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.

June 5, 2023June 6, 2023 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.

May 5, 2023 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. You can get it HERE.

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 And each CD contains incredibly generous tracks of largely unpublished material plus one or two favourites from Alan’s albums over the years.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.

April 24, 2023April 24, 2023 by mikeraggett

Birthday Bonanza

21 April 2023 was a very significant date. There was a star-studded gig at London’s Café Oto called Impressions of John Coltrane. It was celebrating 60 years since the release of John Coltrane’s revered album Impressions. And another album was previewd that night in Dalston: A Supreme Love a six CD box set covering six decades of playing by Alan Skidmore. Oh, and it also happened to be Alan’s 81st birthday. Quite a night!

As the poster suggested, there were three groups in the evening’s line up. A trio with Ed Jones on tenor sax, Dominic Lash on bass and Mark Wastell on a splendid array of percussion instruments. Mark was also the organiser of the whole thing. This was a contemplative, free improvisatory set which meandered in and out of Coltrane’s 1966 composition The Father and The Son and The Holy Ghost and set the scene for the evening very well. Next up was the David Angol Quartet with David on tenor and soprano saxes and they were joined by Alan Skidmore for a spirited rendition of the tune Impressions. After a short break the final set was played by the Nat Birchall Quintet. Nat is another long-time admirer of Coltrane’s work and also invited Alan to join the quintet for a Coltrane tune Selflessness in which where the interplay between the players was really intense and dramatic.

The finale with everybody on stage was a barnstorming Ascension and brought to an end a brilliant evening of quality jazz dedicated to the memory of the all-time great composer and saxophonist John Coltrane. What a night!

A highlight for me was being able to purchase the first copy to be sold of the CD box set and have Alan sign it for me. A prized possession which contains a fascinating journey over six decades of Skid’s development as a musician. The story is elegantly traced by Richard Williams in the comprehensive booklet of sleeve notes. Highly recommended – as only 8 of the 46 tracks included have been published before so it’s a truly unique opportunity to hear the range of Alan’s playing from early days with his dad through to recent Coltrane commemorative (or thank you) gigs in 2019.

*Six CDs, an illuminating booklet and my signed box.*

The whole project – box set and concert – was masterminded by Mark Wastell’s Confront Recordings label from which you can also buy this amazing testimonial to a great tenor saxophone player when it goes on official release in a couple of weeks’ time.

Watch this space for the date.

Words and images Mike Raggett April 2023

August 15, 2021August 19, 2021 by mikeraggett

A new departure

Sunday sun and showers in Hoxton surrounded an enterprising gig at the Hundred Years Gallery.

Percussionist and record producer Mark Wastell teamed up with tenor saxophone legend Alan Skidmore for a unique duo for saxophone and percussion.

The gallery’s basement holds about 25-30 people about half of whom seemed to be tenor sax players keen to experience this unique pairing. In his introduction, Mark recalled his first exposure to Skid’s music over thirty years ago and the striking and long-lasting impression it had on him.

For his part Alan warned that it had been two years since he’d played in public and that was in front of a full house at the Royal Albert Hall in the company of 60 other saxophonists in the tribute to Ronnie Scott.

Well with this line up it was always going to be a bit different. Added to which they had not rehearsed or ever played together except in a big ensemble number at Café Oto’s Coltrane tribute a few years back.

Since his childhood, Alan has always been passionate about the drums although his dad warned him off the seat with the advice: “You’ll always be first in and last out of the gig” but today he had several opportunities to play percussion alongside Mark whose array of drums, gongs, bells, shruti box and assorted devices must take him hours to stow and transport.

The first set began quietly and built into a sensuous soundscape which formed a base for Alan to join in with his tenor. There was a blues and ballad feel at the start but then, prompted by Mark’s ever-changing swirling textures and urgent beats, the Alan of SOS days emerged seeming to revel in free improvisation once again.

