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Jazzin’ It Up Shoreham Style!

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Just back from an exhausting but brilliant day down on the South Coast, rehearsing for Friday’s forthcoming gig at the Ropetackle Arts Centre, as part of this year’s Shoreham Wordfest. Having commandeered a small school hall and lugged in copious amounts of equipment, a kettle, tea, milk & coffee (no sugar) and a tasty if paltry packet of biscuits (Phil, the saxophonist, sensibly brought along his own pack-up, which he sat quietly to one side nibbling when not blowing) Lee Harwood and I set to running through those of our poems we’d opined might fit with a jazz backing. And not any old jazz backing – John Lake’s Quartet being not only professional to the last argument about a diminished fifth, but – if the Wordfest poster is to be believed, which, of course, it is – fiery to boot.

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The last time Lee read with jazz musicians, he tells us, was back in New York in the 60s when he was a young poet on the arts scene and in the company of some of the classiest bebop players of the day, whereas, as readers of this blog will know, my own experiences in that area are more recent – albeit allowing for Mansfield and Worksop not, with all due deference, being Greenwich Village.

No matter.

We manoeuvred out way through tributes to Chet Baker, Lester Young & Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, and, from scratch, the band built some beautiful and appropriate architecture around two pieces of Lee’s, Brighton. October and Gorgeous – yet another Brighton Poem – which is exactly that, gorgeous, I mean.

So there we’ll be on Friday, kicking off at 8.00pm, and if you’re anywhere within reach it could be a night to remember. It will be for me, I’m certain, and Lee, too, I’ll be bound, to say nothing of the boys in the band. And if you can’t get there yourself, tell your friends. They’ll thank you.

 

 



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