Feature: Ian Storror
IAN STORROR
BRISTOL'S JAZZ BEACON
By Dave Lisik
Published July 3, 2026
Ian Storror has been a key figure nurturing the Bristol, UK jazz scene for more than four decades. He has personally facilitated more than 3,500 performance events by some of the most prominent international jazz artists, while also fostering an environment to encourage and bolster the best of the local jazz talent. Inspired by the concept behind Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic performances, Storror’s “Jazz at the Albert,” now often shortened to “Jazzata,” celebrated its 40th anniversary of promoting high level jazz events in Bristol in 2024. As a club owner and music promoter, Storror transformed The Albert Inn pub in Bedminster, Bristol—which had a seating capacity of just under 80 patrons—into one of Europe’s most renowned jazz establishments. His efforts to bring high-quality jazz performances to Bristol-area audiences continue long after he ceased operating the club.
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Storror was also instrumental in aiding the development of Bristol’s Bebop Club and the Bristol Jazz Workshops, and he presented a series of radio shows, “Giants of Jazz,” for BBC Radio Bristol with Keith Warmington. Often at significant personal cost, Storror has regularly presented world-class international artists on various Bristol stages. These performers include Seamus Blake, Ambrose Akinmusire, Joey Calderazzo, David Murray, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and many others. He also maintains a longstanding relationship with one of Europe’s finest saxophonists, Andy Sheppard. Storror's most recent concerts have been presented in the newly refurbished Lantern Hall at the Bristol Beacon concert venue. His newest endeavor is an inaugural jazz festival debuting in September 2026 at the Radford Mill Organic Farm in Somerset.
Only a few weeks after moving to Bristol in July 2025, I attended my first performance facilitated by Storror. The concert featured Andy Sheppard and Swiss pianist Michael Arbenz performing music from their recent duo recording, From Bach to Ellington. The following conversation took place over beverages at The Wishing Well pub in Longwell Green, Bristol, on October 2, 2025.
Michael Arbenz (piano), Andy Sheppard (tenor saxophone)
Dave: It’s great to meet you, Ian. When we were at the venue a few weeks ago [the Bristol Beacon’s smaller performance space, Lantern Hall], I was sitting next to an older gentleman, currently living in Bath. When you came on stage to introduce Andy and Michael, he mentioned to me that you had a long career promoting jazz events in the city.
Ian: Yes, last year was my 40th anniversary.
Dave: I think everyone at the concert was worried for a few moments. You explained that in a long career of putting on thousands of shows, there were only two instances where the show needed to be cancelled due to logistical problems. I’m sure everyone was wondering if that night was about to be the third. Fortunately, despite some challenges with Michael’s cancelled and diverted flights, he ended up at the concert with a sliver of time to spare.
Often when you’re at an event, of course, you know it was facilitated by someone, but you’re not assuming that the people putting it together are particularly interested in the music. It's usually some committee. In New Zealand, where I was living for a decent amount of time, there's a reasonably sized jazz festival, but it's not always run by knowledgeable or passionate jazz people. The roster of artists is created cannibalizing the Melbourne Jazz Festival. They select a small number of the acts already coming to Australia and say, “That'll be our festival. And then we'll have a bunch of local people.” They get people to register their own gigs as though that's somehow the work of the festival.
Ian: Yes, it's a way of bulking out without having the cost of paying all the musicians.
Dave: So when there’s someone in a decent-sized city organizing jazz events for the love of the music, and not working under the safety net of government funding, there are bound to be some interesting stories there. That person probably has a pretty thorough knowledge of the jazz scene during, at the very least, the time they’ve been operating.
Of the significant British musicians I know, I suppose I haven’t had much of an idea of where they were from regionally. I’ve known about Andy [Sheppard] for quite a while, but I didn't know he had spent most of his adult life in Bristol. But when I saw the concert advertised—a friend in Birmingham sent me the listing—I bought tickets right away because I wanted to be in a room with his sound.
Ian: Yeah, Andy was born in Salisbury. He moved to Bristol when he was in his teens. And originally, he was a guitarist. But then he heard [John] Coltrane and that was the end of that. Andy is self-taught. He's never had a lesson in his life, really. He even taught himself to arrange and compose. He used to have a guy called Dave Buxton, who was a very good pianist, and he would do all his [music] notation for him and score everything out. But he learned how to do that too, after a while. He still sometimes uses the guitar to start writing tunes and then he shifts [the music] to keyboards or saxophone later.
Andy had been in Bristol for a while, but he moved over to France for about a year and a half. While he was in France he worked with Gil Evans. In the 1980s, Gil had a French jazz orchestra there and Andy managed to get a seat in that. That was great for Andy. He used to say that that band, and Gil Evans’s connection to Miles Davis, was like a direct link to God.
Andy was also part of a Paris saxophone ensemble called Urban Sax [founded and led by French composer and multi-instrumentalist Gilbert Artman], something like twenty-four saxophonists dressed up in nuclear fallout gear, gas masks and space suits. They'd have people on forklifts and different props and they played his droning sort of stuff and Andy got involved with that.
Note: (British saxophonist Andy Sheppard, who joined during his early-1980s Paris residency, described the ensemble as "prowling the streets in nuclear-protection suits." Sheppard also recalled "choreographed chaos" with props evoking dystopian machinery.)
Ian: He loved his time over there and learned to speak fluent French. When he came back into Bristol, which was probably around 1982 or 1983, that's when I first got to know him. He was playing gigs and people were saying, “You've got to hear this guy, he's amazing.” And, of course, as soon as I heard him...
Dave: And so that was right around the time you started doing your thing at the Albert?
Ian: Yeah, I had a pub called the Albert. I started doing music in 1983–84. I could hear already that Andy was going to be something special. The tone that was coming out of his horn was like nothing else I’d heard in our area.
Dave: Right.
Ian: He was several cuts above. Obviously, nobody knew him then. I got friendly quite quickly with Andy and he started doing a lot of gigs in my pub with various outfits.
Dave: And you weren't just organizing the music. You were actually operating the venue.
Ian: Right, it was my business. I was the landlord of the pub. Because of that, I couldn't go out to hear jazz gigs. So, my idea was to bring it into my front room [bar]. And that's how I started it off.
At first, I was doing it as totally free entry. I paid the bands out of the takings. It took quite a long time to get it built up, about two to three years.
Dave: So, when you decided, “I’m going to create this venue,” was it specifically for music? Did you have that in mind from the beginning?
Ian: When I went in there, it was both a way of developing a business and a way to express my love of music, jazz in particular. When I took the pub over, it was only open three days a week: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It wasn't open on Sundays. I had to get the place open every day of the week. I was having to get things like darts teams and cribbage teams, on different nights of the week to get more trade in the door. There was no business on Sunday at all, and it had been like that for about two years. So, I thought, “Well, I'll try jazz on Sunday because nothing's happening right now.” And it built up over a period. But because we were in the pub industry, the trade stuff always came my way. Remember Schlitz beer in America?
