Barracuda live at The Hare & Hounds Worthing, 25th October 2011

Barracuda is an organ trio featuring Simon Robinson on Hammond, Tony Shepherd on drums and myself on guitar. We played our debut on Tuesday at Worthing's Hare & Hounds. We really appreciated having such a warm and attentive audience.

Here are most of the tracks. Pretty guitar-heavy but they give a sense of how the trio works together.

The organisers do a great job of promoting local jazz and deserve all the support they can get. You can get an up-to-date gig listing here: http://worthingjazz.org.uk/index.php?page=events

More Jazz at Smalls, The Caxton Arms, Brighton

Alan Barnes [multi-reed] is one of the most versatile and respected jazz players and composers in the UK. His album last year with Scott Hamilton, 'Hi-Ya' was received with great critical acclaim and was featured as one of the top ten albums of the year by jazz critics. This year he has repeated the feat, his collaboration with Ken Mathieson ‘The Glasgow Suite [The music of Benny Carter] has received sumptuous recognition - ‘’Barnes principally plays alto saxophone...his solos are excellent...surely this will feature in 2011’s album of the year poll...this is a real treat for all jazz fans’’ [Jazz Journal].

His optimistic and good nature seem to have 'magical' qualities. At the recent Titley Jazz Festival [Powys] – ‘’soon the grim clouds crowded out much of the failing light...after a superbly crisp 14 minute ‘Just One Of Those Things’, Alan Barnes’ opening number, things had considerably brightened...he seems to have permeated the whole festival’’ [Jazz Journal].

He had a long-standing association with the late writer/lyricist Alan Plater producing a number of jazz influenced shows and recordings. Alan also runs his own recording label and has featured with Harry Allen, Ken Peplowski and Warren Vache. He tours extensively and is much in demand at jazz festivals and concerts in the UK and abroad. It is a real pleasure to welcome Alan back to Smalls, where his great performance last year created an atmosphere that swung.

Alan is joined by the wonderful rhythm section of Terry Seabrook [piano], Piers Clark [rhythm guitar] and Steve Thompson [bass] who have done so much to enhance the quality of music at Smalls.

liz and dennis simpson

Blue Note cover art comes to life!

I'm a big fan of the Blue Note cover art work of Reid Miles with photos by Blue Note co-owner Francis Wolff. This video brings some of those classic album covers to life. Amazing!

Bill Frisell & The 858 Quartet

Really looking forward to seeing this band at The London Jazz Festival. Signs of Life is a kind of jazz/classical crossover inspired by the paintings of Gerhard Richter. Caught them at The Village Vanguard last year on a memorable Sunday evening. Interested in how they sound at The QEH. This video gives a wonderful flavour of the music and its background.

Peter Bernstein on listening at the start of tunes

At the recent Barry Harris gig at Pizza Express I was really struck by the way that Barry would start a tune, unannounced then look up to see if bass player Dave Green had got it and Dave and drummer Steve Brown would just slide seamlessly in.

It's just about listening.

In this clip Peter Bernstein talks about starting tunes with no words spoken. Just listening and following, or leading the other musicians in:

 If you can just learn to follow and say, "I hear what he's playing, I hear what key he's playing it in, and it's obvious what tempo he's playing it in (hopefully)," and go from there.

Jim Hall & Barney Kessell: You Stepped Out of a Dream

It's ages since I blogged. Mostly because I've been busy, but also because I haven't had a great deal to write about. Barry Harris at The Pizza Express was superb, but that was the only significant gig I've been too for a couple of months.

This is a superb video of Jim Hall and Barney Kessell playing at the top of their respective games in the early 60s. There's not too much say about this, just listen to 6 minutes of bliss.

Joe Lee Wilson: A Celebration