HASTINGS JAZZ CLUB

Venue M - George St Old Town Hastings

An independent volunteer non-profit group
that has been putting on gigs since Autumn 2005

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Archive

March 2008

Simon D'souza's "Spirit"
A great 3 piece horn section saxes, trumpet and trombone playing with an exciting rhythm section keyboards, double bass and drums. Originals and rearranged standards penned by Simon. Beautiful melodies and thoroughly enjoyable.
Simon D'souza tenor and soprano sax, Rob Heasman trumpet,
Tim Wade trombone, Tom Phelan electric piano, Nick Mcquigan double bass and Dave Trigwell drums.

December

Lynda Murray Quartet
Lynda Murray alto and soprano sax, Nick Peck electric piano,
Paul Whitten double bass and Loz Thomas drums.

Again another great evening from Lynda and the guys playing originals and carefully selected standards. They get better everytime. A very pleasant surprise was vocalist Naomi Kilby, Lynda's daughter from her marriage to jazz photographer Jak Kilby.
Naomi is a classical concert singer but her rendition of the Billie Holliday classic Don't Explain shows that she could have a future as a top jazz singer.

October

Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble

Gilad never fails to delight, his playing is phenomenal, at times truly awesome, he is also funny and the band very enjoyable. This tour is promoting his latest album Refuge and I think it will become a must buy for any Gilad fan.

Great gig - thanks guys.

Hastings Urban Youth Project
Selected young soloists from around the town performed with Lynda Murray saxes, Nick Peck electric piano, John Banks double bass and Dave Trigwell drums

Review by Christine Harmar-Brown
Young soloists were given the opportunity to play with a professional jazz quartet in a project developed by jazz musician Lynda Murray. 'It's so hard for young people to get the experience of playing with a live band," she explained at Saturday's concert. "It's a completely different experience, standing in front of a band, especially the drum kit, which you feel through your whole body."
Vocalists Jo Hodges, Belinda Stewart and Liz Pouch from Dab Arts Youth Theatre were amongst the youngest participants along with 15 year old Hamish Hiscock playing alto sax and 17 year old Jack Lineham on drums. Jo Stout returned to Hastings from London where he is in his third year of a Jazz degree to play alto sax and vocalist Lizzie Rafati (also an undergraduate) sang the classics Summertime and Fly Me To The Moon.
The concert started and finished with a couple of numbers from Lynda Murray and her quartet and the event was a hugely enjoyable testament to the considerable talents of the participants.

Comments from Hastings Urban Youth
Jack Lineham ( drummer)
"Last Saturday saw an opportunity for myself and other young aspiring jazz musicians to play in front of a live audience with the Lynda Murry jazz quartet.
The project organised by Lynda proved to be a huge success with all seven solo performers displaying their talents to an appreciative audience. For me the experience was thoroughly enjoyable and I made some good contacts with some of the professional players.
It is thanks to these projects that help young musicians like myself find their way into playing live music as well as keeping jazz exciting and new".

Joe Stout (saxophone)
"Well done for organising the Urban Youth concert Lynda, I found it really beneficial to get up and play with professional musicians.
It helps so much with gaining confidence as a soloist and it was very rewarding to get such encouraging feedback too. I look forward to the next one!"

Lizzie Rafati (vocals)
"I thought it was great to see a variety of young people have the chance to perform with a professional, tight jazz band. Next time it would be good if the young musicians had a longer set with the band on stage".

September events

Brass Jaw - saxohone quartet
Truly remarkable group - fantastic ensemble playing and sound with outstanding solos to boot.

The Which Blair Project and What's Cookin'
A fantastic night of local talent with our largest audience so far.
Musicians involved:-
Blair Mackichan - vocals and keyboard
Lynda Murray - alto sax
Luke Rattenbury - guitar
Paul Whitten - double bass
Jo Brooks - hammond organ
James McMallian - trumpet
Russell Field - drums

August event

Julia Biel - vocals/acoustic guitar/keyboard
Marco Piccioni - electric guitar, Ben Hazleton - bass, Patrick Illingworth - drums

June event

Saturday June 23 - Phil Robson - electric guitar,  
Lynda Murray - alto and soprano sax,  Paul Whitten - double bass, Dave Trigwell - drums
Superb playing from this quartet

April Review The Blair Project - Juanita Homan

It is high time that the 'boy Blair' was written about, and I don't refer to our current  Prime minister but to Blair Mackichan, our local pop/jazz phenomenon and frontman of the jazz band Blair and Friends.

On Sunday 22nd April, Blair and Friends put on an  electrifying performance of jazz/pop at the
White Rock Hotel. It takes but a couple of minutes of Blair's highly charged singing and keyboard playing for the andrenaline to start coursing through the veins. This is beautiful, raw, dynamic stuff ranging from jazzed-up versions of salsa, bossa, samba and even a Beatles song.

Blair has got a powerful, beautiful voice of amazing range and plays on his electric piano with the energy, passion and virtuosity of a man much younger than his alleged age of 42.  He is also a master showman, weaving nonchalantly amongst the members of his band whilst they
improvise or dancing in a somewhat idiosyncratic way before choosing to interpose. He also keeps up a charming line of patter between pieces thus interacting well with the audience.