Dave: Sure.
Ian: Schlitz was one of the early corporate sponsors of jazz events in the US and they were trying to break into the English market. They decided to set up a jazz competition, which they were going to back and help to promote in all the pubs in the UK. One morning I got this notice through the post about this jazz competition, basically, “Do you want to nominate anybody to go into this competition?” I got in touch with Andy. I said, “Come on over and have a look at this.” First, he said, “Oh, yeah, I'm going to give that a go.”
The nomination had to come from the pub, so I had to be the one to enter it. I filled out most of the form and gave it to Andy. I said, “You’ve got to fill in a little paragraph on the back about what you've been doing [with your music] so far. “And then we'll send it in.” So, he took it away and I guess he thought about it for a week—and then he binned it! He said, “I don't think I want to do this.” He's never been into the competitive side of music. You know the old thing that the Americans used to do, about “cutting.”
Dave: Cutting contests.
Ian: Yeah. They’d get together and have a go at each other. Andy was never into that. He just didn't like it at all. He didn't like that aspect of it. He thought everybody should collaborate as musicians. So that's why he binned it. But then, three or four days later, he phones me up and says, “I think I want to do it.” So, I got another form, we filled it all out again, and we sent it in. You also had to send a demo recording in with the application, Andy got accepted into the regional finals and he won that part of it easily.
The final was in London at a gay night club called "Heaven," located under a railway bridge near Charing Cross station. It’s a massive club. But this was obviously on a weeknight where they didn't operate as a club. There were four bands on and the event was televised. Joe Zawinul [Weather Report] was on the panel along with an English saxophonist, Gail Thompson. She is no longer alive.
Ian: Based on the performances, Andy should have won it, but he was penalized for breaking the rules of the competition. Because it was being televised, the musicians were supposed to keep each tune to three and a half minutes. But Andy got into a saxophone solo, and he just went on and on and on. And it was great. He was doing all this circular breathing, and it was spectacular. I've still got footage of it from the night. But it was long.
Dave: So, they didn't disqualify him?
Ian: No, they knocked him down to second, because he broke the [time limit] rule. Even though everyone on the night said, “He's the best soloist we've heard tonight.” When it was broadcast, the saxophone quartet, Itchy Fingers, won the top prize, but Andy still won quite a healthy prize, and they paid the band for playing.
There were two places Andy was regularly playing in in Bristol: my place, The Albert, and the Kings Arms up on Whiteladies Road. The Kings Arms had a room at the back, which was a skittle alley, and they used to put music events in there. When the competition was broadcast, Rob Partridge of Island Records was at home doing some work on his laptop, or his computer, as it was in the day, and he had it on television. He wasn't taking much notice, but when Andy did this solo, it caught Rob’s attention and made him stop what he was doing. Two days later he was down in Bristol, and he signed Andy up to Island Records.
He was on the Antilles label, which was the jazz label of Chris Blackmore's Island Records.
He did four albums on that label. The debut album was with his original quartet from the competition. The second was a slightly changed quartet, Introductions in the Dark, followed by his first all star big band Soft on the Inside. There is a brilliant promo, hour-long video for this album out there somewhere. The last album was a quintet, but it was quite a groove-based band, and it was a little different from what he'd been doing before, with electric bass and keyboards, In Co-Motion.
Dave: Was Courtney Pine on that label?
Ian: Courtney Pine's on that as well, yeah. And that's how that happened. There were three saxophonists who came through at the same time: Tommy Smith from Scotland, Courtney, and Andy. All at one time. And that built something of a jazz revival in the UK. There hadn’t been anyone with that kind of profile since saxophonist Tubby Hayes in the 60s and 70s. So this was quite a new thing that all these good young saxophonists were coming through at the same time.
Andy’s record deal was a three-album deal, and he did all three albums, plus one more.
But then Antilles got bought out by EMI. He did sign a deal with EMI [Blue Note], but after two albums with them, he wasn't very happy.
It reflects Andy’s sense of humour as to how and when he named and released the two albums. His partner Rebecca was expecting their first child, which wasn’t planned. He called the first album, Rhythm Method, a reference to the lack of family planning, but also a musical reference. By the way, he had to change the name of the album for release in the United States as it was deemed too risqué for the US public. The second one, Delivery Suite, came out nine months later to mark the birth of his daughter.
Ian: Blue Note released Andy’s first album, and they asked him to go to New York to do a week of performances there, which he was happy to do. But the way the record company set it up, Andy was probably not going to get paid anything. They'd pay the rest of the band but, because money was tight and it was his album, Andy wouldn’t earn anything from the gigs. They said they would have the albums on sale in New York. So, the press that they were doing and the work in the clubs that he was playing would get people to buy the album. But when he got to New York, they hadn’t sent out any of the records. Andy felt that he had gone all that way for nothing. “Oh yeah, I'm not earning anything. Yes, I get exposure in New York for a week. But the albums you said would be there, aren't on sale.”
That sort of started him down the path of wanting out. Once he decided that, it cost him £80,000 to buy himself out of the contract. But he did get back the rights to his music back because of that.
Dave: Wow, that's when recorded jazz music was worth something, if you had to pay £80,000 to get out of a record contract.
Ian: It took him three years to pay it off, but he did it early enough in his career, and his profile was really high at that time. He was getting lots of work. Serious Productions in London, they're now just called “Serious,” is a big promotion company that brings lots of Americans into London. They also run the London Jazz Festival series. Andy had a particularly good relationship with one of the directors, John Cummings, and with his help, they started putting him together with some interesting non-jazz musicians to work with. That really raised his profile.
He worked with Nigel Kennedy, the classical violinist, which he hated, but he got paid very well because the classical musicians' rate was enormous. He played with Indian violinist Shankar, classical pianist, Joanna McGregor and John Harle, the classical saxophonist. So, there were lots of these little pockets of music that he was able to get into, that raised his profile. His own groups then started to do festivals. That's how it all took off for Andy.
Two years ago, it was my 40th anniversary of promoting music in Bristol. Andy lives in Portugal now, but I got him to do a quartet gig with some guys that he used to work with in the UK. When they came back for the second set, he announced from the stage that they were going to play a new tune and it was dedicated to me! He was telling everybody how I helped him get on, early on. I didn't really have much to do with his success. He is a remarkable talent, and he was going to get there anyway. But he said that the key thing for him was the jazz competition and having regular gigs in my pub, how these opportunities allowed him to experiment, and how we became great friends. He tells the audience that he's written this song for me, called "The Dog's Bollocks.”
Dave: Ha! He's an interesting character.
Ian: Yeah, he is.
Dave: And, like you say, following a bit of a different philosophical path. Like maybe being disconnected from the American aesthetic allows you to do that a little bit more.
