MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB JUNE 2013 GIG

Zoe Gilby


GIFTED YOUNG SINGER RETURNS TO MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB

 

This month’s concert at Milestones Jazz Club on Sunday 2 June features the return by popular demand of an exciting and gifted young singer from Newcastle fast making her mark on the UK jazz scene – Zoe Gilby and The Andy Champion Trio.

Zoe Gilby last appeared at Milestones in 2011 when she entertained a large audience with accessible, exciting music without losing the deeper subtleties of a fine jazz musician.

Zoe has already been praised by Courtney Pine as deserving of wider recognition when he played her debut CD on his BBC Radio 2 show.

Zoe’s is a versatile voice, which mixes great jazz technique and a healthy dose of the blues with a deeply expressive and agile quality.

A childhood steeped in jazz means that her many influences are clear - not only great vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson and Anita O'Day but also revered instrumentalists like Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker and John Coltrane.

"I was brought up on listening to jazz", says Zoe, "I have had this passion passed on to me from my father who worked professionally as a jazz trumpet player and arranger for over 40 years."

In 2007 she released her debut CD, ‘Now That I Am Real’, which has subsequently been broadcast on radio stations across Europe and the US.

While still so young, Zoe has already performed with respected musicians like Louis Stewart and Jim Mullen, at international jazz festivals around the UK and at prestigious venues like Ronnie Scott’s Club in London.

Zoe’s long-time accompanist, the endlessly resourceful double bass player Andy Champion, will lead sympathetic support on a repertoire of American songbook classics, modern jazz standards and originals from her latest CD, ‘Looking Glass’.

The band’s full line-up features Zoe Gilby (vocals), Andy Champion (double bass), Simon Brown (piano) and Brian McAllister (drums).

Listen to Zoe Gilby's music at http://www.zoegilby.co.uk/music/ or http://www.myspace.com/zoegilby or visit the club website at http://www.milestonesjazzclub.co.uk

All Milestones gigs are held on the first Sunday of every month and take place at Hotel Hatfield, Esplanade, Lowestoft with the doors opening at 8pm.

Admission - £7 / £6 (concession).

ART AND POETRY BOXES FLOURISH

I continue to make Art & Poetry Boxes under the OUT OF THE MACHINE tag. They can be found on offer on my eBay Shop

CAN WE GO ON? BENEFITS JUSTICE

Underpass, Anglia Square

News that the first suicide due to the Bedroom Tax can be found in The Mirror

This grandmother couldn't go on after the government took £20 away from her per week because she has a spare room.

Of course, this tax doesn't apply to millionaire mansions or locked up churches. This isn't a tax on property or space - this is a tax on the poorest for being poor.

A vibrant Anti-Bedroom Tax group is building in Norwich and a Benefits Justice Summit was held in London at the weekend to co-ordinate opposition across the country.
 

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF ART

Anglia Square, Norwich. There's been more public art activity going on of late. I love it - from spraying to print cartoons.

For me, this is Art - every bit as much as art found in a gallery. Yes, it can last just a moment but unlike Damien Hirst's diamond studded gold skull, this 'throw away' art is forever in real hearts and minds.

Hirst's art is purely speculation, like the Price of Gold, the use of Gold. This is the 'Divide' which will kill off Hirst's work over the next decade: hearts, hands and minds versus the silly marketing ideas of the super rich.

 

THE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

If like me, you're forever looking for the truth in our Times, News Unspun is 'tops' in unravelling the media bias - particularly the right wing bias of the BBC, which is meant to be a public broadcasting company (that is, owned by all of us, for all of us).

Visit News Unspun

DAVID SULLIVAN - ARTIST

David Sullivan is an exciting artist. Do visit his website

GUITAR CELEBRATION, MAY 5 GIG AT MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB, LOWESTOFT

Dave Cliff


SUMMIT MEETING OF GREAT GUITARISTS AT MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB
This month's concert at Milestones Jazz Club on Sunday 5 May features a guitar summit meeting between the UK's premier bop guitarist and East Anglia's own six-string hero - The Dave Cliff and Phil Brooke Quartet.

