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. There are only a few physical boxed sets left so if you like to handle CDs and would prefer to read Richard Williams’ excellent booklet in print hurry over to Confront now while stocks last. All tracks will remain available to stream – but it’s not the same is it?
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.
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 National Jazz Centre 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.
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.
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 LoveRead 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alan Skidmore and Nat BirchallAlan soloing on AscensionEverybody on stage for Ascension
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alan Skidmore 