Ian: I've worked with quite a few American guys over the years, even when I was at the pub. Most of them were very good to work with. The pub really got such a good reputation, even though the bar was only officially licensed for eighty, but we did squeeze in up to a hundred at times—people stood on the tables and chairs at the back. It was cramped but it had a great atmosphere. And I ran it like a real club. There was no talking while the musicians were playing. My bar staff carried on serving but, during the music, they didn't ring the till. They would write down all the orders on a bit of paper and would then ring it all in at half time or at the end.
We also had a lounge bar where all my regulars could go, and they didn't have to be involved with the music. Gradually, as we were getting better musicians, we started charging on the door. We ended up having David Murray perform. Our normal door charge was between five and eight pound. We charged fifteen quid a ticket for the Murray gig. It sold out in eight days.
Dave: That's also when the pound was worth more too, right?
Ian: Oh, yeah. But loads of top Americans came over in those days and in the following decades. I was able to work with some of them, the ones that I could afford to book, or would come for my sort of fees. They wanted to come because of the growing reputation of the venue. We had guitar legend Tal Farlow, pianist Joey Calderazzo, and a long list of saxophonists: Nelson Rangell, Chris Cheek, Mark Turner, Michael Hashim, Ben Clatworthy, Spike Robinson, Alexander McCabe, Tim Warfield, and the late great Jim Pepper. Clarinet player Evan Christopher came in 2011 and Don Byron with his band, Existential Dred, was here in 1998 on a tour organized by the sadly missed Contemporary Music Network.
Don’s band featured an amazing line-up with James Zoller [trumpet], David Gilmour [guitar], Uri Caine [piano], Reggie Washington [bass], Ben Wittman [drums], Dean Bowman [voice], Sadiq Bey [poet/rapper] and augmented by British based trombonist, Fayez Virji. Yet again, another seminal gig. The band got in late that day and hardly had time to soundcheck. And the band barely squeezed onto our tiny stage.
Near the end of the gig, Don addressed the packed, delighted audience, which turned out to be one of the funniest, black-humored interactions I’ve ever heard. “Nice to be here, but because we got here late, we haven’t been able to see anything of your beautiful city. What its famous for?” The audience in almost perfect harmony responded “Slavery!” Bristol was once a leading port involved in the African trade in slaves to the American colonies. Don’s eyes opened wide and the other Black members of the band drew breath and whistled inquisitively. Don pranked back, “Have we come to a Ku Klux Klan meeting?” Everybody laughed loudly and it rounded off a wonderful night. The gig was awesome for both band and audience.
Read the review in The Independent here.
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Guitarist Wayne Krantz (Steely Dan) played The Albert in 2002 with Tim LeFebvre and Keith Carlock
Ian: This gig was brokered via Jed Williams, the legendary programmer at the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales. He acted as a sort of agent for Wayne in the UK, and this gig was a landmark gig for us at the pub. We had a great talk with all the guys for an hour or so after the gig. We used to lay on a late night curry from the takeaway just up the road from the pub, and it was very good quality. They would walk it down to us and we often got quite a few freebie dishes, because the orders were pretty large. Jed was enigmatic and was a difficult character to get to know well. He always kept his cards close to his chest, when announcing the lineups for the festival. This was because he added top US artists at the very last minute, who he had managed to talk into dropping in to the festival on the way home from the North Sea Jazz Festival. It would be a coup for the festival and usually the only gig for those US musicians in the UK that year. Wayne grew very fond of Jed and the work he did on his behalf over here. When Jed passed away in 2003, I went over to Cardiff for his funeral and was amazed—but not totally surprised—that Wayne was there. He had flown into the UK on the morning of the funeral and flew out directly after the wake. I think that says it all.
There was also work with trombonist Steve Davis; Dave Paquette, a New Orleans pianist; Joe Locke and Steve Hobbs, and guitarists Ron Jackson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Mundell Lowe, Doug Raney, and Joe Cohn. Pianists Bruce Barth, who was later MD for Tony Bennett, John Colliani, and Joe Barbetto. Vocalists like George Shervington, Stacey Kent, and Marlene Verplank; drummers Tony Petrocinno, Gerald Cleaver, and Keith Copeland, and bass players Howard Britz and Joseph Lepore.
Then there was tenor saxophonist Jean Toussaint [Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers], who was freshly resident in the UK, as was Pee Wee Ellis [James Brown], and Scott Stroman. Several other were in the same position: drummers Clifford Jarvis, Jeff Williams, and Gene Calderazzo; and pianist, Kirk Lightsey.
Jean Toussaint
Seamus Blake
American bass player, Michael Janisch also had moved to live here around 2001. He married a Brit and started his own record label, Whirlwind Records, in the UK. He had come to play as a sideman with various UK outfits, at my venues at Colston Hall 2 and the Hen and Chicken.
This meant there was another steady flow of Yanks coming to Bristol. He fed us several US bands and artists that he had on his label: The Bobby Avey Project, which included saxophonist Miguel Zenon, Ben Monder [guitar], Bobby Avey [piano], Michael Janisch, and Jordan Perlson [drums].
And also Jon Irabagon and George Colligan in a quartet with Micheal on bass, led by Scotsman, Andrew Bain on drums. Andrew is now Head of Jazz at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Ambrose Akinmusire
New York Standards Quartet
Ian: [Saxophonist] Seamus Blake was also here in 2011.
Dave: I saw that. Also, Ambrose [Akinmusire]. And the New York Standards Quartet with Dave Berkman and Tim Armacost. I know those guys. That’s a fantastic group.
Ian: Yeah, they were great and it included Michael Janisch on bass and the wonderful drummer, Gene Jackson. Also, on the Akinmusire gig was saxophonist Walter Smith III, who was outstanding. That series of gigs I did at the Colston Hall 2, now The Lantern at Bristol Beacon, in that same room as the other night. In 2014 and 2015, we put on a pretty young band from New Orleans called The Session which included a very good line-up [Ashlin Parker, trumpet; Andrew McGowan, piano; Jasen Weaver, bass; Darrian Douglas, drums] and a Brit ex-pat, James Partridge [saxophones]. They came over to work a summer school in Aberystwyth, Wales, and we tagged these gigs on the back of that. They went down a storm, enough that we did extra nights at the Be-Bop club in the same weeks.
The Session
Jonathan Kreisberg
Ian: Guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg was another top musician to play in my program more than once, always with an outstanding American lineup. In 2016 he brought pianist David Kikoski, Rick Rosato on bass, and drummer, Colin Stranahan. The following year it was Nitai Herskovits, also a stunning pianist, Matt Clohesy [bass], and Colin. Both gigs were sold out and outstanding.