Dave Cliff has long established himself on the national jazz scene as a guitarist of taste, style and excitement, firmly grounded in the bop school of long, flowing lines.

In a career of over forty years he has worked with amongst others Nina Simone, Wynton Marsalis, Georgie Fame, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh and Scott Hamilton.

"I love the experience of playing in a group. To me it’s much more important than virtuosity," says Cliff.

East Anglian guitarist Phil Brooke has long been the first choice of both local musicians and visiting stars for his intelligent playing and sympathetic accompaniment.

Here is a rare opportunity to hear Cliff and Brooke explore a programme of standards and jazz classics through the rich harmonies and direct styles of their main influences - Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Joe Pass.

This concert will feature the unusual instrumentation of two guitars, a combination that leads to be both complimentary and excitingly competitive playing and a swinging approach that aims for musicality rather than innovation-at-all-costs.

The band's full line-up features Dave Cliff (guitar), Phil Brooke (guitar), Ivars Galenieks (double bass) and Brian McAllister (drums).

Listen to musical clips at at http://www.davecliff.com and watch You Tube footage of Dave Cliff via the club website at http://www.milestonesjazzclub.co.uk

All Milestones gigs are held on the first Sunday of every month and take place at Hotel Hatfield, Esplanade, Lowestoft with the doors opening at 8pm.

Admission - £7 / £6 (concession).

CHANGING TIMES: MAY DAY IN NORWICH

Return of May Day in Norwich

Drawing by Rupert Mallin 1983

THE LYRIC TRIO SALUTE MICHAEL GARRICK - MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB, APRIL 7

THE LAST WORK OF A JAZZ GREAT AT MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB
This month’s concert at Milestones Jazz Club on Sunday 7 April features a tribute to one of the greats of modern jazz in Britain by those that worked with him - The Lyric Trio plays the last music of Michael Garrick.

The restless creativity of Michael Garrick earned him the title 'The English Duke Ellington' and placed him since the 1960's at the forefront of the UK creative music scene as a pianist, composer and band-leader.

A remarkable composer always one step ahead, he effectively assimilated the influences of American jazz and 20th century classical music with his love of English literature, folk and Indian music.

And in singer Nette Robinson, he found a muse for his love of poetry and music, revelling in her ability to sing whatever melody his mind could compose.

Only a year before his untimely death in 2011 Garrick appeared with Robinson at Milestones Jazz Club, the core of his final creative band which he later dubbed 'The Lyric Ensemble'.

In his last recorded music, 'Home Thoughts', Garrick explored the work of some of the great poets, effusively composing to the lines of Shakespeare, Browning, Blake and Tin-Tun-Ling in addition to his own poetry.

And it is this last music that will be performed at this tribute concert where Michael Garrick's role at the piano will be taken by the celebrated pianist Nikki Iles, long respected as a leading musician on the UK jazz scene.

Voice and piano are further complemented by the articulate and lyrical saxophone playing of Tony Woods.

This concert is part of a national tour supported by Jazz Services.

The band’s full line-up features Nikki Illes (piano), Nette Robinson (vocals) and Tony Woods (saxes / alto clarinet).

Listen to The Lyric Trio's music at http://lyricensemble.co.uk/music.html or via the club website at http://www.milestonesjazzclub.co.uk

All Milestones gigs are held on the first Sunday of every month and take place at Hotel Hatfield, Esplanade, Lowestoft with the doors opening at 8pm.

Admission - £7 / £6 (concession).

NB Milestones Jazz Club takes place in a basement room that requires the use of stairs. If you have a disability please contact milestonesjazz@hotmail.co.uk or (01502) 568684 for more info and help in entering the building.

QUOTES...

"The cool-voiced and clearly enunciating Robinson caresses lyrics...Woods supplies elegant saxophone colour and bite...striking", Jazz Journal

"Possessing the smoothest of timbres, Robinson's voice is one you could never tire of listening to...rich in subtle emotions and moods...a little gem", Jazzwise magazine

"A gorgeous valediction for the late pianist", Jazz UK

"A formidable UK jazz presence rising to her full height", The Guardian on Nikki Iles

"A very fine singer, very accurate, very emotional", Michael Garrick interviewed on BBC Radio 3, 2010

THE POET'S DESK - 1976

A drawing of my typewriter back in 1981. Back in the 1970s you needed a typewriter with a long carriage if you were going to duplicate A5 size booklets!

