Happy Birthday Kenny Wheeler

Monday.

The gig to mark Kenny Wheeler's 75th birthday was packed out last night. It's amazing how many people in the Bogsville area will go and listen to live jazz when it is supposed to be a jazz desert.

Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Evan Parker, Stan Sulzmann, Dave Holland, Norma Winstone and other notable "wrinklies" together with a healthy mix of younger musicians celebrated a remarkable musician's talents.

The gig ended with a new work commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for 18-piece big band. I look forward to hearing that again. Unfortunately BBC replays only run for a week. The link is always worth listening to though.

The last piece they played was a version of How Deep Is The Ocean that included just about the most incredible tenor sax solo I've heard for years. I've never been able to appreciate Evan Parker's free improvisations, though it would be impossible to deny his technical mastery of the saxophone. Last night, within the context of the big band, his solos were simply amazing. He produced unbelievable "sheets of sound", I don't know any other way to describe it, where hundreds of notes, covering the whole range of the tenor saxophone, all seemed to flow into one and yet fitted perfectly into the overall form of the piece. A truly remarkable experience.

I'm working on some photographs.

If you came here looking for Unfair Cop - it's here.