Going back to The Lantern, before the renovation, the room was set up in the opposite direction. And the acoustic in there was awful. The PA guys were always fighting the room to get a good sound. Part of that series also included the Kyle Eastwood Quintet (Clint’s son), but that was using UK musicians, Kyle has continued to use the same guys for some years now, when working in Europe. The stage was at the other end. Now they've flipped it around so all the dressing rooms are at the back, at the same end as the main hall. Before they were all over the place. Now it’s called the Lantern Hall. But then it was called the Little Theatre, and it was a theater at the time. They put on plays back in the early days.
Dave: As soon as you put a drum set in most concert venues, it’s much harder to get a decent sound for jazz.
Ian: Exactly.
Dave: Not that there was a drum set in the room the other night.
Ian: Did you look up and have a look at the ceiling? When they refurbished the room, they found that there was a false ceiling in there. It was still quite high. And above that were these natural vents. They've uncovered them and cleaned them all up and those vents open the room up now, acoustically. The sound doesn't bounce around like it used to. And they’ve got acoustic curtains on the sides. They're really good. They're thick and they suck up the sound just enough. But there's still a natural acoustic in there and it sounds fantastic.
Dave: Well, it looks really good. And the whole presentation of the building is high quality.
Ian: Absolutely.
Dave: One of the attractive things about contemplating moving here was knowing how convenient it was to get into London. And hearing the London Symphony Orchestra, once in a while, will be a major perk. But it’s even more convenient for orchestras to come here and I can take one bus into town right to the hall. I was impressed to see that the LSO is here several times a year. You think it’s going to be very convenient to go to London, by any standard, but not as convenient as being able to see them in Bristol.
Thinking back to when you were starting to run the Albert, even putting the music part aside for a minute, running a venue like that is a ton of work. And you’ve got to know what you're doing, otherwise there’s a high risk of bankruptcy, almost immediately. And even if you do it’s high risk.
Ian: There were several challenging times in the period I was running it. There were a lot of changes in the brewing trade. That caused real problems. A couple of times I nearly went out of business. But I kept it going. Every time it dipped down, I managed to get back up again. But it was hard work, stressful.
Dave: And I imagine most of that involves a whole set of separate skills from the music part.
Ian: Absolutely.
Dave: What was the catalyst that first made you interested in music, or jazz music, specifically?
Ian: My dad and his record collection. I was playing and listening to his Louis Armstrong records at four years old. So, I wouldn’t scratch all of his records, he had a set of certain records that I could play that weren’t his pristine ones.
When I was growing up, I played the life out of some of them. Louis Armstrong especially, but he also had a lot of big band stuff: Ted Heath, a British UK big band leader. Dad’s taste was pretty straight-ahead. He didn't really like Charlie Parker or anything from the later eras.
By the time I was twelve or thirteen I started to get a little bit bored with what I was listening to. I wanted something a little different and I started listening to bebop and music on the Blue Note label.
And then I found Monk. Thelonious Monk was my path to the other side, to the contemporary improvised jazz side, which I love. So, my love of jazz music really goes from Blue Note and swing right through to the avant garde. I can take all that now. I think it took me about five years to get my ear tune to avant garde before I could begin to say I understood it. My friendship with Keith Tippett helped me get to understand what improvised music was all about. You know, real improvised music, I mean no notated music, where the band just starts playing and finishes; two one-hour sets without stopping.
Keith Tippett
Keith was a local improvising pianist who became world class in his field, a maestro, but not all that well appreciated in the UK, in comparison to Europe. I worked with him a lot. He passed away a couple years ago. He was a true giant.
Dave: Your father wasn't a musician though?
Ian: No, he just loved recordings, he loved jazz. He took me to see Duke Ellington at Colston Hall when I was about ten.
It was Duke Ellington's 70th birthday tour. There’s a double vinyl album from that tour, which I've got. Most of it was recorded in Manchester, but there are one or two tracks from the Bristol gig on it. Satin Doll was one of those.
Dave: You're from Bristol originally?
Ian: I'm a born and bred Bristolian.
Dave: Duke’s 70th birthday? That was very late ‘60s?
Ian: That would have been 1969.
Note: The UK leg in November 1969 included Bristol, Colston Hall, November 25, 1969, and Manchester. Duke Ellington’s 70th Birthday Concert was originally released in 1970 on Solid State Records, later reissued on Blue Note.
I remember that they played the first number and I said to Dad, “Which one is Duke Ellington?”
And he said, “He's not on the stage yet.” Then they played "Take the ‘A’ Train" and he came on.
His hair was slicked down, and he had an azure-blue jacket on. That band had a lot of the greats in it: Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonzalvez, Cat Anderson, and Cootie Williams.
It was my dad's record collection, really, that got me switched on to jazz. He also developed his own listening a bit. He loved Oscar Peterson and he also had some Jacques Loussier in his collection, which I got to quite like, that mix of classical music and jazz which Loussier did really well. But it was Monk. That was the one that really switched me on to something completely different.
Dave: I was thinking about comparing a photo I saw of the Albert to the famous picture of Monk outside Mintons. When you first see that photo, you might get the sense that this was some grand establishment, especially considering the reverence it has in jazz history. But in reality, it was much more modest. So, is it fair to say that you’ve either been directly or indirectly involved in much of the jazz that has happened in Bristol since the early 1980s? You've certainly been aware of almost everything that's ever happened.
Ian: I've helped steer it. We got to the state where we were charging every week on the door, so every Sunday night there was a gig. We'd also set up an acoustic night called the Albert ‘Hole’ Folk and Music Club. H, O, L, E was a play on words with the Royal Albert Hall in London. My partner, Lorraine, was into folk music so she was programming all of that. I set up all the infrastructure for it. We had to bring in the movable stage twice a week and take it back out the next day. In the beginning we were doing the folk on Fridays, upstairs in our club room, which held fifty people. Then we brought it downstairs to the bar on Wednesdays. So, there were two nights of music on, per week, throughout the year.
Sometimes the door charge for the jazz was as low as three quid. Sometimes it was fifteen quid for something like Murray or nine for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. We had to take all the tables and chairs out to make room for that gig. That was yet another stonking gig and I remember it was a very warm night. We opened all the windows and kept both doors open. The music flowed out onto the street and the audience also spilled outside to dance.
The guys set up on stage and the sousaphone player, called ‘Tank,’ had to sit on a small stool, which meant the bell of his horn just cleared the ceiling by about two inches.
He had the lungs of an ox, having to keep up the base line of all the tunes, all night.
The Dirty Dozen on that night were Kevin Harris [tenor saxophone], Roger Lewis [soprano and Bari saxophones], Efram Towns and Gregory Davis [trumpets], Charles Joseph [trombone], and Kirk 'Tank' Joseph [sousaphone].
When we got to this stage of development, scheduling everything was more difficult for me. I had managed to integrate the best local musicians into my program with the touring guys I was getting. It was more difficult to keep the best locals in the mix because so many bands wanted to come down from London to play.
