I’m very excited to be teaming up again this weekend with the great Matt Roberts (of Matt Roberts Big Band, Gentleman’s Dub Club and more) playing a selection of the music of trumpeter Lee Morgan.

It’s the third of these we’ve done together – previously we’ve done a Miles First Great Quintet and a Freddie Hubbard project – and it’s a lot of fun to get into playing the music of another giant of the trumpet!

We did Sela last night and coming up are HEART, Headingley tonight (7th June) 7:30pm; Huddersfield Jazz (8th June) and Darlington Jazz (9th June).

I just finished editing this video of the new standards quartet with Sam Gardner, Sam Vicary and Declan Forde playing ‘All or Nothing at All,’ from last week at the Jazz Jam at Sela, Leeds.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front recently so here’s a few things that have been happening in the past few months:

Wild Flower Sextet – this project has started gigging properly, with a great first performance with the full sextet back in February at 7arts. The brilliant Laura Jurd is now playing trumpet. I’ll put up some videos of this gig soon! We also have more gigs confirmed including:
17/7 – The Lescar, Sheffield
18/7 – Lit and Phil, Newcastle
24/8 – Zeffirellis, Ambleside
23/9 – Jazz at the Fields, Haslingden

Jamie Taylor Quartet ‘Outside Line’ – also in February I played on acclaimed Sheffield-based guitarist Jamie Taylor’s new album as part of his quartet ‘Outside Line’ with Garry Jackson and Dave Walsh. We did it with a great engineer and musician called Sam Hobbs who has worked with a lot of great artists including Matt Bourne and I’m really proud to be on the record – it’s going to be amazing! Upcoming performances include:
24/4 – The Lescar, Sheffield
4/7 – Seven Jazz, Leeds – part of ‘Concert for Colin’ tribute to Colin Watson.

Standard Deviation Quartet – this is a new collective project I’m a part of with Declan Forde (piano), Sam Gardner (drums) and Sam Vicary (bass) playing standard songs. To quote our official description:

The Standard Deviation Quartet is a group committed primarily to playing standard songs. With their highly melodic, song-based approach, they create fresh re-interpretations of the standard repertoire as defined by composers such as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. The quartet initially formed as part of Leeds-based guitarist Jiannis Pavlidis’ group, and after discovering a great chemistry together quickly sought to establish themselves as a band in their own right. They have appeared at many venues across the country (Splinter @ The Bridge, Newcastle; Sela Bar, Leeds) as well as appearing live on BBC Radio Leeds. 

We have some shows coming up including:
5/5 – The Bridge, Newcastle
7/5 – Sela Bar Jazz Jam
24/5 – Heritage Coast Jazz Festival, Staithes

Matt Roberts Quintet: Tribute to Lee Morgan – we have a new Matt Roberts Quintet tour booked in for June. After previous tributes to Miles Davis’ First Great Quintet and Freddie Hubbard, this time we are focusing on hard-bop hero Lee Morgan. Very much looking forward to working with Matt again, tour is below:
6/6 – Sela Bar, Leeds
7/7 – HEART cafe, Leeds
8/7 – Huddersfield Jazz
9/7 – Darlington Jazz

Another exciting thing I’m doing with Matt Roberts is the LCoM Summer School, a week-long intensive jazz course from 28th July – 3rd August at Leeds College of Music. The course includes great tuition from Matt Roberts who has a high profile as a jazz educator and was involved in the summer school last year. More details on their website here: http://www.lcm.ac.uk/courses/Short-Courses/summer-courses/summer-jazz

Here’s a recording of the Jimmy Van Heusen love song It Could Happen to You:

‘All I did was wonder how your arms would be… And it happened to me’

Kind review of the Jiannis Pavlidis’ appearance at Splinter @ The Bridge last Sunday by Lance Liddle of the bebopspokenhere blog – check it out here.

The final Wild Flower Sextet video from our session in July has now been edited and uploaded, so go check it out at http://youtu.be/RYpGzZfSOiA:

I’m looking forward to rehearsing with the band next Tuesday and getting all the material together for our first gigs in the New Year – 6/1 Pave, Hull and 24/2 7arts, Leeds. More gigs to be announced soon!

Tomorrow night I’m playing at HEART in Headingley with Jamie Taylor and his new quartet, following on from a weekend of appearing as part of Jiannis Pavlidis’ and Mark Donlon’s bands. A growing proportion of the gigs I’m doing are now as a sideman, which is a role I always wanted to play more often. Before the advent of jazz education and music college courses in jazz, pretty much the only way to learn the craft was for younger players to work with the older, more experienced ones, who would pass on their knowledge and skills and keep the music going. Since I am a product of the jazz education system, studying at Leeds College of Music, I was still a little uneasy going straight into leading my own bands without much of this experience of sideman work, so it’s wonderful to now be part of a few bands led by experienced players from an older generation.

The Jiannis Pavlidis Quintet is made up of Jiannis on guitar, Declan Forde (piano), Sam Vicary (double-bass), Sam Gardner (drums) and myself. Jiannis studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and has toured and recorded with many world-renowned jazz artists such as Dave Liebman and Adam Nussbaum. We met through LCM where he is a lecturer. The quintet plays Jiannis’ original music which sounds to me quite influenced by late 60’s/70’s Miles (the groove stuff), with elements of Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dave Liebman, Steve Grossman, Mark Turner and Coltrane, and all based on the tradition of standards and swing.

Pianist Mark Donlon was another of my lecturers at LCM, and his quartet also features Simon Read (double-bass) and Sam Gardner (drums). Mark was based in London for many years before moving to Leeds, and has worked with a lot of top British Jazz players like Julian Siegel, Kenny Wheeler and Tim Garland. This quartet plays his original music from his latest album, ‘Kashasha,’ as well as some music by Simon, Sam and I, and has a bit more of a European flavour than the other bands.

Jamie Taylor was Course Leader when I was studying, so again it’s a real honour to be playing in his band. As well as Jamie on guitar, his quartet also includes heavy-weights Dave Walsh (drums) and Garry Jackson (double-bass), so it’s another great learning curve. The music is very much based in the American jazz tradition with an emphasis on original compositions by Jamie as well as some nicely arranged standards.

We’ve put together a second video of the Wild Flower Sextet from the recording session in July. This time it’s Wayne Shorter’s Masqualero.

Video footage from our recording session in July, very kindly put together by engineer Tony Garthwaite.

I’ve made some recordings with my new sextet and they’re available online to listen. It’s an all-star line-up of Mark Chandler (tpt), Alex Munk (gtr), Jamil Sheriff (pno), Sam Vicary (bs) and Dave Walsh (dr) and myself on tenor.

J.G. (Matt Anderson):

Masqualero (Wayne Shorter):

Blues for Wayne (Matt Anderson):

Fall (Wayne Shorter):