NEWS IN BRIEF

ROBERT GLASPER AND MARCUS MILLER FOR BAND ON THE WALL Leading Manchester jazz club Band On The Wall has a string of high profile jazz gigs this month including Led Bib (3 November), Victor Bailey Group (4 Nov), Bass Day featuring Marcus Miller and guests (6 Nov), Yellowjackets (15 Nov), Robert Glasper Experiment (21 Nov), and Olatuja Project feat. Soweto Kinch and Jason Rebello (29 Nov). For more go to www. bandonthewall.org

EMILY REMLER REMEMBERED Guitarists Deirdre Cartwright and Kathy Dyson tour Emily Remembered this month in a tour sponsored by Jazz Services. The project celebrates the music of Emily Remler, the US guitarist who sadly died aged just 32 in 1990. Dates are Seven Arts Centre, Leeds (6 November); Vortex, London (8 Nov); the David Hall, South Petherton (12 Nov); International Guitar Festival, The Wirral (18 Nov); Teignmouth Jazz Festival, Teignmouth (19 Nov), Beaver Inn Appledore (21 Nov), and St Ives Jazz Club, St Ives, Cornwall (22 Nov).

DURHAM DATES John Taylor, Louise Gibbs and Omar Puente have been booked for this month’s Musicon Jazz Festival in Durham running from 10-12 November. To book phone 0191 332 4041.

DJANGO LOOKS EAST Django Bates’ appears with his Belovèd Bird band on 6 November at Stratford Circus in London E15.

SEVEN SEAS SESSIONS Avishai Cohen returns to Ronnie Scott’s in London this month for a three-night run from Monday 28 November to 30 November. For more go to www. ronniescotts.co.uk

DAVE HOLLAND AND IMPOSSIBLE GENTLEMEN FOR TAMPERE The Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland, celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, runs from 3-6 November. The Impossible Gentlemen, Dave Holland, Kimmo Pohjonen, Abdullah Ibrahim, and David Murray are among the high profile names heading north.

BRISTOL AND BACK Singer Gretchen Parlato plays UK dates this month with her trio of pianist/keyboards player Taylor Eigsti, bassist Alan Hampton, and drummer Kendrick Scott. They play St George’s Bristol (17 Nov); and London Jazz Festival – Kings Place, London (18 Nov).

SCOTTISH FESTIVAL PROMOTER DIES Ken Ramage, the founder of the Nairn Jazz Festival in Scotland has died aged 76. Originally from Clackmannanshire, he owned greengrocers in Nairn, Forres and Inverness and a wholesale business and began promoting jazz concerts in 1990.

KAIROS 4TET WIN JAZZ ACT MOBO At the SECC in Glasgow in October Kairos 4tet won the MOBO for best jazz act.The band, led by Adam Waldmann, released Statement of Intent for the Cardiff-based Edition records last year.

NIC HITS THE ROAD Nicolas Meier dates this month include the Guildford Jazz Club, Guildford (3), Bonington Theatre, Nottingham (17), Torfaen Jazz Club, Wales (18), Chapel at No 1, and Stratford-Upon-Avon (20).

NEIL COWLEY TRIO CHANGE TACK ON FOURTH ALBUM Set for release in January by Naim Jazz early listens to The Face of Mount Molehill – the band’s fourth album – suggest a substantial shift in direction since their previous album Radio Silence. Cowley, who more recently has appeared on Adele’s hit album 21 (he’s the pianist on ‘Rolling In The Deep’), has reconfigured the NCT for Molehill. Bassist Richard Sadler who appeared with Cowley and Evan Jenkins on the first three albums Displaced (2006), Loud... Louder... Stop (2008) and Radio Silence from last year has gone, and in comes Rex Horan (known for his work with indie rock group Mama’s Gun) to join Jenkins plus a string section and session guitarist Leo Abrahams who has previously worked with Brian Eno is on the opening track ‘Lament’, ‘Meyer’, ‘Distance By Clockwork’ and the title track adding guitar effects. The NCT began to record the album in May shortly after a well received Cheltenham Jazz Festival appearance with several of the strings players. The complete track listing is ‘Lament’, ‘Rooster Was A Witness’, ‘Fable’, ‘Meyer’, ‘Skies Are Rare’, ‘Mini Ha Ha’, ‘Slims’, ‘Distance By Clockwork’, ‘The Face of Mount Molehill’, ‘Hope Machine’, ‘La Porte’ and ‘Sirens Last Look Back’. Tickets have already gone on sale for next year’s first major airing of the album that takes place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 15 March billed as by Neil Cowley Trio featuring the Mount Molehill Strings.