There were some jazz workshops that started in a pub called the Crown and Anchor over in the Hotwells area of Bristol. But they were kicked out of the venue.
They came to me and said, “Is there any way we can use your upstairs room?” I said, “Yeah, you can use the upstairs room, on this night, and that night. But maybe we should look for somewhere in the area where you were operating because everybody's used to knowing where that is.”
There was a pub further down the road called The Bear Hotel, also in Hotwells. My sister-in-law and her husband took over the running of The Bear. And I said to the couple, “This is perfect for you to get these guys to come into your back room and start this up.” This was then quickly followed by a jazz night as well, which was called the “Bebop Club,” which continues in a different venue to this day.
Dave: How far away were those venues from each other?
Ian: Five hundred yards. It was down the other end of the road, really.
Dave: Oh really? That close? And how far away from The Albert?
Ian: We were over the other side of the river, in South Bristol, a couple of miles away, so that worked really well. The bands that I couldn't put on or didn't have room for in the schedule started playing at the Bebop Club. That really raised the overall scene. So, we had the jazz workshops, which were two nights a week. And that was for all standards. There were very basic level musicians, people just learning to play jazz, through to very competent musicians. The local guys provided rhythm sections for that. From the workshops, people started forming their own bands and they would play at the Bebop club. My promise to them was, “If you get good enough, I'll give you a gig in my place.” So, there was now a little pathway of growth for bands to explore.
And then what I tried to do, because I was a little bit friendly with Ronnie Scott, was recommend a few acts for his (London) club. Ronnie had come down and played at my place, and we had a few really good conversations, before and after the gig. I could go to Ronnie's and he’d put me on the guest list. So that’s how friendly we were. I wouldn't say we were bosom buddies. Nobody was that close with Ronnie. But he appreciated what I was trying to do and he suggested a couple of things to me. His idea was that if we got a band in Bristol, that was good enough, I'd give Ronnie a shout and Ronnie would try and put them on for one night, on a Sunday.
This now, created a curve for a band to get a gig outside of Bristol. That was engineered to a certain extent. And I've always helped advertise other people's gigs too. To me, the more people who are going out to jazz gigs, there's more audience for me to tap into. My newsletter isn’t just the gigs that I’ve got coming up. It’s also all the other gigs that are happening in all the other jazz venues in Bristol, and even some over in Bath.
I also did a thing on Radio Bristol for about six years with another friend of mine, Keith Warmington, who was a well-known local radio personality. We used to do a drive time thing called “Giants of Jazz” for the BBC.
One we did about Clifford Brown, got a Sony Award nomination for that programme. At first, it was only half an hour long; I would pick a musician, and try and explain his entire life & career, in half an hour, and play three or four tracks to show that guy’s style and work. They were quite successful.
Keith’s slot then got moved to a late-night slot, 11 o’clock until twelve. I agreed to carry on doing it and we extended the shows to an hour. Although it was a local radio station, it attracted quite large audience. It got replayed to two or three other regional BBC areas, and later in the week it was replayed locally at a different time of the week. We reached something like 28,000 people at its zenith.
Dave: Do you still have all of those recordings?
Ian: Yeah. My dad used to tape them for me. So, I’ve got most of them on audio tape. He recorded them for me because of my accent. I asked him to record it because I wanted to know what I was sounding like on the radio because I had no idea. I found it quite intimidating to start with. I sat there with Keith, who's a mate, but there's a presence, you know, there's a load of people out there. The audience was about 17,000 on Radio Bristol and then it went out to 28,000 when it was replayed, so it was quite a lot. Keith had a great radio voice, deep and raspy. He’s retired now but he’s still around and doing great. He's a musician himself. He plays very good blues harmonica, plays guitar, and sings a little bit. But he's more of a singer/songwriter now.
This whole series got Keith into jazz. As I was playing this stuff, he was absorbing it all. I didn't pick many difficult subjects because the audience out there were not going to like everything. Even David Murray was, you know, too far out there for the Radio Bristol audience. I did one on Ornette Coleman one time, but I didn't play too many pieces on it, obviously.So, again, [the radio show] was another way of mine, trying to get jazz out there, to get more people interested in coming to the gigs. That was the general idea.
But it was good fun doing it. It used to take me about twenty hours to do the program, write it all out and pick the pieces of music. Then I had to work out when we were going to fade in and out the music. And then I'd script it so I knew where the music was going to slot in. The taping of it was a challenge for me. I talk very quickly, so I had to slow my voice down to make it sound right.
A local taxi driver friend who used to pick me sometimes, says, “I listen to your show every week.” But he had some suggestions for things I kept saying, like “ahs” and “ums.” So that was helpful and I weaned myself off those bad habits. That was the reason for my dad recording it originally, but then he kept going, until there were three full boxes of them.
One of the things I've been wanting to do is take twelve of those shows and redo them as LIVE talks with audio visuals. That way I can go out and do local roundtables or guest speaker gigs.
I'm thinking about the ones I've got on the go like Ella [Fitzgerald], Frank Sinatra, because that's an easy one to sell, and Dexter Gordon.
Dave: And you want to record a voiceover?
Ian: No, I do it live. I’ll go and do the talk live but then use visuals using photographs. And play music as well.
Dave: Right.
Ian: It could be anything from forty minutes to two hours. And I thought, I could do that when I retire.
Dave: What's your job now, outside of promoting the gigs?
Ian: I work part time for Bristol Museums at The Red Lodge, a historic house on Park Row, Bristol. It has the oldest interior rooms in Bristol, dating from 1580, so they are Tudor and Elizabethan. I’m the Senior Visitor guide there. I've tried to stop doing it [the concert promoting] twice.
It's been impossible, because musicians keep phoning me up and saying, “Well, we want to come down to Bristol and do a gig, but we don't want to do it unless you're going to be involved in it.” And that's a trust that has built up. I’ve never been able to pay them what they were worth, but I paid them as best as I could do, and they respected that. Plus, the way I put the gigs on, with the audience being quiet and giving it their full attention, the musicians appreciated that. They really loved coming down and playing.
Now though, I'm starting to be able to pay that loyalty back. The gigs at the Lantern are paying off and I can pay them at least two to three hundred quid a man now. I could never ever do that before. The guys used to come down from London for about £100 a man. I charged six or seven pounds on the door. And I would try and make that money. If we sold out, we would make it. If we didn't, then my cash register subsidized the gigs. Over the twenty-six years, it probably cost me about £100,000 to subsidize the music. But, if you divide the number of gigs I did into that amount of money, it worked out to be about fifty quid a gig. And you couldn't even hire a DJ for fifty quid, even in those days.
Dave: I guess that’s a pretty typical story. I ran a couple of events in New Zealand, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and these Jamey Aebersold style jazz workshops, that allowed us to bring some top international musicians to the country. One of my colleagues at the university ran a big band for more than fifty years and was one of the main sources the country had for guest artists. He also ran the university big bands. But the problem with getting anyone there was the massive flight cost.
