Wates (as) Martin Shaw (t) Steve Main (ts) Leon Greening (p) Malcolm Crease (b) Matt Hone (d)

“A seriously good band containing six of Britain’s finest jazz musicians, regardless of age or style” 
Dave Gelly, Observer
Matt was born in London in 1964 and graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1988.
I’ve been running this band for about twelve years now. The combination of two saxes, trumpet and rhythm section is a fairly classic one in jazz and has appeared many times in the last fifty odd years. It creates a lot of possibilities for an arranger/composer.
As a writer, I am basically trying to come up with material that will be fun to play, and to create a strong mood that will communicate itself well to an audience, I feel my best compositions are the ones that create and sustain a mood well. If you’re going to have a band, it seems to me you’ve got to have original material, otherwise you just end up sounding like a lot of other groups. I also feel it’s important to keep adding to the repertoire so that it doesn’t get stale. I therefore feel obliged to try to keep coming up with new pieces to play. About eighty percent of our repertoire is original, and the rest consists of “standards” from the great American songbook that I have arranged for the band. The great standards have a timeless quality although I hope that our interpretations sound fresh and up-to-date.

In style, the sextet certainly resembles many of the great small bands of the 50s and 60s, such as those of Horace Silver and Art Blakey. We take inspiration from the past, but we are not trying to replicate it, merely to add in a small way to the music for which we have the deepest respect and love.

I strongly believe that jazz has to swing. To me, this is what gives the music that beautiful human quality which attracted most of us to jazz in the first place. We play some Latin American style pieces and some funky things too, but the heart and soul of the band will always be straight-ahead swing. If it isn’t swinging at least some of the time, I really don’t feel it’s jazz.

I’m also trying to avoid some of the egotism that has beset the music since the 60s. I want a band that sounds like a band, not just a collection of soloists, and so we tend to keep the improvised solos fairly short, and punctuated with backing riffs. After all these years, the band is certainly sounding pretty tight.

In general, I am trying to put back into the music some of the things that I feel have got lost over the years: melody, swing, and the idea that a band should not be just a battleground of egos. Above all, I maintain that jazz should be fun to listen to as well as to perform.

www.mattwates.com

Anita Wardell

Anita Wardell (voc) Robin Aspland (p) Jeremy Brown (b) Tristan Maillot (d)

Anita Wardell’s singing is exciting and breathtaking. She is noted for her mesmerising and captivating vocal improvisations and vocalese lyrics to instrumental solos. Anita is a musician who uses the voice as her instrument, displaying precision and agility, mixed with heartfelt emotion.

“Kinda Blue“, her second and most recent album for Proper Records UK, shows Anita’s versatility and complete command of her instrument. On this recording, she has teamed up with some of the UK’s finest musicians: Robin Aspland (piano), Jeremy Brown (bass), and Steve Brown (drums), with special guest performances by Tristan Maillot on drums, Adam Glasser on harmonica and Phil Robson on guitar.
This carefully selected set of songs gives you an insight to the infectious and spellbinding performances heard live.

Anita received the prestigious BBC Jazz Award for Best of Jazz category in 2006.This coupled with the release of Kinda Blue are now propelling Anita into the major artist arena.

Noted, her first release for the new label (released in July 2006), is a collection of well known material from the Blue Note era to which Anita has penned many of her own lyrics. It received much radio play and 4 and 5 star reviews from UK and European jazz publications.

Singer Norma Winstone praised her “unexpected vulnerability, which makes her reading of the ballads both beautiful and touching. Her honesty shines in this well chosen collection of songs.”
Bebop pioneer Mark Murphy proclaimed Anita, “a gift from Australia”, adding, “what hits me, is how expressive her ballad singing is. Then she has the courage to scat a ballad or two, not unlike a young lady disciple of the Ben Webster school.”

Born in Guildford, UK, Anita moved to Australia with her family as a child. Anita’s formative years were spent soaking up the Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter classics. She also explored her father’s collection of big band albums by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and many more. During her teens, she started to get to grips with the complexities of modern Jazz when she discovered Clifford Brown,
Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. At the same time she learned her vocal craft from greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Mark Murphy, Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, Jon Hendricks and Eddie Jefferson.

After attending secondary School she completed her degree in Music at the Adelaide University. In 1990, Anita relocated back to the UK where she studied at the Guildhall school of music and drama.

www.anitawardell.com

The ‘Stars of British Jazz’ recreate traditional jazz as made popular in Britain in the 1950s and 60s, which became known as ‘British Trad’. From this period emanated bands that dominated the British jazz scene for many years, such as the bands of Kenny Ball, Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Terry Lightfoot and Humphrey Lyttelton, all of whom became highly respected on the international jazz scene.
With this spirit in mind, we present to you ‘Stars of British Jazz’ – a band comprising of a mixture of past and present members of these famous bands together with younger, top class ability musicians of today, all of whom have previously worked together in various bands over the years. It is the bands intention to keep this wonderful music alive by presenting a programme performed with all of the original creativity and energy to reflect this era.
The eminently swinging, three piece rhythm section is complemented with a formidable front line to the highest standard of musicianship, in order to present a slick, entertaining programme, combining a cross section of traditional and mainstream jazz, not forgetting of course, a nod in the direction of the aforementioned ‘famous names’. The result is a professionally presented show of non-stop entertainment suitable for any music / jazz festival or special event.

www.starsofbritishjazz.com