1976 was a changing year for me. There was the Ipswich Poetry Workshop and Stable Press (I had published two issues of Stable Magazine and various booklets); and 25 poems were published in magazines, including AMBIT, which paid a little. I lived between Clare and Ipswich and I lived on very little.

However, Christmas was terrible. With the family gathered, Dad told us he'd been diagnosed with bowel cancer and faced a major day-long operation in the New Year. 1977 was going to be tough.

THE PEOPLE OF THE IPSWICH POETRY WORKSHOP

It's really important to me that this attempt at providing an autobiography - a personal history - of the poetry scene doesn't involve relationships, and the incidental clashes and comforts with and of others. However, the Ipswich Poetry Workshop was nothing without the strong characters who made IPW possible.

Come back to this posting as I attempt to update it with links and new rememberings!

BILL SCHEMENSKY was an incredible working class poet who was in his seventies when he attended the workshops. His "Rocky Old Moonlight" poem should be read by children today. What did landing on the Moon do for us? Bill was a Communist, probably an old Stalinist, but he always put ordinary people first.

JOHN ROW, for me, was an incredible performance poet. He had worked with Nick Tozcek in Stereo Graffiti and subsequently worked with fusion bands in Ipswich and beyond. He has been the number one writer/performer working in prison and, needs be, a storyteller at the big festivals for well over 30 years.

FRANK WOOD was the quietly spoken but gritty Northerner whose realist poetry always cut an edge. Frank was central to IPW. He was good friends with the brilliant Socialist poet JIM BURNS who was poetry editor of TRIBUNE.

Talking of TRIBUNE...

PAUL ANDERSON was then a seventeen year old school student who set the workshop alight. His 'Rat Repeater' will never be forgotten as Punk alighted in 1977. Paul went on to Oxford University, became editor of TRIBUNE, then deputy editor of NEW STATESMAN. He has written much, now lectures in Journalism.

Paul is still friends with another who attended IPW - TRACEY MACLEOD

KEITH DERSLEY was already a puiblished poet when he joined IPW. His poems in London Magazine are among his best - the best. Keith went on to create his own Press and his RAGGED EDGE website (now sadly missed). He was the quiet one who inspired.

MARK JARMAN, another school student like Paul Anderson, was inspired by Keith. Mark went on to run and edit Chocolate News.

MARTIN STANNARD was the find of the Ipswich Poetry Workshop! That is, Martin went on to edit JOE SOAP'S CANOE and have many books of poetry published. Martin now teaches in China.

Many others too... ROBIN MAUNSELL was a well established magaizine poet; JOHN GONZALEZ set up his own press and STEVEN SMY published a magazine.

This list of poets may seem a bit male but there were quite a few females!  Or did they just sit there and take in the foolishness in order to bypass and be themselves? To make it?

 

THE IPSWICH POETRY WORKSHOP: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

 

 

The idea of the workshop was to have a meeting every week for a couple of hours. These would alternate fortnightly between formal criticism of poetry submitted to the “worksheet” and ‘experimental’ workshops which sometimes worked but could also degenerate into read rounds without worksheets. Having copies of poems being read was to enable those attending to not only hear the poem but also read and see the poem before offering criticism. As I used to insist before these workshops, “all criticism must be constructive” to avoid any spats. Most of the time, this seemed to work well.

The experimental workshops were less formal and pretty quickly we had to give each a topic or a task so they had purpose. These sessions ranged from talks on Concrete Poetry and Surrealism to practical sessions involving music, cut up instant poems, poetry with music and poetry with a dramatic dimension. For myself, to have my voice accompanied by Richard Rhimes on zither was a high point. Sometimes these workshops closed in slide-splitting laughter.

It had escaped my memory but we did have a formal structure. I was Secretary, Frank Wood was Chairman and John Row Treasurer with a committee of five. This was ratified in March 1977. Subsequently John Row resigned as treasurer (he would be away a lot) and  Mick Duck was co-opted onto the committee.
 