Within America, you could fly almost anywhere for five hundred bucks. Even getting them to Europe would have been far more reasonable than flying them to New Zealand. Then it's $2500.00 if they'll fly coach. If they start wanting an upgrade you're talking eight or nine thousand for a plane ticket. That makes it almost impossible to manage. So there was a lot of goodwill. They had to want to do it for the experience of being in New Zealand. And they're in love with the music, of course, and then they see what you're doing. Jazz musicians understand some of the financial realities and how much the whole thing relies on tireless effort by educators.
And your situation where, “I've got my club, then we've got the smaller club leading into my club, then we've got the bigger club in the big city and we're leading up to that.” And you’ve obviously thought about how you need to build things for the main venue to thrive. “Somehow, we cross pollinate these groups.” And you can see why people like Andy are appreciative of people who care to support them early on.
Ian: Well, that's why, now, there's a dearth of American musicians coming over here because nobody can afford them, unless they're coming over to play a festival. Even Ronnie's is not having that many Americans these days. That was always the place that all the Americans went to. Now even Ronnie's can't afford to get some of them.
Dave: I've got my tickets for Donny McCaslin coming up in October. And it’s pretty expensive to go to Ronnie’s compared to the Village Vanguard. We’re going to both shows.
Ian: Yeah, Ronnie's has changed. In the earlier days, Ronnie's was the place to go and hear jazz, but it was a bit of a dive. It wasn't posh. And Ronnie had money problems over the years. We talked about that a couple of times because I understood some of the pressures, he had, running the club. He actually did a really stupid thing—which he acknowledged—he franchised the bars out. He was getting an income from them every month. But he had no control over the bars. They weren't even serving draft beer. It was all in cans. And they hardly had any food. It was like toasted sandwiches and that was about it. And it was awful. The musicians wouldn't drink in Ronnie's. They went to a pub just down the road from Ronnie’s, which they called the ‘Dirty Duck’ [The Dog and Duck].
Dave: Because it's like the restaurant business and it’s one of the hardest to make work, even without the music part.
Ian: Yeah. Now it's a money maker. If you do it well, you can use it to subsidize the music. Now it's owned by an American lady, the big Broadway producer [Sally Greene]. She bought the Old Vic in London when it was run down and almost going to close. She put Kevin Spacey in there for the first five years as an artistic director. Then it was making lots of money. Then she bought Ronnie Scott’s and changed it all around. It's really quite nice now. The basic structure is the same, a room with seats on the side and the pit in the middle and a balcony bit at the top. The bar is now at the back of the room instead of down the side. The stage is still in the same place and the seating is pretty much the same as it always used to be. But she's poshed it up. And it's now two sittings. When I used to go, I’d get in there for about 8pm, and I wouldn’t come out until nearly four o'clock in the morning.
Dave: Yeah, I’ve had tickets to both sets a couple of times and everyone still needs to clear the room in between them so they can clean it.
Ian: What used to happen was a support set, then the main artist for two sets , and then another support set. But you got four sets of jazz. Right now, it's like one set of support and one of main artists and then you’re out.
Dave: Ronnie’s is set up in a similar way to the Jazz Standard in New York, with the meal service and the general seating set up, and the overall “redness” of the interior. It closed several years ago, I think during the first year of COVID. Quite a bit different from the setup at the Village Vanguard where there’s only drinks and the place holds maybe 125 people.
Ian: I like what they've done with the video system they’ve got there. They’ve got a camera that films all the performances live, and you can watch everything online.
Dave: Yeah, I think that's Smalls and Mezzro. The Village Vanguard was in some financial distress during COVID, like almost everything else, and they were selling live/online performances as an emergency set up. But only for a short time. But Smalls and Mezzro, those are managed by this piano player guy, Spike Wilner. They've got thousands of videos of past performances. You can subscribe to them, but they've also got them all on their YouTube channel where I don’t think you need to subscribe to it anymore. But yeah, I watch a lot of those. Especially being in New Zealand and being so far away from everything, it was very useful.
And for that kind of setup, the sound is pretty good. Some online audio is so bad that you just don't want to listen to it. But Smalls is actually quite good. And they just have a pretty minimalist two camera system. There's a camera on a little bit of a track where it just moves back and forth randomly and then there's another one pointed at the piano. This is a pretty simple compared to what they could be doing but I think that’s all part of the charm.
Ian: Oh, yeah, but it's got to be pretty much fixed, to be quite honest, hasn't it?
Dave: Yeah, especially if you've got a small venue, you're not going to get people in the crowd with handheld cameras or anything complicated. One cool thing for me was watching Alex Sipiagin’s group playing a few months ago and… well, one other thing that made it cool was one of my former students was playing bass in his group. This kid, Hamish Smith, he's about 25 now, was in the New Zealand Youth Jazz Orchestra and did the summer workshops. He went to MSM [Manhattan School of Music] but has been doing some really great gigs in New York recently including subbing in the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Luis Bonilla the New York trombone player and VJO guy who is now teaching university in Graz, [Austria], also had Hamish in his JMI youth orchestra and really helped encourage him through school. But anyway, Alex’s group was playing with Dave Kikoski, Hamish, and Donald Edwards, and then Chris Potter walks in and talks to Alex. But then he takes his horn out and then plays with the band for the whole set.
Ian: Dave Kikoski is a remarkable player.
Dave: Oh, yeah. He's as good as it gets. I've done more than a dozen recordings with Dave. He’s still like a big kid. A ton of energy. The last time I saw him in person, we were in the Green Room at Ronnie's. He was there three years ago with the Mingus Dynasty. We're just hanging there and he was talking about writing all this new solo music for solo piano and he's just bouncing off the wall.
Ian: He did my gig with Jonathan Kreisberg, the guitarist. I was like, “Oh, fantastic, major bonus.” We were waiting to open the doors to let the people in. This was at the Hen and Chicken, one of the pubs I moved to after I left The Albert. Dave’s freaking out saying, “Can you give me five minutes? I’ve got a tune in my head, and I need to write it down…”
Dave: The first time I met him in person was 2012. I had written music for this jazz quintet album we were recording, and it was Alex Sipiagin and a few of his regular guys: Kikoski, Boris Kozlov, Donald Edwards, and Donny McCaslin. Dave, Boris, and Donald are regular rhythm section guys with the Mingus Big Band and Boris is the MD. And so we're in this popular rehearsal venue called Michiko Studios, in a pretty small room, and Dave gets in a few minutes late and he’s pretty frantic. He has all of the music printed off but went to the front desk to get a tape dispenser so he could tape all the sheets. So, the band is playing through the first couple of tunes and he's playing and taping the parts at the same time as he goes.
