Author / mikeraggett

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Posts by mikeraggett

I'm a writer, producer and director living in London. My interests are wide ranging: reading, theatre, art and music battle it out with food and wine (especially Spanish), gardening, walking, Hampshire cricket, Watford Football Club and Boston Red Sox for prime spot which of course changes all the time.
by mikeraggett

Super Saturday in Southend

It was freezing cold outside but the temperature inside the Jazz Centre UK’s Southend premises soared on Saturday 11 January as Alan Skidmore joined Anthony Kerr, Dominic Howles and Trevor Taylor for a special concert of music by Coltrane, Monk and Miles. The Centre holds an amazing collection of jazz memorabilia to which Alan contributed back in 2017 when he was honoured by the Centre. He repaid the compliment with a great afternoon of high quality jazz.

To kick things off Anthony Kerr on vibraphone played a set with Dominic on bass and Trevor at the drum kit. Anthony’s improvisations on standards like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Isfahan are always enchanting and were greeted with enthusaistic applause, as were all the tunes in this opening set.

After a short break the trio were joined by Alan for an hour long set of superb variety. We all know that Alan can play more notes per second than most but he is also a sensitive interpreter of ballads as we learned from the 1999 album with the Hannover Philharmonie symphony orchestra After the Rain which you can get from Miles Music, now run by Peter Watts, or on Amazon if you must. The set started with the lively Thelonius Monk tune Nutty followed by the lovely John Coltrane ballad Lonnie’s Lament (see below). Mikes Davis’s catchy So What followed – it’s the first track on the iconic Kind of Blue album – and this segued into another Coltrane favourite of Alan’s Impressions. They finished with Duke Ellington’s Take the Coltrane and Blue Monk another characteristically jagged and captivating Thelonius composition.

The Stage is set … with Humphrey Lyttleton’s trumpet foreground
Jazz Centre UK’s Digby Fairweather introduces Alan
The audience were delighted
Alan, Dominic and Anthony

And for those of you who missed out on this fantastic gig here’s a short three minute taster from the ballad Lonnie’s Lament. It starts at the end of Anthony Kerr’s fine solo and features Alan’s lyrical solo and conclusion.

Words, photographs and video courtesy of Mike Raggett

by mikeraggett

AS, AK and KB

COME IN OUT OF THE COLD! Saturday 11 January sees Alan joining his good friend and outstanding vibraphone player Antony Kerr for a special gig at the National Jazz Centre in Southend. Here’s more info. It’s from 14:00 to 16:00 in this fascinating location filled with jazz memorabilia, information, archives, workshops and live music. Come on down and hear their take on the music of Coltrane, Miles and Monk.

Skid and Anthony as a duet on a previous occasion at Jazz Centre UK. This time he’s a guest with the Anthony Kerr Trio.

2024 concluded with a rather unusual request for Alan to participate in a podcast. It took him back to 1976 when he was booked to record the iconic solo on the song The Saxophone Man on the album The Kick Inside that shot the teenaged Kate Bush to fame.

Professor Darrell Babidge, Chair of the Faculty of Vocal Arts at the prestigious Juillard School in New York runs the Kate Bush Fan Podcast and asked Alan to recall the session. It will doubtless introduce a whole new audience to a different kind of music too. Darrell asked if he could play out the podcast with a favourite track of Alan’s. He chose Giant Steps acknowledged to be the hardest tune in jazz to play. You can listen here. Enjoy!

by mikeraggett

We’ll remember Coltrane – 1983 style

Alan was rooting through his archives – something of a habit after the reception to the CD Boxset A Supreme Love – when he found a VHS tape (remember those?) labelled Baden-Baden 1983. It contained some rare footage recorded by the German TV Station Südwest Funk. It was part of a week-long workshop under the title we’ll Remember Coltrane which Alan did in that year in Baden-Baden. The week culminated in a concert hall in Mainz. Gathered here were some of the great names of European jazz: Albert Mangelsdorf, Tomasz Stanko and a whole raft of saxophone players including Alan himself. They were joined by Rashied Ali from the USA who had played as a drummer with John Coltrane so the connection was very real for all concerned. The presenter Joachim Ernst Behrendt introduces each of the saxophone players who will solo and we hear the introduction to My Favourite Things a song Coltrane usually played on soprano saxophone although the opening here is on tenors.

We’ve edited the session down so as to feature Alan’s solo, following on from his great friend Gerd Dudek, in which he squeezes some wonderful phrases out of the top end of the soprano. Have a listen.

And if you want to hear more from Alan’s archive – A Supreme Love has sold out in the CD version but you can download all or individual tracks from Confront Recordings.

by mikeraggett

Top 5 Stateside – and then #1

The highly influential NYCJR has listed Alan’s CD Boxed Set A Supreme Love in its top five boxed sets of the year.

