Category / News

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

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

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.

© 2021 text and photographs Mike Raggett WATCH THIS SPACE – SOME VIDEO CLIPS MAYBE ADDED SOON

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.

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.

Quartet and audience

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.

Skid Psalm

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.

Trio with audience

Steve Melling Trio

Ed

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.

Finale WS

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

Ed, Skid, Howard
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