But maybe the most remarkable thing I've ever seen, and I've told this to almost every group of jazz students that I've had, is what Dave did on one tune. I've written all the music and it's all original tunes. I've got some of the tunes where I’ll use mode names for chord symbols, so instead of a C7 flat nine or something, there’s C aeolian or C Locrian sharp-two or whatever. I don’t remember the actual mode name but Dave didn’t really know what it was. Any advanced jazz student would know it but, since he was a student, Kikoski has forgotten a thousand times more things about jazz than almost anyone else knows. But Donny [McCaslin] is there, and Donny knows everything, so Dave is asking him what notes are in the scale. “Donny, what's that one, man?”
And he starts explaining but then Dave just points to the bass player and gets him to play the form of the tune and he says to Donny, “Sheets of sound!” They play through the form and Donny's just running up and down the scales that go with the different chords and modes. Kikoski is listening and playing chords as he hears them and, after two times through the form, he’s like, “Okay, I got it.” And he just had it after that. And that's where most kids in school have no idea yet, no idea the level at which some of these guys operate.
It's not like he didn't learn everything at one time, but he’s reached the point where the sound matters more than the labels. Which is what we always talk about as being the goal. It’s just music in his head, just sounds. And when he's operating in that area, there's nothing he can't hear, right? And so, he's just like, “I don't care about the method.” And it's like, “Okay, now there's the level.”
And you don’t get to see that often. You go to a great concert, and you hear a very polished performance. And when you go to a jazz festival masterclass, the artists have great things to say, but when they're standing in front of a bunch of kids, they're never going to say anything to scare the kids about how hard they’ll have to work. “If you really want to be as good as me, you'll have to practice eight hours a day for years.” And they never say that because they'll never be hired back. Because it's pretty negative, even though it's true. They also know that that’s not what most of the kids are there for either. But watching great musicians in rehearsals is here you get so see some things.
So, when I started making records with these guys on that level I got to see some of what they were really capable of doing. And a display of pure musical skills isn’t the performance but it’s very sobering. And if you’re in that mix as only the composer, you aren’t as distracted by worrying about playing your own part.
You also get to see them operate in their comfort zone. We did a bunch of records at Systems Two in Brooklyn. That version of it closed down when the couple who ran it retired but, while that was going, that was one of the really top places to record.
And these guys were there all the time. They knew the space and the engineers. If it was my project, I would get there earlier than the musicians, but the staff had everything set up already. “Donny likes this microphone and Alex likes this one. Jeff Watts is the drummer, and he’ll bring his own snare and cymbals but he'll use the rest of our shit. And it's almost like they're making music in their living room. That's how comfortable they were with that venue.
Ian: The first time I saw [Dave] Kikoski was in Ronnie's with Bob Berg. I was sitting about four rows back on a little table that Ronnie sorted out for me. And I just couldn't take my eyes off Kikoski. The rest of the band could have been there or not.
Dave: It’s true, there are very few musicians like him. Most jazz musicians aren’t as well-known as they deserve to be but in that community of people familiar with jazz, he’s at the top of many lists.
Ian: The only thing I would say is, I like finding and working with musicians who have a completely different sound or different take on things.
Dave: That was what was interesting about the concert the other night with Michael and Andy. After the concert I sent Michael an email to get a couple of charts and ask a couple of questions, so I could write a review. I can imagine enjoying hearing Michael playing a concert of fully notated contemporary classical music, in a non-improvised context. You could also imagine Michael doing a straight-ahead jazz trio gig and enjoying that just as much.
Ian: Which he still does. Florian, Michael's twin brother, is a drummer and they have this trio Vein. They came to Bristol. It's a long time ago now, over ten or twelve years ago. They did a gig for me, at the Hen and Chicken. Great gig. Straight ahead jazz. But I didn't know that Michael had a classical background. Florian's the one that drives the bookings and is my contact for the trio. He got in touch with me and asked me about Andy because they wanted to work with him.
Ian: For the gig they did for me at Hen and Chicken, I asked Andy if he'd come along and have a chat with them. He was living in Bristol then and he said, “Yeah, I'll come along.” They had a chat before the gig, then Andy walked around the corner to his house, got his sax, and came back and played the whole second set. I think they did three short European tours after that and that's how he got to know Michael. Florian is actually coming back in March next year [2026] to do a gig for me, as a trio with Greg Osby. I didn't know Michael's background was mainly classical until he proposed this duo thing.
Dave: But he's fully capable as a straight ahead player.
Ian: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I did think when I was listening to him solo that he wasn't quite as free as what I would call a natural jazz pianist. Do you know Will Vinson?
Dave:: Yes, he’s on one of my records with Alex [Sipiagin] and Chris Potter. Amazing player.
Ian: His mum lives in Bristol.
Dave: Oh, does she?
Ian: Yeah. When he left college [Guildhall], he was living in Bristol with his mother. He got a place at one of the jazz schools in New York [Manhattan School of Music]. I think he had enough money to pay for his first semester, but it was four semesters he had to cover financially.He started playing in Bristol with the local guys. So, he was getting involved. He was a good young player, but he was raw. We did a benefit for him, and we managed to get enough money to pay for a second semester. Then he went and did the first year. And while he was in New York, he started playing, so he was earning money, which means he got to do the rest of his degree. I think he's back living in London now.
Dave: Because his wife is the head of jazz at the Guildhall.
Ian: Oh, right.
Dave: Jo Lawry. She's a vocalist. Australian, I believe, and has been a singer with Sting.
Ian: I got a feeling one of the reasons they've moved back is not only has she got that job, but that he was getting fed up with politics in the States with all that’s going on. He started writing some stuff on Facebook about it.
Dave: I think they spent most of COVID in Australia.
Ian: Well, there's a quintet he's in now, with a guitarist called Ant Law, and another player who has come back over. Really good bass player, his name is out of my bloody mind at the moment…
Dave: Orlando le Fleming.
Ian: Oh, yeah. So, he's moved back to London as well now. They’ve got a quintet now with Will, Orlando, Ant Law on guitar. I’m trying to get a date for that next year.
Dave: Oh, yeah, that would be great.
Ian: His alto playing has gone to a really high level since he's been in New York.
Dave: Oh, yeah. He's one of the best living players now. I also saw that Joey Calderazzo was on your roster of international players you brought here.
Ian: I got Joey to play twice at the pub. Two years on the trot. His brother Gene is a drummer and lives here now. Both married English girls and, in the summers, Joey used to come over with his wife to visit her mother in London. Gene would say to me, “Joey is coming over. Do you want to do a gig?” We only had an upright piano in the pub. On those occasions, I hired a baby grand piano. The first time I paid for it myself and I'd done it a few other times before, like Julian Joseph on my 10th anniversary. After doing those, I thought, “Why don't I get a sponsor for the piano in the future?” I was very good friends with the guys that ran Bath Ales brewery, and they hired the piano for me for two nights that Joey played. So, I luckily managed to get him twice through the family connection with Gene. He was working with Brecker then as well.
