Post 303: THE SORRY STATE OF U.K. JAZZ CLUBS

We read in the December edition of Jazz Guide about yet another traditional jazz club in England that is closing down for good at the end of 2015, after having hosted jazz bands pretty well every Thursday night for many years.

This seems to be the trend in England. Audiences are dwindling. Each club has its own little nucleus of elderly folk who try to attend regularly. But as these people die or become incapable of turning out, the club withers.

Here's a recent photo taken at one of England's more successful clubs. Its sessions are held at lunchtimes on Sundays.

Fewer than fifty people attended and they were elderly. It's hard to imagine that even such a club as this will still be in operation a few years from now.

I'm sorry to paint this gloomy picture and - as regular readers know - I am thrilled that there is still some great traditional jazz being played by young people throughout the world, if you care to look for it.

But in England, ask 'the man in the street' where you can go to hear a live traditional jazz band, and he would be unable to tell you. In fact, he might not even understand your question.

The music gets so little exposure in the most influential of the media.

When Christmas shopping, I visited the store that has the largest collection of CDs in Nottingham. It has a section labelled 'JAZZ'. But I couldn't find a single CD that could indisputably be described as 'traditional jazz'.

The last two generations have grown up on the disco music of recent decades and are unaware of much else. Making matters worse, music education in schools is very limited. It seems to me that it's only the privileged few who even learn to play an instrument.

Fortunately, we have twenty or so brilliant musicians in the United Kingdom who are under the age of forty and playing fine traditional jazz. But that's not many in a population of about 65,000,000. In general the future for traditional jazz in England is not looking good.

Post 199: JAZZ MUSICIANS DYING

Having recently attended the funeral of yet another jazz colleague, I was looking at a photograph of myself playing with him in a traditional jazz band nine years ago. The photograph was taken in a Norfolk pub, here in England. There were seven musicians in the band.

Today I am the only musician in that photo who is still alive. The band itself no longer exists. It was impossible to find replacements for those who passed on.

I will leave you to imagine the memories, feelings and reflections that went through my mind as I looked at that photo.

Though I am still playing in other bands, they too are running out of players. Prospects in my part of the world for the future of our music are not looking good.

Post 188: THE OLD FISH JAZZ BAND

Here's more good news for those of us who are concerned about the future of our music. Robert Duis has introduced to me The Old Fish Jazz Band.

I know nothing about the band - apart from what I have learned from YouTube. They seem to have played in Bucharest and other European cities. But it seems they are based in Berlin. Their instrumentation varies a bit between performances but essentially they are a six-piece, including washboard percussion and brass bass (reminiscent of Tuba Skinny).

They make even an old chestnut such as Bill Bailey sound very exciting, as you will find if you watch this. A correspondent has told me that the trombonist in this video is Kristoffer Alehed from Sweden, where he leads a quartet named Swing Tarturo. Another told me the lady washboard player/singer is none other than the famous Jessy Carolina, with her husband on clarinet.

CLICK HERE.

After listening to that, you may be tempted - as I was - to explore more of their videos.

Post 121: OLD MEN PLAYING JAZZ

I was invited to play a jazz gig recently in a band that had been put together just for the occasion - a 'telephone' band, as you might say.

When I turned up, there was no trombone player, but we had two reed players - clarinet and saxophone.

We three were required to be the 'front row', with the rhythm section behind us. So I had the clarinet player on my left and the sax man on the right, with me in the middle playing cornet. Before we started, we had a chat and commented that we were obviously quite elderly.

We all revealed our ages and - guess what - the combined total of the three of us was 243 years! We wondered whether that was a record for the front row of a jazz band.

My guess is that there are plenty of bands these days whose front rows could beat it.

Post 54: A NEW AUDIENCE FOR OUR MUSIC?

Regular readers will know I frequently bemoan the fact that - where I live in England (and I believe in many other parts of the world) - most of the audiences for traditional jazz concerts consist of people aged 75 and above. 

The musicians, too, are mostly in that same age category.

It is no surprise that we see the audiences gradually dwindling; and the bands struggling to survive as the musicians retire or die. Venues and festivals are not as numerous as they once were.

However, one of my optimistic musician friends recently made an interesting point in a discussion with me. I think it is worth passing on.

He claims to have noticed that quite a few people, after retiring from their jobs, look for ways of keeping themselves amused and entertained in their retirement. Some of them discover - to their surprise - that traditional jazz bands are playing lunchtime concerts in pubs near where they live. After giving the music a try, they find they very much enjoy going out for a pub lunch with such musical entertainment. Still aged in their 60s, they become 'regulars', replacing the older disappearing members of the audience.

I hope my friend is right. I go to four or five pub lunchtime sessions every month and I must say I too have met just a few people in this 'new audience' category.

Of course, there is still the problem that we also need to maintain the supply of musicians, but perhaps there are also some promising amateurs who will soon retire from their day jobs and think about taking up traditional jazz playing as a hobby.