Tag / After the Rain

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

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