Dave: Right, starting in the ‘80s. He was with Brecker’s touring band. There’s a video of Brecker at Newport in the summer of 1987 which was the first time I’d ever heard of Brecker. Joey was in the band, at that point I was 13 and didn’t know who any of them were. I think I was a month or so from starting jazz band in school. Then he joined Branford’s quartet not long after Kenny Kirkland died. I saw Branford the first time in between, when he was doing tours and recordings with his trio.
Ian: I was a bit worried because he smokes these big fat stogies.
Dave: Joey does?
Ian: Yeah. And he was smoking on stage, because you could smoke in the pubs in those days, he's smoking on stage and he’s putting the cigar on the rented piano.
Dave: I remember a concert with Joshua Redman’s quartet at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada. After a great piano solo, Brad Mehldau lit up a cigarette and right behind him was a huge brass no smoking sign. That would have been a great picture if any of us had had camera phones back then. There have always been examples, going back to Sidney Bechet, top “New York” jazz musicians, a lot of them saxophone players, spending a lot of time in Europe. A few guys I know well like Luis Bonilla, who is now in Graz, and Alex Sipiagin in Italy. And Will is just coming home but the choice is still interesting. But it certainly helps jazz in general to have guys playing, and probably teaching, on a high level and living in all of these different places.
Ian: Andy’s work with Carla [Bley] certainly raised his profile in the States. And George Russell.
Dave: I think her records are probably where I heard Andy first.
Ian: Andy did George Russell's European “London Concerts” and the “European Concerts.” He did those twice with George and recorded two albums. It was billed as George’s big band, but it was mostly UK guys in the London ones and French guys in the European ones. Didier Levallet was the bass player. I think he organized most of the band for the first gig they did. That was a bit like with Gil coming over. He’d meet the band here and come in with his music and teach the band. Then they’d go tour and possibly record. They used to do that in those days. And George had that thick theory book.
Dave: The Lydian Chromatic concept.
Ian: You’ve got that book?
Dave: I've got it.
Ian: As far as I remember, he never made a huge amount of money out of jazz until he wrote that book. And then he got award after award, like big bursary awards.
Dave: I’m not sure he necessarily made huge amounts of money even from the book but it’s an interesting take on thinking harmonically. I think it's always still self-published and pretty expensive. The community of people who would care about it is still pretty small, relatively.
Ian: Andy loved George to death. He said he's a lovely guy to work with. Calm. Quiet talking. I met him once at one of the gigs and Andy said, “Come backstage and meet George.” That was nice.
Dave: Talk a bit about this Radford Mill Jazz Festival in September.
Ian: This September, I’m curating a new jazz festival at the Radford Mill Farm near Paulton in Somerset. Radford Mill has hosted regular folk and blues events for many years, but its jazz festival never gained much momentum. The organizers are hoping to relaunch it and build it into a lasting annual event. It’s going to be over the weekend of September 11th to 13th. It’s a popular camping spot but there are more upscale options for accommodation.
Friday night will be leading saxophonist Alan Barnes, a performer of more than five decades and widely regarded as one of the UK’s finest reed players. He also known for bringing a distinctive sense of humor to his performances. Alan will be joined by the ‘All-Stars’ a Bristol-based group featuring some of the South West’s finest instrumentalists: trumpeter, Jonny Bruce; pianist, Jim Blomfield; bassist, Riaan Vosloo; and Andy Haugue who plays trumpet and drumset.
Saturday’s program runs from 12:30pm to 11pm. We’re still adding bands but already have the Ben Kerrigan Trio, Woodwerk, and Silverado, a six-piece band playing the music of the legendary Blue Note pianist Horace Silver. That’s followed by a Latin set from the Saoco Collective. Sunday will feature a jazz brunch with the Mendip Swing Big Band performing two sets from 12:30 to 3:30pm.
Dave: What big dreams do you have for other things you want to accomplish going forward?
Ian: I'd like to keep the Jazzata thing going past me and have it set up as a non-profit company. I did get a good way down that road about eight years ago but didn’t manage to push it all the way through because it got a bit complicated. There's a lady I know, Sandra Fryer, who's really into jazz and has been working in local government for many years, dealing with buying and selling property. She knows how to fill out a form, let's put it that way. I think I've got her interested in what I’ve wanted to do with Jazzata.
Once I do that, I can actually apply for proper funding for things. I've never been able to apply for anything significant as a single individual. I did get some funding from Southwest Jazz for one commissioned piece of music. They gave me a thousand pounds but that's no longer an entity. That's the only time I ever had any funding. But I don't want to chair it as a community interest company. I’ll be artistic director or something similar. Once we get that set up, I'm going to look for a young person to come along that can do my job. In other words, I would teach him how to do stage management and booking and how to deal with the musicians when they're here and treat them properly. Ideally, we can get enough funding together to pay a salary, and then the Jazzata thing can continue on way past my time. I have talked to Sandra about this before. Sandra and I both served on the Bristol Jazz Festival committee as trustees.
The other thing I would like in the future is to put on a proper Bristol Jazz Festival. With most festivals it's almost all rock people and the jazz musicians are down the low end of the programme. We want to do one with jazz. So that might be something in the future, a mini festival, more than just a weekend. Like, Thursday & Friday night through Sunday.
Dave: So somewhat like North Sea? I think they still have three days crammed with shows.
Ian: North Sea festival is a monster. Not quite as intense as that. We'd like to have maybe two bands on Thursday night, two on Friday night, then various smaller venues Saturday and Sunday finishing up with something big. I've always had the idea of getting Andy to do a gig, where we’d get him to put his old big band back together, put them on a pontoon in the middle of the docks, with all the lighting, and have a fireworks display while the band's playing.
Dave: Andy is one of the most prominent jazz musicians associated with Bristol.
Ian: Maybe the most, apart from Keith Tippett.
Dave: One of the first things I'd like to do here is a Bristol-related album length jazz orchestra composition. Andy would be an obvious choice to be a featured artist playing solos.
Ian: You should talk with Andy Hague because Andy’s got his own big band. He's a trumpet player but he also plays drums. They're doing my Christmas gig this year because it's Andy's 60th birthday. So, it’s the Andy Hague Big 60 Birthday Band. And that's the December gig. And they're good. Andy has been running the Bebop Club for about seventeen years. He's mostly stopped doing that now because he's had enough of it. So, he's handing that over. He's not the world’s most technical trumpet player, but he has got a unique sound. How do I describe it? What's the Canadian guy who lived over here for most of his life?
Dave: Kenny Wheeler.
Ian: Kenny Wheeler. He sounds a little bit like Kenny Wheeler.
Dave: Speaking of another top North American jazz musician who moved over here.
Ian: If you come to that gig at Christmas, they’ll blow your socks off.
Dave: I'll definitely be there.
