Brecon Jazz Club column - celebrating 40 years of year-round jazz in Brecon.
This Saturday, February 6, please come along to the Wellington Hotel for some great free jazz from 8pm with the Mike Chappell trio, arranged by Brecon Jazz Club to celebrate live jazz music in the town. The trio - Mike on piano, with Erika Lyons on double bass and John Gibbon on drums, are all highly talented and well-established musicians on the Welsh jazz scene. Thinking about this reminded us that Mike and his wife Pam ran Brecon Jazz Club for many years, and handed over to us an archive of material that they had collected, which had been passed on to them. We were amazed with what we found there - cuttings and write-ups going back to the 1970s. Indeed, the club members then were active in producing material to put in the local newspaper about their jazz events, a bit like this! And where do you think the club met? Yes, at the Wellington Hotel, the venue for Saturday’s music.
It was in the ’Duke’s Bar’ of the Wellington that the club used to get together, and it set a very ambitious programme. The club invited in rising stars whose fees were still affordable - we try to do the same these days, Mike! - as well as the wealth of nearby and local jazz talent who also performed there. And they didn’t hold back when it came to aspiration. Two names in particular stand out, of musicians who came over to Brecon, in a rich season of music by soon-to-be international ’superstars’ of jazz. These were Barney Kessel (acclaimed US acoustic guitarist) and Martin Taylor, the UK jazz guitar supremo, described by Kessel as someone ’who has brought a new voice to the jazz guitar...unique (and) wonderful’.
And it was that archive, a gift from the past, that helped shape our invitation to Martin Taylor to play again in Brecon last year - by email we chased him around the world, as he toured in US and Japan, ran workshops in Italy and prepared to travel to Australia for another series of concerts. We wrote with the original ’sign in’ logo [pictured] that Martin had used at the club that night on 15 November 1988 (and yes, it was a ’Tuesday’, still our regular monthly jazz night). We included the published write-up/review of the evening too, and even had the set-list courtesy of the archive. Perhaps some of the B&R’s readers were there on that night of ’Jazz at the Dukes’ in 1988 - were YOU there? We also reminded Martin that he’d been made an ’honorary life member’ of Brecon Jazz Club on the night, and we hoped he’d return the favour by coming back: he did [see photo].
We certainly had some wonderful reactions - ’we were just dazzled by his playing’, two local jazz fans wrote in to say. There was also an independent review published following the event, which described the concert as ’ a masterclass in the art of solo guitar..Time seemed to stand still as Taylor drew the audience deep within his personal soundworld...the playing brilliant and immaculate...warm and filled with humanity, utterly spellbinding. It felt like a homecoming. A genuine Festival highlight’ (www.thejazzmann.com/reviews). One young local musician said she’d never seen someone as talented or who could play the guitar in such an amazing way, and people who’d travelled two hours to the concert contacted us to say: ’World class. We just sat there bathed in his loveliness. Unbelieveably wonderful, multiple rhythms, stunning’. Needless to say, the jazz team were very pleased with the response, as were Orchard, the Festival promoters.
The Wellington Hotel also did their bit when, on learning of Martin’s visit, the management offered to co-host with the Club a ’Welcome Reception’. It allowed Martin Taylor and wife Liz to meet some of today’s up and coming Welsh jazz stars Will Barnes and Tom Ollendorff, as well as being introduced to visiting French musicians Major Swing, including violinist Yurie Hu [see photo]. She had ’impressed in the Stephane Grappelli role’, recalling the early career of Martin Taylor himself and his 11 years of touring as the guitarist with Grappelli. Yurie, a jazz violinist, also earned her own stunning reviews that weekend.
Today’s Brecon Jazz Club has its base in the delightful surroundings of the town’s Theatr Brycheiniog. Our February event will be on Tuesday 23 February (8pm) with visiting pianist Juan Galiardo from Spain. More about that in our next column - but here’s another question - which Brecon jazz pianist kindly loaned a keyboard for Juan’s last Brecon visit....? Come along to the Wellington on Saturday and ask Mike himself!
For more ’great evenings in Brecon: Saturday, February 6 (Wellington); Tuesday, February 23 (Theatr bar).