Stacey Kent Releases Live Album Recorded In Paris Dreamer In Concert now confirmed for a UK release on 31 October is Stacey Kent’s first live album available on the first day of her five-day run at Ronnie Scott’s. Her ninth album, Dreamer In Concert is the London-based US singer Kent’s third for Blue Note records. The album was recorded at La Cigale in Paris in May. Tracks are ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’; ‘Ces Petits Riens’; ‘Postcard Lovers’; ‘If I Were a Bell’; ‘Corcovado’; ‘Waters of March’; ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’; ‘O Comboio’; ‘Dreamer’; ‘Breakfast On The Morning Tram’; ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me; ‘Samba Saravah’;

and ‘Jardin d’Hiver’. The lyrics of the title track of the album was written by the late Gene Lees who is well known for the lyrics of ‘Quiet Nights’. Dreamer In Concert features

Stacey and her husband saxophonist Jim Tomlinson;

plus Graham Harvey, on piano/Fender Rhodes;

Jeremy Brown, double bass; and Matt

Skelton, drums and percussion.

THE JAZZ WARRIORS RETURN WITH NEW ORGANISATION AND MISSION STATEMENT In an announcement posted on their new website the Jazz Warriors have issued a mission statement that marks the return of the seminal 1980s big band, a musical collective instrumental in achieving a substantial resurgence in black UK jazz at the time, recording Out of Many, One People in 1987 following their foundation the year before and with the success of founder members, notably Courtney Pine, ushering in a successful period of UK jazz. The new organisation’s core members are Jazz Warriors vibes player, composer and educator Orphy Robinson who played on Pine’s hit album Journey To The Urge Within and was signed to Blue Note records and who has gone on to pursue a subsequent successful solo career; vocalist, composer and actor Cleveland Watkiss, who also featured on Journey To The Urge Within, and Out of Many, One People and whose solo records include Green Chimneys and Blessing In Disguise for Polydor; his brother pianist, bandleader and educator Trevor Watkis; Wendy Ahmun, a diversity and cohesion specialist and a governance and elections advisor in Zambia; and Leon Daniel, a former human rights barrister now specialising in contract and marketing law.

DEEP DARK BLUE CENTRE ~ R.I.P. GRAHAM COLLIER Duncan Heining pays tribute to influential composer and educator who died in September aged 74 Composer, bassist and bandleader Graham Collier died on Saturday 10 September 2011 following a stroke and heart attack. It was quick, relatively painless but unexpected. We all felt sure Graham had too much sparkle, too much music in him to go so soon. Graham was the first British graduate from Berklee School of music and, on returning to Britain in the mid-1960s, formed his own band. The records he made during those years (recently reissued by BGO), reveal a precocious talent able to fuse a British pastoral compositional sensibility with something far more rambunctiously funky that stemmed from his admiration for Mingus. The first two of these BGO sets are indispensable, while the third is perhaps merely necessary. In 1968, Graham was the first jazz composer to receive an Arts Council grant. It took 37 years for Workpoints, the wonderful and forward-thinking music that resulted, to make its appearance on the US Cuneiform label. Hoarded Dreams, another big band set, was even better. That took a mere 24 years to see the light of day. Yet both albums sat perfectly with the series of large ensemble albums that Graham released in the late-1990s and early noughties, with Bread And Circuses from 2003 perhaps the finest of these. Yet it is fitting somehow that Graham’s masterpiece, Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, would be the last record he would issue during his life. Its music brims with vitality, good humour and humanity. Graham gave gladly of his music and of his time. He was there early in the life of NYJO, was instrumental in the formation of Loose Tubes and in 1986 launched the jazz course at the Royal Academy of Music. As pianist Peter James, an RAM student, told me: “Graham’s open ethos created an invaluable environment for students to develop their own musical voices”. This too is a mark of the man. But most of us will hold on to his music – by any standards a most remarkable epitaph. Our thoughts and condolences go to writer John Gill, Graham’s partner of 35 years.

66 NOVEMBER11 // Jazzwise