BRECON Jazz this year is gaining pace and everyone is pulling together making preparations, from pubs and clubs, cafes, shops, venues, and guesthouses, campsites, anywhere that visitors can stay during ’the jazz’.

In the 1980s and 1990s, we stayed in most of the B&Bs, campsites and hotels in Brecon for the jazz weekend. Where you stayed depended on how early you booked! We’ve written in this Jazz Corner about the Castle Hotel, its ballroom, dancing, and splendid lawns for ’jazz on a summer’s day’, and of the Wellington (Hotel), with it’s ’Duke’s Bar’ and home to an earlier Brecon Jazz Club. But staying at the ’Lansdowne’ (now Ty Helyg) was always something special. For one thing, you needed to be a musician really, and those ’civilians’ amongst us in residence were definitely in the minority; American voices were the norm at breakfast.

But these special places - we’ve mentioned and celebrated them previously, these venues and spaces of the festival – they do remain very evocative. They ’hold’ cultural memories and experiences in their being but also in the discourses and narratives of those who have passed their way. Yet it always surprises how easily and quickly these are drawn out and evoked.

We had an hilarious moment at the last jazz club event this month, after a wonderful musical collaboration between South African pianist Philip Clouts and a special Trio we had put together of young jazz musicians based in Wales. At the end of the evening, as they were leaving, a couple of members presented us with a poster for a future BJC event. We did a genuine ’double take’ - the poster looked absolutely genuine and all in the house style with headers and dates. But the photo and lineup featured them, those cheeky members of the audience! We loved the playfulness, engagement of this, a joke on all of us, and with suitable wording to match - ’the Trio have performed in all the best venues, they have a laid-back style..’ etc. There is something precious and enduring about entering into and onto such an initiative. Where else can that go! Turning the world upside down is definitely what jazz (and art) can be about.

There were some more examples of this when we spoke to John and Pam Nancarrow recently. They are residents of Brecon, and for many years, the owners of the famous Lansdowne Hotel - ’the Pendleburys always stayed here’ - on the Watton. John recalls how one year a Cuban band who were relaxing in the evening and after some ’refreshment’, started using the plates, knives and forks to tap out the multiple rhythms and beat that had recently stirred a large crowd to dancing! Trumpeter John Hamm reportedly told others how he arrived at the Lansdowne to check in, only to hear singing and music coming from the dining room. He went in and there were Tina May and Dylan Fowler the guitarist, giving a tea-time mini concert!

Something in a more dominant key took place literally on the hotel’s front doorstep when Jim Wood (band marshall) and the Adamant Band, after completing their town march and musical parade through Brecon, returned to the Lansdowne and just kept marching and playing - right through the hall and into the front room, tubas and all! Pam remembers it well - the whole house shook, from the floors to the ceilings!

It gives the title to this week’s piece - Raising the Roof! Let’s hope we can all raise the roof, and the whole town, with music, summer, festivity, and that special combination called ’Brecon Jazz’, this August. You can see the band relaxing on the lawns of another hotel, the Castle, perhaps after the ’shakin at the Lansdowne’ session!

Expect to see all of us there. No doubt John will be going to hear Tina May...but if you like to bang your cutlery and tap your plates, may we suggest some guided practice with the excellent Cathy Jones, whose workshop on Sunday includes Samba rhythms and Bossa Nova numbers (1.30 Guildhall). Keep telling us your stories of Brecon Jazz! And long may it last….