The second set featured a lot of call and response with ideas being thrown across the room between two musicians who were clearly enjoying each other’s company.Some of Mark’s sounds reminded me of Japan and at other times the duo took me off to the Africa of Ubizo, Alan’s collaboration with South African musicians from back in the early 2000s. The session just pointed up Mark’s ability to create a huge variety of sounds and Alan’s versatility on his instrument with lush melodic passages interspersed with honks and squeals, scales and octave leaps.

It included a sequence with both of them creating wonderful patterns on the drums. There were inevitably echoes of Coltrane from the tenor most notably with A Love Supreme featuring strongly towards the end.

An afternoon thoroughly enjoyed by all present. Let’s hope they can repeat it on a larger stage before too long.

April 14, 2021 by mikeraggett

We know Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis – we now have Alan “Lockdown” Skidmore

It’s over a year now since Alan was able to hoist his tenor onto its strap and blow for the benefit of others. Apart from his wife Kay that is, who might catch the odd strain coming from Alan’s music room.

But while he may be out of the public gaze he’s certainly not forgotten as the article below demonstrates. The prestigious NYC Jazz Record lists prominent birthdays in each month’s issue and this month has featured Alan in a sidebar boxed feature.

It’s interesting that Alan shares his birthday with the late Ian Carr and it’s a day before Charles Mingus and Paul Chambers. What is it about April?
As an aside here’s what Ian Carr wrote About Skid’s album *after the Rain* in BBC Music Magazine:

Alan Skidmore’s playing in After the Rain is a miracle of sustained poise, inspiration and feeling. Skidmore’s huge and mellow tenor sax sound in the lower register and his control of the quiet singing tone in the often extreme upper register are juxtaposed to great effect on his superb rendering of melody on ‘Too Young to Go Steady’ and in his ensuing solo. His love of each piece shines through and while his main improvised phrases seem passionately sculpted, his quiet asides or afterthoughts have an extraordinary potency. Ian Carr, BBC Music Magazine

Let’s hope it won’t be too long before we can enjoy listening to live jazz again not just through the Zoom sessions that have sustained many fans during the Covid-induced drought.

February 8, 2021 by mikeraggett

52 Years ago …

One October morning in 1969 Alan Skidmore arrived at Lansdowne Studios to record an album of new compositions by his friend Stan Tracey. Alan was fairly newly arrived on the jazz scene having served his Blues Apprenticeship with John Mayall and Alexis Korner but he knew Stan from listening to him as house pianist as Ronnie Scott’s Club after popping round there between his sets at The Talk of the Town.

Stan’s earlier Jazz Suite inspired by Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood has been a huge success and today’s material was Stan’s take on the Shakespearian theme from Jacques speech in As You Like It. The sixteen-piece Stan Tracey Big Band recorded eight tracks that were released in September 1970 as The Seven Ages of Man on Columbia Records. It did well but over the years fell out of print.

Jump forward to 2020 and Stan’s son Clark Tracey has produced a digitally remastered version of this session and one recorded with a quartet a month before as a double CD Wisdom in the Wings. Released in January 2021 it presents a fascinating opportunity to revisit some early Tracey material.

Alan has a solo on the first track ‘All the Worlds a Stage’ described as ‘ferocious’ by sleeve note writer Simon Spillett. Both CDs are well worth a listen with superb sound quality in this reissue. You can buy them from Resteamed Records as CDs or downloads and from other suppliers.

Over his long career Alan collaborated with Stan Tracey in a number of formats: with the Big Band, an Octet and a tour in which they performed piano and saxophone duets which they took to the Edinburgh Jazz Festival.

July 18, 2019August 28, 2019 by mikeraggett

The Spirit lives on

John Coltrane may well have died on 17 July – indeed, sadly, he did 52 years ago – but on 17 July 2019 his spirit was evident at Café Oto for a 52nd anniversary commemorative concert featuring the Alan Skidmore Quartet. This event was organised by musician and producer Mark Wastell of Confront Recordings who had invited Alan to play at the previous concert in 2017 which marked fifty years since Coltrane’s death and which subsequently featured as a Confront CD set.

The Alan Skidmore Quartet

This year it was an all-Coltrane evening spread over three magnificent sets.