The fortnightly (or three-four weekly!) worksheets were my duty as poems had to be typed up and duplicated. It was over a year before anyone offered to have them photocopied! However, some 17 worksheets (with up to 12 poems per worksheet) were produced over the 14 months the workshop ran. These became worksheets + newsletters.

 The fortnightly basic/experimental workshops worked very well to begin with. Though as more reading and performance opportunities emerged, often ‘experimental’ became a rehearsal. There was quite a lot of music, some concrete poetry, some talks and even a little drama!  

Frank Wood, Keith Dersley, John Row, Steven K Smy, Mary Nobbs, Berthram Bay, Jan Auton, Mark Jarman, Brendon Pearson, Richard Rhimes, John Rooney, Bill Schemensky, Paul Anderson, Robin Maunsell, Simon Bishop, Martin Stannard, Carol Parker, Joan Cubbin, Trevor Read, Jim Brown, Janny Bude, Jennifer Armstrong, Lawrence Peckham, Gillian Bence Jones, Mick Duck, Malvine Southgate, Les Warren, FB Brame, Shaun, Jack and many others attended the workshops.

We got some good publicity from the Evening Star and our first reading was at the Gardeners Arms in December. All those wanting to read got a slot and I think Brendan Pearson provided a musical interlude. An A5 poetry pamphlet was produced with one poem per poet. Beyond the group and their friends and family, I’m not sure we got too much of a paying audience but it was a start.

Within the year we staged six or seven IPW readings, an EAA funded Poets in Pubs reading featuring Jim Burns, an Ambit magazine reading featuring Edwin Brock and editor Martin Bax, and a talk by Kemble Williams of the Ipswich based magazine Samphire.

 

Having four or five sixth form students attend regularly was the energy the workshop needed, while IPW was flexible and relaxed enough to enable an eclectic mix of poets and others to pursue their writing. From the Newsletters it appears that things only became difficult as ambitions for IPW overtook what was possible.

Fund raising was on the cards and a grant application was in the pipeline. There was talk of setting up an IPW centre. We must have been stark raving bonkers! Also, by default, a faction emerged via having groups within the group reading/performing separately. Hey-ho. Also, quite a few of the more established and literary poets weren’t so keen on the notion of a ‘workshop.’ There was also a drive to set up a performance group from the IPW membership. More factions, more splits. That is, people wanted a lot of different things.
 

 

We hated this Ipswich Evening star headline but the article itself was excellent.

 

In the Autumn of 1977 the workshop began to collapse. For some, it had run its course. The mistake, my mistake, was to see IPW move from the Drama Centre to the Globe Bookshop to avoid a small fee. The back room of a shop wasn’t  the same as a classroom.  

Over the fourteen months we had three or four readings in Ipswich pubs; at the Drama Centre, Ipswich; the Drama Festival, Sudbury; the Old Hall Community, East Bergholt; and at a Sixth Form Collegiate event – with various levels of success. We had 55 weekly meetings.

The Ipswich Poetry Workshop zoomed into the air like a rocket and came down a stick. That’s fine because a lot of people got something from the fireworks and some of us stayed up in the air.

 

 

 

 

IPW BOOKLETS FOR READINGS:

An important idea of the Ipswich Poetry Workshop was that we'd publish booklets of poets' work for our readings. We produced two small A5 duplicated booklets for two such readings.

"Standing On The Barmaid's Head" because the stage in The Running Buck, Ipswich, was then literally built over the bar!

THE IPW WORKSHEETS: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

Seventeen worksheets containing poems by the Ipswich Poetry Workshop were produced over a year.

1976: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

1976 was a big year for me. Via some kind of relationship, I moved to Ipswich. Got a bedsit just off Portman Road. I reforged friendships with Stef from my art school days. Think he became a manager at Sainsburys (amazing what graphics can do). Anyway, I was back in the town.

I got a job at Burton Son & Saunders for a month. Just a terrible factory. They made all kinds of sweets and were once famous for Waggon Wheels. I met a black woman who was still working the same machine in which she had lost her hand! And another older woman who had worked there 41 years and every year took her holiday in Rhyl! And after a run in with the forewoman, was out the door after four weeks!

