BOXES AT MAGDALEN ST CELEBRATION, NORWICH

My Art & Texts in Boxes show at 86 Magdalen Street, Norwich, this Saturday, October 1st 10am to 4pm, alongside others' photos, ceramics and paintings - all part of the annual Celebration 

Find out more about the Magdalen Street Celebration.

MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB 15TH BIRTHDAY GIG

MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB CELEBRATES 15TH BIRTHDAY WITH JOOLS HOLLAND’S SAX PLAYER

This month's concert at Milestones Jazz Club on Sunday 2 October celebrates the club's 15th birthday and features a band led by a virtuoso musician described as "one of the most versatile saxophonists in the UK today" - Derek Nash and The Chris Ingham Trio.

Derek Nash is renowned on the UK jazz scene for his energetic, passionate and charismatic performances on all four saxophones - from biting alto and honking tenor to sonorous baritone and soaring soprano.

At any one time Derek’s playing can take in blistering bebop, blues, soul and funk and is heard regularly with The Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra.

As lead alto saxophonist with Jools Holland, Derek performs over 100 gigs per year including for 65,000 people at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium, over 100,000 at the Glastonbury Festival and in concert and on TV with such greats as Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Solomon Burke, David Sanborn, Annie Lennox, Jamie Cullum, Madeleine Peyroux, Roger Daltrey and Tom Jones.

Derek has also led the saxophone group Sax Appeal for over thirty years, fronts the funk/fusion band Protect the Beat and as a member of the Ronnie Scott's Blues Explosion performs regularly at the world-famous club alongside blues greats like Jack Bruce who invited them to become his regular European touring band.

Born in Stockport, Derek started playing saxophone at the age of 13 encouraged by his father, a respected arranger for the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra for over thirty-five years, before moving to London to join the BBC's sound department.

As much a composer and arranger as a performer, Derek has composed for TV and radio and arranged for David Sanborn, Annie Lennox, Mavis Staples, Alison Moyet, Lulu, Kylie Minogue and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.

Derek also owns and operates Clowns Pocket Recording Studios where his skills as a record producer and engineer on Jamie Cullum’s album ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ won him a gold disc.

‘Joyriding’, Derek’s latest CD with his acoustic quartet will be released in the autumn.

At this concert Derek will be supported by The Chris Ingham Trio on a reportoire of jazz standards and a smattering of Nash originals.

If you like passionate, hard-swinging, blues–soaked excitement then this is not to be missed.

The band’s full line-up features Derek Nash (alto, tenor, soprano and baritone saxophones), Chris Ingham (piano), Andy Doyle (double bass) and George Double (drums).

Listen to Derek Nash’s music by visiting http://www.dereknash.com/music 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).

A LIFE: 1928

1928 begins badly: the Thames floods and 14 are drowned; Stalin introduces the first five year plan in the USSR and begins to drive down wages; and Coca Cola arrives in Europe, via the Olympics in Amsterdam.

Still, the Women’s Right to Vote is extended in Britain and Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance.

My grandfather’s hands are shaking: the economic tides are turning and his trowel is dry.

Muriel Grace is three and Tom Mather is oblivious to his first birthday.

A LIFE: 1927

1927 - West Bromwich’s motto is “Work Conquers All.”

West Bromwich lies five miles north of Birmingham in the Black Country. Here my father Tom Mather Mallin was born on June 14, 1927, the year in which a telephone line between New York and London was first used, British troops invaded Shanghai and Trotsky was expelled by Stalin from the Soviet Union.

Tom was the last child born to Clifford Vincent Mallin and Olive May Mather. Sisters Joan and Mary were born in 1920 and 1922 respectively. Mary was twin to a girl who died in infancy. In fact both twins were born disabled. Mary lived until her mid-teens.

Clifford Vincent Mallin, the grandfather I never met, was born in Staffordshire in 1887 and died on January 5, 1932, at the wheel of his car, possibly from a massive heart attack. So my dad lost his dad when he was four years old.

