LONDON JAZZ NEWS: In Lockdown with...

In Lockdown with...

Since the enforced Lockdown imposed by the coronavirus and the UK government, we have all found different ways of coping with the restrictions and disruption of our daily lives. Some of the hardest hit have been the musician who have suddenly found their livelihoods disappear overnight, and these series of In Lockdown with... interviews on the London Jazz News website have served to show just how adaptable the musicians are becoming.

As Sebastian Scotney, editor of Londown Jazz News says "I was impressed when Danielle White wrote in one of her emails (or e-blasts as she likes to call them) at the beginning of the lockdown:

“Jazz people are amongst the most adaptable of our species as life mirrors art and we improvise our way through – we're uniquely qualified to weather the storm.”

I thought London Jazz News ought to do something to capture and to celebrate that , but didn’t know what… So when an initiative came from two London Jazz News writers, Lauren Bush and Leah Williams, who also does a weekly editing stint with us, I was keen to see where it would go.

Lauren and Leah had both come up with the idea that we should get going with a “cookie-cutter” interview about what people were doing and how they were coping with lockdown. They both sent in sets of questions we might use, and our "guinea-pig" cellist Shirley Smart kindly agreed to choose the questions that interested her, and thereby became our first interview subject. Since then we have gone on using the questions she chose, and there are ten interviews so far.

Whatever else happens, I know that to have recorded for posterity both Ben Comeau’s and Nigel Price’s hilarious “most memorable incidents” has already made this exercise worthwhile!

Click on the links below to read this enlightening series of interviews so far...

Photo Credit Carl Hyde