However, I had plans to set up a poetry group in the town. The Eastern Arts Association couldn't provide me with direct funding but would offer me the opportunity to help run Poets In Pubs. I met Irene MacDonald, EAA arts officer after work in The Swan. Despite being covered in sugar, it was a good meeting. a bit of a spur.

Meanwhile, I began gathering names, contact details. John Row, performance poet; and Frank Wood, active in the Suffolk Poetry Society. Frank told me there was a published poet in Ipswich I must get involved, Keith Dersley. I had seen Keith's poems in Samphire and was keen to involve him. He worked in the main Post Office. I plucked up courage and went to his counter and, reluctantly at first, he was on board.

I also had contact via a friend in Sudbury with the director of the Drama Centre at Gatacre Road who was keen for a poetry group to hire  a room at the centre.

My memory fails me in how it all came together but the Ipswich Poetry Workshop was formed.

The next posting here will centre on the workshop, the poets, this exciting little venture which momentarily changed some of our lives.

MY FIRST VOLUME OF POETRY: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

FOOT ON THE BEACH

This was my first volume of twenty poems, hand set in 12pt Gill Sans, in a numbered edition of 100 with a further 20 copies for the British Library and reviews. They sold out quite quickly. I chose the wrong paper and the wrong method of binding but I was on a learning curve.

It was described as a volume of “adolescent poetry,” which I only half minded as many of the poems were written when I was a teenager. Small press reviews can take some time to come out, so we may take a look at those a year down the line!

The physical effort of composing type was incredibly useful in understanding the need for brevity! I also liked the physicality of the project. Also, my spelling was still terrible and I had to concentrate to avoid mistakes. I was going to illustrate the volume and I did cut a few lino blocks but time was not on my side – nor my lack of cash!

Also, the act of composing and printing was a brilliant self-discipline. I had some kind of attention deficit disorder, twitching, moving, awkward most of the time, even in adulthood.

Of the twenty poems, all but four were published in magazines in 1975 or in the pipeline to be published over the following eighteen months. ‘Girl At A Gate’ was published in six different magazines! As a new kid on the block, I slowly realised you couldn’t send out the same poem to different magazines at the same time.

Via this first volume and my investment in printing equipment there was no getting out of this journey. Poetry had become IT.

THE HAVERHILL POETRY GROUP: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

THE HAVERHILL POETRY GROUP

The group was set up by local teacher Joe Sheerin, whose poetry had a gritty realism. Two others joined us so we became four.

FOUR was produced as our magazine anthology. We had two poetry readings: Haverhill Folk Club and Dunmow High School, Essex.

My father created the cover design. With parents whose life is art and writing as a living, I found it difficult to compete with them. Indeed, I’m sure this is why I chose poetry because it was the only mode of expression my dad didn’t have a handle on!

My contribution of five poems to FOUR now embarrasses me. It was as if I had written them on the back of Mr Hopkins’ Sprung Rhyme and spat out the results as if bailing hay by hand. Yet, with fresh old eyes looking back I can almost see what I was attempting.

 

Love, a long excuse                      Letters out of a heart read
A reason obtuse                            Give Your Blood
Recluse
Words…                                          SPIT BACK

Are we in love?                              He died at 6 am

Your morning lips crack               Deficient in blood

                                                        And warming love

On hard edged lips

Blister and spit fat                         SPIT BACK
The bradawl of your eyes             He died at 6am
Spies other women in his                                   
Eyes                                                 Deficient in love

                                                         And iron blood…

In this short extract, there are not two poems fighting each other but two voices pitched against each other. Each phrase is like a statement. So how could I change this today?

 

Letters out of a heart read           Love is a long excuse

Give your blood                            Reasons you lose
You can speak                              Or refuse
These words                                 SPIT BACK

 

He died at 6 am                             In love
Deficient in blood                         Your warming kisses
And tender warmth                      Crack on hard edged lips

In blisters, oozes fat                    SPIT BACK

 

He died at 6am                              As the bradawl of your eyes
Emptied of love                             Spied other women
Deficient in blood                          In his dead eyes
SIT BACK

 

1975: THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

My plan is to finish this 'poetry' autobiography by mid-June as my 60th birthday looms...

