Notes on Past Gigs

Superb gig, big audience, couldn’t be better. Something about the instruments: first the piano. Oddgeir Berg brought some electronics driven from a small but very good mic clipped to a bar on the open front piano. This gave Oddgeir a variety of soundscapes driven by the piano. He used his hand on the strings at times to produce a percussive sound. Mind you, while playing without the electronics, his touch is such that the full range of dynamics from softly lyrical to loud percussive was there. Audun Ramo’s bass also was driven through a stomp box set, but the changes…

This gig’s review is from Robert Carr of the Hadleigh Nub News. All of the pictures from the gig are on our gallery page Take care, Dave A fun night with Jivin’ Miss Daisy at Fleece Jazz By Robert Carr With blizzard conditions making travelling difficult on a bitterly cold Suffolk night, the entertainment supplied by Fleece Jazz at the welcoming Stoke by Nayland Hotel Resort provided just the tonic (gin optional) to warm the audience members. From the off, Simon Thorpe’s Jivin’ Miss Daisy band set the swinging tone of the Fleece show with a bold and brassy performance…

A band primarily playing bebop, without a drummer, is not to everybody’s taste. It is to mine. You get the combined sound and great clarity from each instrument. This band’s musicianship and joy in playing together  were exceptional. Power of Three indeed. Tommaso Starace is a great presenter: lovely stories,  good (and very bad) jokes, and most important, he was clear about song titles and composers. As to the latter, Steve did have a query or two about attribution. But the thing is his playing. His mastery of the instrument is amazing, with a big dynamic range, ideas piling on…

Last night we had two deps at this gig due to illness in the band , but they were amazing. We wish Neville Malcolm and Robin Aspland quick recoveries.  Jerry Logan was the bassist: he was the pulse of the band, inventive and accurate. Carl Hudson played piano and keyboard with intensity and joy. This was a band with power and love throughout the evening. We loved Dave Lewis’s raw, yet lyrical sound on tenor sax. Rod Youngs is a brilliant and very powerful drummer. There are some jazz singers with “little girl” voices, and those singing from the throat,…

Peter Fairman said “John was Burning!”. Steve and Dave were away. Miles Dagnall wrote the following review of this gig. If a rock band only needs three chords and the truth, what happens to the man who knows three thousand? Can he still maintain the authentic feeling expressed in the blues and marry it with the technique necessary for accomplished jazz playing ? This is John Etheridge so the answer is of course, ‘yes’. Ably supported by this edition of his Blue Spirits with Pete Whittaker on keys and George Double on Drums, the trio delivered a set full of…