Tom later told me that the middle class practice of wearing corsets during pregnancy was a contributing factor in his twin sisters’ disabilities. Disability was frowned on in the 1920s and 1930s and Mary, I was told, spent much of her time in a long black pram like a coffin. When visitors called, Mary was gently wheeled into the cupboard beneath the stairs. Whether truth or myth, this was my father’s recollection of his own childhood.

Grandfather Clifford had risen in status from an assistant buyer for Dunlop to became a Steel and Iron Buyer for a Staffordshire Carriage & Wagon Works. He also became a mason of standing. Clifford’s father had been a successful pattern cutter at an iron foundry in Staffs, so metal seems to have been in the Mallin blood.

In 1927 there were bloody riots against the Fascists in Vienna and a rebellion against British Troops in Shanghai, while the US was busy developing TV and the UK enforced strict control of radio frequencies.

A LIFE: 1926

On January 16, 1926, uproar was caused by a BBC Radio play about a workers’ revolution! The Russian Revolution was nine years behind and only Trotsky’s ‘Left Opposition’ opposed Stalin’s control of the Soviet bureaucracy but revolution reverberated around the world still.

On May 3, 1926 the British General Strike began. It lasted nine days before the lure of government-TUC negotiations deflected workers away from their fight.

My grandfather in Chicago was a confused Communist supporter. In 1926 the winds of wealth and want were blowing together again: Route 66 was opened that year and TV was an experiment away, but work on large construction projects was becoming less and less secure. Muriel Grace was one year old.

Working class Reds on this side of the family - true Blue Masons on the other…

A LIFE: 1925

A Chicago skyscraper is perhaps an odd place to begin an autobiography but I have in my mind my grandfather’s hands and arms all those feet up in the air, a plasterer, applying the skin to the American Dream, 1925. I imagine his arm shaking a little as he contemplated his emigration from Essex, England, to the Windy City as his wife Elsie grew heavy with their first child.

Harold George, my grandfather, had emigrated to the US in the early 1920s as his supply of building jobs began to dry up in England. So it was that on February 18,1925, my mother was born in the United States of America, first daughter to Harold and Elsie Ruth George (nee Adams). My mother, Muriel Grace George.

Already in January 1925, Mussolini had declared himself dictator and Fascist ruler of Italy. However, in the US things appeared to be on the up: the first woman in history became a state governor, The Chrysler Corporation was set up, records were being mass produced, The Great Gatsby was published and The New Yorker produced the first newspaper supplement.

Yet, there was a very dark side to the US of 1925: over 40,000 Ku Klux Klan members and supporters marched in Pennsylvania.

***

My grandmother Elsie died in 1944 and, of course, I never met her. However, I met Harold -  “Pops” - a couple of times when I was a child. He had remarried. We drove from Clare in Suffolk to Clacton-on-Sea, where Harold and Marie (pronounced Mar-eee) had a small bungalow. I remember Harold crying, probably because of all the years gone by.

Effectively, my mother Muriel left home when she was evacuated aged fifteen. Elsie died in 1944 when my mother was 19. I always wonder what Elsie was like - my grandmother, the person so influential in my mother’s life.

BOXES FOR SALE ONLINE

Out of the Machine Art&Text boxes are now on sale for under a fiver - P&P free - at Rupert's eBay Gallery Shop

POET MARTIN STANNARD GUEST BLOGGER ON 'THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY'

Poet Martin Stannard takes a look at English Poetry and England as guest blogger on 'The Best American Poetry.' He writes about England from China and, to be honest, he gets a better perspective of this island from there.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY - SEPTEMBER 16

'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' will be coming to UK cinema screens September 16th. Adapted from John le Carre's novel, it is directed by Tomas Alfredson and stars Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and John Hurt...

On the dark walls you may see some paintings. One of the paintings is by my father Tom Mallin. It is a life figure painting, except the figure is really a life-sized dummy! Think it was painted in the early 1960s - at the height of the Cold War...