In the first of these Alan’s regular quartet featuring Steve Melling on piano, Andrew Cleyndert on double bass and Miles Levin on drums enchanted the audience with a continuous performance of three tracks from the seminal album A Love Supreme. They started with Resolution, segued into Pursuance and brought the first part of the evening to a close with the rarely performed Psalm. The last strains of this died away into one of those moments of enraptured silence before the extended applause broke out.

Alan plays Psalm

In his introduction Alan had explained that he couldn’t stand up for long periods because of having a leg full of steel rods which resulted from an accident some 40 years ago. So, Alan sat out the second set while the Steve Melling trio were joined by guest tenor saxophonist Ed Jones. Remaining with Coltrane material they treated us to blues and ballads including Mr Day from Coltrane Plays The Blues from 1962, Central Park West from Coltrane’s Sound released in 1964 and Moment’s Notice from the early Blue Trane from 1957.

Steve Melling Trio

Ed Jones

The final set saw Alan with the quartet playing one of his most popular numbers After the Rain which Alan recorded with a full orchestra on the album with the same name in 1998. Utterly spellbinding in quieter ballad mode, Alan then wrapped up the evening by asking Ed Jones and Howard Cottle (who had featured alongside Alan in Paul Dunmall’s Sun Ship Quartet two years earlier) to join him on the stage. The intensity, inventiveness and variety of these three tenor sax masters on Transition from the epynymous posthumous album. But they did not overshadow Melling, Cleyndert and especially Miles Levin who all made huge contributions to this barnstorming end to a fabulous evening.

If there is an afterlife, JC would have been smiling broadly and applauding this wonderful tribute.

The finale with (l-r) Steve Melling, Ed Jones, Alan Skidmore, Andrew Cleyndert, Howard Cottle and Miles Levin

The three tenors

UPDATE 27 August 2019

At the Café Oto gig was renowned jazz journalist and reviewer John Fordham. He obviously enjoyed the evening and wrote this for the September issue of Jazzwise magazine. Jazzwise Cafe Oto review

June 15, 2019 by mikeraggett

Unmissable gig at Café Oto

Cafe Oto promo 2019

Cafe Oto If you missed Alan Skidmore’s performance at the 50th anniversary commemoration of John Coltrane’s death you can hear it on the double CD which has attracted phenomenally good reviews, which are reflected in a previous post.

But there’s nothing like hearing the legendary tenor player giving it some wellie live. And you have a chance next month when on Wednesday 17 July Alan with his own quartet will be playing a 52nd anniversary concert. Alan’s quartet is Steve Melling on piano, Andrew Cleyndert on double bass and Miles Levin on drums and they are going to be joined by special guest ED Jones also on tenor saxophone.

It promises to be a great night of high octane jazz so get your tickets soon. You can book online directly from the Café Oto website. Alan looks forward to seeing you all there. Doors open at 19:30. Get your tickets now before it’s too late.

May 1, 2019May 21, 2019 by mikeraggett

Global acclaim for Skid CDs

Naima The two most recent albums to feature Alan Skidmore have been garnering excellent international reviews. The double CD of Skid’s quartet live in Berlin and at the Boxford Fleece have been praised in the UK and the USA.

JAZZ JOURNAL

Jazz Journal Naima review

NYC Jazz Review Naima review

JAZZWISE MAGAZINE

Naima review Vacher

Cafe Oto While the John Coltrane Tribute at the Café Oto in 2017 has also attracted rave reviews especially in America.

This journal has an extended review which you can read here – scroll down to the fourth item. But here’s a flavour:

For the third set, Dunmall’s Sun Ship Quartet is joined by British tenor titan Alan Skidmore. Like Dunmall, Skidmore is a self-professed Coltrane acolyte and has delved deeply into Coltrane’s playing and compositions through his career. Skidmore and Dunmall played together in the group Tenor Tonic in the mid-80s but collaborated only rarely since then so this meet-up is particularly intriguing. With three reed players, things could easily become an impenetrable mess, but the group manages to avoid that. The five launch off on “Attaining,” with one horn intoning the plaintive theme over Bianco and Brice’s slow, loose simmer. The music wells as the full ensemble comes in to restate the theme, then opens up into extended solos for each of the horn players. Each attacks their explication with lithe, freely-melodic vitality, with Dunmall’s insistent stabbing take particularly arresting. The final Sun Ship tune, “Ascent,” is one of the strongest of the recording, starting with a pliantly probing bass solo which segues into a series of particularly searing solos by the reed players. Skidmore kicks things off with molten torrents that spill across the framework of the theme with thoughtful intensity. Dunmall switches to soprano and weaves a deconstruction of “My Favorite Things” into his labyrinthine take. Cottle wraps things up with incendiary passion, digging in to the tune with overblown multiphonics and cascading flurries. The three come together for a brief, three-way joust at the end that closes things with ardent abandon.

Avantscena header

This blog was equally impressed by the recording of the concert. Again the whole piece is here but this will give you a taste of the reviewer’s opinion.

This album is like a bridge between traditions and innovations, modal and modern jazz, nervous and complicated bebop, aggressive hard bop, stable and calm cool jazz or frantic, wild, frustrating, aggressive and passionate free improvisations. Rich, multi-layered, colorful and universal musical pattern is created. It’s contained with dozens of textures, sounds, timbres, all kinds of rhythms, melodies, exotic or rare ways of playing, suggestive instrumentation and evocative musical language. The changes of moods and playing manners are just marvelous – it turns the music into dynamic, tremendous and sparkling set of compositions. “Paul Dunmall Sun Ship Quartet” is playing on every composition with famous jazz masters. Various combos are formed to create a different sound and mood. The last composition “Ascension” joins all musicians at one scene for free, passionate and bright improvisation. …

Julie Kjaer shows her best abilities of improvising and makes an impact on the whole sound. The saxophonists Paul Dunmall, Howard Cottle and Alan Skidmore create the basic of the melodic section. Wild, frantic, thrilling, scratching, furious, scandalous and aggressive solos meet the soft and gentle lyrical pieces, passionate and expressive melodies, trendy and fabulous riffs, luminous, growling and radiant bursts of energy or – romantic, dreamy, cool and simply beautiful excerpts. The saxophones dictate the mood and sound of whole album. It gives the main tune to the melody line also. The reeds is the source of energy, crazy ideas, expressive and luminous mood, driving and inspiring style and wild bursts.

DNG In his review Bruce Lee Gallanter of the Downtown Music Gallery in New York said this of the Café Oto CDs.

On the second disc, the Sun Ship Quartet is joined by Alan Skidmore, now with three tenor saxists, the expanded group bringing the energy to boiling point. Drummer, Tony Bianco, pulls off a few great solos sounding little Elvin Jones on swirling mallets. The three sax quintet, sound astonishing on two more songs from “Sun Ship”, burning, erupting, exploding in Nirvana. The final piece is an extraordinary version of Coltrane’s classic “Ascension”, the original version which featured a half dozen extra saxists. It is the crowning way to bring this disc to an incredible conclusion, all three saxists getting a chance to stretch out, with the first up trio added for good measure, several layers of spirits, cosmic currents all rising together. It is one of the first days of Spring today (4/24/19) and the Sun and spiritual music sound perfect together after a long, cold, dismal at times winter. A toast to this mighty fine two CD set, no doubt one of this years best efforts!

And in the UK the Jazzwise issue for June carries this glowing 4 star review:

036_New Releases_JWJune19.indd

April 23, 2019 by mikeraggett

Seventy Seventh Heaven

Skid birthday pic

Skid celebrates his birthday on 21 April and this year’s prize presents from his wife Kay and granddaughter Naima are proudly featured on Easter Sunday. Elvin Jones is Skid’s next jazz hero after John Coltrane and to wear him proudly on his chest is a real privilege. He also got to play with Elvin on several occasions so the connection is really meaningful.

Family is also important to Alan and to be given a “Greatest Grandad in the World” cap by Naima was an added pleasure.

Nothing for it now but to head off to the pub for a celebratory pint.

Alan Skidmore

Tenor saxophonist

Author / mikeraggett