Blair started his musical career playing drums and later progressed to the piano. He writes a lot of his own material and won his Brit award for Will Young's track 'Your Gain'. He also wrote the
song for Lily Allen which is out at the moment and has had a lot of chart success over the years. He likes to play World Latin music and is continually experimenting with Latin rhythms to build up a set.

Blair and Friends are a well-knit, highly talented little group. Jo Brooks plays a tiny Hammond organ, Russell Field is an inspirational drummer, and James McMallain provided some truly beautiful improvisation on the trumpet. Lynda Murray joined them on sax for a couple of numbers but just as she was getting warmed up club duties called her away and she did not manage to get back up on stage. She will be playing with them in September when hopefully we will be entertained by her exciting and sophisticated sound.

To spend an evening with Blair and Friends is an emotional roller-coaster of a ride through some pretty amazing jazz. Blair strides like a Colossus over the whole performance but wears, his talent lightly on his shoulders and therein lies his charm. In his last hip-hop track,
he had all of us eating out of his hand  singing ya, ya, ya!!
(ridiculous really) but that is the measure of Blair's charisma!

Blair and Friends are not to be missed. They make a great team. Go, see, listen. This is upbeat , life-enhancing music. And once again, we must thank Lynda Murray for organising such a fabulous evening for the Hastings Jazz Club.

Review

Estelle Kokot Trio - March 2007

South African born Estelle is a lovely performer with a great voice and an earnest desire to engage with her audience. Estelle writes her own material and accompanies herself at the piano. We were treated to an evening of mainly self-penned songs from her latest album 'Information' and a very satisfying take on 'Round Midnight' by Thelonius Monk.
She is also a nominee for the 2007 Best Vocal Jazz South African Awards.

Her trio was fantastic with Mick Hutton on bass and Cheryl Alleyne on drums, both consummate musicians. They support Cheryl but both, are individualistic and very interesting in their approaches to their instruments and accompanying styles.

Lynda Murray

Reveiw

Trevor Watts and Jamie Harris - February 2007

The earthy sound of their music makes me feel as if I have been transported to the Nile. The beautiful, haunting, raw nasal sound of Trevor's soprano is reminiscent of the Arabic shannai, a double reed woodwind instrument from Africa and predominantly played in Arabic music.
The drum and voice are timbres always associated with Africa and Jamie playing a mix of congas (Cuba), djembe (Africa), darbouka (Egyptian/Arabian tabla) and vocals give an exotic ethnic world mix to their sound.

Jamie plays an intricate but solid rhythmic foundation for Trevor to fly over. Trevor plays melodies upon melody, harmonies over harmonies, he uses circular breathing to quite stunning effect. Sometimes Jamie will vocalise one of Trevor's melodies as in Ancestry, when there only two players it is lovely to hear the pure timbre of the voice, again in my imagination I am back in Africa. Trevor also played percussion on Alatopa to very good effect before moving on to the alto, which has a warmth and richness in sound that was very engaging.
They specialise in very intricate polyrhythms, 2's against 3's for example and their music is hauntingly unusual, Trevor and Jamie are playing better than ever.

Lynda Murray

Reveiw

Alan Barnes and Mike Hatchard - January 2007

What a great way to start the year many laughs and some seriously good playing from all three musicians.
Alan flew into action with You Stepped Out of a Dream, his soloing is fluid, sophisticated and awesome. Mike is a very good pianist but because he does so many other things particularly well, his is not noted for his excellent piano skills. Terry Pack on double bass supported these giants and gave an excellent solo on Chick Corea's Spain and of course on the blues.

We were treated to two originals from Mike's 'Lewis Carol Suite', The Mock Turtle's Song and Father William. The soprano sax line on Father William was particularly exquisite and played to perfection by Alan, the two numbers were such a welcome relief from the standards.

Mike then got us howling as he improvised the lyrics to a blues from three topics suggested by the audience - "Jade Goody, Fish and Chips and Kansas City".

It was a great night with some superb playing from all three guys and it was so good to have a laugh.

Lynda Murray

Roundup 2006

Jazzworld has had a great first year with some very special people travelling down to this little seaside town on the South Coast. The ones that really stand out in my memory for their uniqueness are Steve Lodder, Carol Griimes, Joan Davis, Gilad Atzmon, Annie Whitehead and Christine Tobin.

During the late summer and early autumn we had several generations of sax players play with their respective impressive rhythm sections, the young Rob Hughes, the maturing Tim Collinson, the well established Pat Crumly and the not so young Tony Coe.

These are all good sax players who predominantly play standards. The one that stood out for me was Tim Collinson - his choice of material was excellent and it was great to hear a very sensitive take on the Fredie Hubbard number Little Sunflower. Lester Bennett, his drummer started the tune with some really expressive and subtle percussion work.

Rob Hughes is a fine sax player and a very good flute player. He is in that transition phase of leaving his David Sanborn funk influenced past and moving towards a more Coltranesque influenced style . His own compositions show flare and I particularly liked Buttlerfly which is the title name of his debut album. His band features a very talented Sam Edwards on piano, every solo met with great enthusiasm from the audience.

We also managed a successful two-day jazz festival in October with workshops and jam sessions.