Music / Jazz
The week in jazz – Aug 22-28
Here comes the Bank Holiday so it’ll be down to King Street for the Old Duke’s annual musical street party. This year’s Old Duke Jazz Festival runs, as ever from Saturday to Monday (27-29), though Saturday’s programme is pretty much all country music. Sunday boasts Bristol stalwarts The Blue Notes and Dennis Armstrong’s lot, however, while Monday is non-stop Trad and New Orleans Jazz including the Severn Jazzmen who, like the Blue Notes, can claim loyalty to jazz at the Duke stretching back to the 60s. If you want to warm up well in advance of the weekend then checking out Bama Mine (Canteen, Wednesday 24) will get your old-time juices flowing nicely.
There’s a couple of interesting (and contrasting) sax and keyboard duos on offer this week, too, with the long established contemporary jazz pairing of Kevin Figes (sax) & Jim Blomfield (piano) appearing at No 1 Harbourside (Thursday 25) while the newer groove-based combo of Sophie Stockham (sax) & Ruth Hammond (keyboards) visits the Tobacco Factory (Sunday 18). No Go Stop’s punchy tenor sax player brings his John Pratt Quartet to the Alma Tavern on Sunday, too.
This week’s Fringe session features the interestingly re-named George Cooper & The Jazz Defenders (Wednesday 24) playing an all-original set, each tune a collaboration between pianist George and another band member and inspired by classic Blue Note era modern jazz. Given the line-up of this all-star quintet it should be very interesting to see what they have created.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