This is a fitting accolade for a brilliant effort between Skid and Mark Wastell at Confront Recordings covering six decades of an extraordinary career. The physical boxed set has sold out but you can download a digital album from Confront.

by mikeraggett

A Supreme Love makes Jazzwise magazine’s top 20

The six-CD boxset of Alan Skidmore’s life as a musician has made it into the influential magazine Jazzwise’s Top 20 Reissues and Archive albums of 2023. And with the vast majority of tracks (more than 80%) previously unreleased it leans heavily towards the Archive rather than the Reissues sector.

With his inspiration, John Coltrane, featuring twice in the list and colleagues Stan Tracey, Sony Rollins and Kenny Wheeler also listed, Skid is in very good company. There are a very few copies left so if you don’t want to miss out on one of the albums of the year head over to Confront Recordings to get your copy.

Since writing this the physical box set has sold out but all tracks are available to download from the link above.

Watch this space for other year end awards that may come in for this superb collection.

November in Southend

And in other news, Alan joined outstanding vibraphone player and good friend Anthony Kerr for an impromptu gig at The Jazz Centre UK in Southend at the beginning of November. Long-term collaborators in Georgie Fame’s New Blue Flames it was great to hear the two playing together in this intimate space.

by mikeraggett

The Reviews are Rolling in for A Supreme Love

And as the box set looks back at Alan’s six decades of making music we’ve added some pages to the website to chart the places he’s played and the people he’s played with during that time. Check them out from the links.

The six CDs in this smart-looking box set reflect 70 years of tenor saxophonist Alan Skidmore’s playing career. The collection comprises 46 performances selected from the many live concert, radio and studio recordings he’s made over the years.

Read Brian Payne’s full review here

Look out for a massive retrospective from England’s greatest Coltranian as Mark Wastell’s remarkable avant-garde Confront label is issuing a vast record of achievement by Alan Skidmore entitled A Supreme Love Read the full preview here

Given the nearly fifty tracks on this set, attempts to pick a few highlights result in many changes of mind. However, “Nature Boy” and “I Remember Clifford” from the jazz- with-strings album, After the Rain (Miles Music 1998), with Colin Towns’ arrangements, are wonderful examples of Skidmore’s consummate ballad playing. The three tracks from Montreux 1969 that would later appear on Skidmore’s first album as leader, Once Upon a Time (Deram, 1970), inevitably rank very highly.

Yet, one suspects that fans will turn quickly to “Directions” from a Weather Report performance for Nordeutscher Rundfunk in 1971 with the addition of Skidmore, saxophonist John Surman and trombonist Eje Thelin. The fact that Skidmore damn near steals the show is confirmation of his remarkable abilities but that a whole concert exists somewhere is ear-tinglingly exciting. Read Duncan Heining’s review and interview with Skid here.

British musicians of this generation routinely put wry faces when they get rave reviews for music they made 50 years ago, but damn! What a legacy. A beautifully put together tribute to a real soldier of the road. Read Brian Morton’s full review here.

On the back of the box that houses the magnificent music within, producer Mark Wastell asks: “How do you represent a seven-decade career in only six CDs?” Well, the simple answer is you can’t, but Wastell has had a good go at it and in the process unearthed a cornucopia of previously unreleased material.

Read Nick Lea’s full review here

Very nearly all the material on this six CD extravaganza celebrating the marvellous tenor sax player Alan Skidmore – an eminent figure in UK modern jazz for decades – is previously unreleased and has come out of his private collection. […] OK Alan what other treasures are lying in the vaults and can we have them please? Read Russell Newmark’s full review here.

It’s testament to the richness of Skid’s considerable output over the years that this box set of almost entirely unreleased material devotes a whole disc to each of the six decades in which he’s been active – and never once lets up in intensity.

 Read Daniel Spicer’s full review here.

And you can buy a digital download of this amazing 6 CD box set here.

by mikeraggett

An article about Skid in the NYCJR

The prestigious jazz journal The New York City Jazz Record has picked up on the release of A Supreme Love Alan Skidmore’s six CD Box set published last month by Confront Recordings. He gets cover billing in the June issue.

In an article written by Francisco Martinelli, the author of A History of European Jazz, the piece covers Skid’s six decades represented by the six CDs in the box set. Much of it is drawn from Richard Williams’ excellent booklet which accompanies the CDs and from Martinelli’s extensive knowledge of the European jazz scene. You can read it here. [courtesy New York City Jazz Record]                          Click and + to enlarge if need be.

And if you haven’t got this amazing record of a distinguished career you can buy it here from Mark Wastell’s Confront Recordings.

by mikeraggett

Skid’s 6 CD Box set released

Everybody else can now share my pleasure in listening to 60 years of Alan Skidmore making wonderful music. The 6 CD Box set previewed at the Cafe Oto gig is now available from Mark Wastell’s Confront Recordings.

And what value is is too. A base price of £32 (you can pay more if you like) means that each CD is only a fiver. And each CD contains incredibly generous tracks of largely unpublished material plus one or two favourites from Alan’s albums over the years. Add to this a 20-page informative booklet by Richard Williams charting Skid’s life and music and it’s a truly outstanding package.

Don’t delay – get it today. Click HERE to get a digital download of this amazing compilation. The physical CD Box Set has sold out but you can still enjoy the music.