1975 was the turning year in which ten of my poems were published in little magazines, I set up Stable Press and joined the Haverhill Poetry Group. It was also a sad year as someone I was close to was killed at a very young age in a car crash.

With money I saved I journeyed to the amazing Adana shop in London. I bought various type blocks, ink and rollers. In my parents' extensive studios (which were once stables, hence Stable Press) we set up the duplicator, while my father Tom built a small screen printing bench. In a small room in the house I set up my 6 by 4 Adana press and began type setting the 20 poems of my first publication. This took, many, many hours.

Meanwhile, as the Haverhill Poetry Group came together, I was given the task of producing the group's first publication. At the same time I began work on setting up the first issue of Stable Magazine.

Later in the year, with the Haverhill Poetry Group, I took part in my first poetry reading at the Haverhill Folk Club. The village of Clare was no place to write the poetry I wanted to pursue but the family home was my essential base.

An avid book buyer, between 1974 and 1975 my father Tom bought me the entire collection of Penguin Modern Poets, The Letters of Hart Crane, all Sylvia Plath's books and many others. Such investment, I had to be a poet but as ever my lack of confidence...

DORIS MAGAZINE, NORWICH - THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980

FOOT ON THE BEACH

 

Laughing like a twisted plimsoll

You ran soft skinned through the sand

To a bundle of gently blown clothes.

You crossed a barrier of pebbles

As if on hot coals.

Picked up a few pebbles for your pocket.

Felt their wholeness, round and firm.

Your expressions faded as you dressed

And as you tied the laces tighter

Round your tongue,

Solemn evening killed the sun.

 

This poem was first published in DORIS magazine, issue 9, in 1975. Doris was a brilliant alternative community magazine published in Norwich.

‘Foot On The Beach’ became a signature poem of mine by default. Because I am male, it may appear to be about a young female, but the ambiguity is precisely because the subject is sexless – or that, as a child growing up, it doesn’t much matter, in universal terms, whether you’re male or female. And, the bottom line is that the poem is about myself (as a kind of universal “myself.”)

The poem became important to me as it sparked a theme which ran on for a dozen years or more: the notion that the edge (the beach) is the freedom strived for – a tiny strip between the sea (death) and the inland (work, life, conformity). I played this idea out many times through scores of poems: all rivers lead to the sea (and death) but memory and imagination work the other way round: away from the sea to go upstream – ending up in work and conformity!  Hence, a foot on the beach.

The theme died when I ended up actually living next to the sea in Lowestoft. What an irony!

THE POETRY YEARS, 1974 TO 1980 - FROM ART SCHOOL TO FACTORY

From September 1973 I had embarked on a graphic illustration course at Ipswich School of Art. This was a compromise - a bad one, as I should have stuck out for a place on the Foundation Studies Course. However, with a little bit of a grant I got digs in Ipswich but absolutely hated Ipswich School of Art for it was at that time run by a man with a near handlebar moustache from Dad’s Army. The liberalism of my previous further education experiences rebounded into that same old Suffolk educational conservatism. It was too much like school.

Despite the teachers, a taste of typography, photography and design skills was good discipline, while I enjoyed, beyond all else, life and still life drawing. Though I hated the course, lack of funds meant I had to leave digs after a term and make the 62 mile round trip via buses from Clare to Ipswich. Often I was late in and I’d have to miss the last hour of college in order to get back home. Often I hitch-hiked. It couldn’t be sustained and I left in March 1974.

Luckily, within a few weeks, I fell into a job in Haverhill at Hille International, working at their warehouse department. I liked it and became a forklift truck driver. I survived at the factory for over a year. My biggest regret was that I didn’t take up an opportunity to become a shop steward there. I related to those I worked with. Still, over the year I saved enough money to buy a typewriter with a long carriage, a Roneo electric duplicator and other equipment. My father Tom gave me his old and unused Adana 6 x 4 printing press and case full of Gill Sans type.

With my first poem in BOGG magazine and others in the pipe line I had it all to do when I left the factory in Spring 1975.