“The first thing that really got me was the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album when I was about seven years old and I still love it,” says Travis. Both his parents were keen listeners to music. “We always had music in the house and my parents had a good record collection. Mum was a big Chopin fan and dad had some Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck, so I heard a lot of music from a very early age.”
“That was the chair that Django sat in,” says Goode, as I make myself comfortable in the living room of his west London home. “We moved to London in 1941,” he continues. “And we’ve been here ever since.”
Having finished a world tour with Jamie Cullum at the end of last year, Geoff Gascoyne is as busy as ever. “I’ve been doing a lot of different things this year”, he muses. “Jazz gigs, pop gigs – you name it, I’ve done it. And the best part of it is I get to use all my instruments at different volumes and different levels!"
“I was writing music before I was playing it,” Tim Garland says. “I used to get so incredibly impatient writing everything down. Then when I was about 16, I found there were people who actually specialised in making it up. That’s when I fell totally in love with jazz.” Garland started playing the piano aged six. “I went through all the grades,” he says, his tone reflecting his clear lack of interest. “Then when I was 14 I started playing the clarinet.” He ploughed through all those grades as...
“I’ve got this room upstairs in my house,” says Cawley. “It’s sort of like the culmination of all my childhood dreams, just full of keyboards and pianos.” Music’s always been at the heart of his life. “Dad’s an amateur flautist, and also collects musical ephemera, a sort of one man band. I guess it’s in the genes.” Piano lessons started when Cawley was six, and from there he attended Chetham’s music school in Manchester from the age of eight to 13, “all classical,” he says.
Byron Wallen will always remember his first trumpet teacher. He takes up the story. “In the very beginning I was having difficulty playing the trumpet, so I went to see my teacher. He told me that that my lips were too big and maybe I wasn’t meant for playing the trumpet,” Wallen says, laughing. “But you know, in a way I have to thank him, because that really motivated me to have a go at it.”
Until you’ve heard saxophonist Peter Brötzmann in the flesh you only can gain a partial sense of the primeval sound and sheer power of the free jazz German pioneer through listening to him on CD. For those who haven’t heard him live already, this month you’ll get the chance at the London Jazz Festival. Daniel Spicer talks to him about his motivations for playing the way he does and looks back at his seminal album Machine Gun 40 years on.
A longstanding presence on the London jazz scene, trumpeter Harry Beckett has kept his music fresh over a long career and none more so than on his latest release which invites reggae and dance music influences to happily live alongside his modal jazz flavours. Duncan Heining talks to Harry about his current preoccupations and looks back on a career stretching back to the 1960s.
This month Herbie Hancock makes his presence felt in the UK by playing five eagerly anticipated live shows, including two concerts at the London Jazz Festival that coincide with the release of Then and Now: The Definitive Herbie Hancock, a 12-track career retrospective covering his work for the Blue Note, Warner, Columbia and Verve record labels. In this exclusive interview with Stuart Nicholson, Hancock talks about his new band, his time with Miles Davis and his support for Barack Obama in the...
Arguably the most high profile jazz bassist on the planet and one of the most famous English jazz exports, Dave Holland returns this month with a new album which builds on his substantial career as a leader. Duncan Heining catches up with him on tour with Herbie Hancock and discovers the path Dave has taken in jazz since those early days back in England playing traditional jazz and carving his own career on a very different jazz scene in London.
