NIGEL PRICE - Reimagining Wes & A Post Covid Future
Over the last twenty five years Nigel Price, has garnered the reputation of being one the hardest working musicians in the business. In a world where you reap what you sow this has seen the guitarist embark on extensive UK tours, and he has also recorded a body of work as leader and sideman that has firmly established him as one of the most versatile and outstanding exponents of his instrument of his generation.
His indomitable spirit and determination that has served him so well in what is often a tough industry once again came to the fore when the Covid-19 pandemic hit these shores and decimated the live music scene. All of a sudden, the gigs were gone, diaries emptied, and opportunities to teach confined to online lessons.
Like so many, Nigel was hit hard by the sudden loss of his livelihood, and after the initial shock and a period of contemplation and adjustment to the new and imposed 'norm', he looked to channel his energies into a couple of new projects and produced the outstanding new album, Wes Reimagined. It was therefore a real privilege to have the opportunity to talk to Nigel about the new album, and how he has adapted to the current restrictions to enable him to keep working and stay creative.
On listening to Wes Reimagined I was initially struck by how fresh and original is sounds, so I begin by asking the guitarist why Wes, and how did he conceive the idea of reworking some of his tunes in such an imaginative way? "Every jazz guitar player will at some point be confronted with Wes Montgomery’s huge legacy and I think it’s fair to say that he’s pretty impossible to ignore", says Nigel. "In him we find so many solutions to problems and issues than affect all of us as guitarists. It’s the honesty in everything he does that draws me in. He’s got the most enormous tone of any guitarist for starters and that’s something that we all strive for in our own way. He’s not rolling off the treble though. It’s actually quite open and that’s something that, to my mind, many modern players can miss. " Elaborating Nigel says, "Wes conveys the message with incredible clarity. Some would say despite only having his thumb but I think it’s because he only has his thumb. He’s completely accepting of and at home with his shortcomings in the technique department. You never get the feeling that he wishes he was any better technically. He’s happily working to the absolute limits of what he’s got and that’s just fine. That resounds with me in a massive way, not having being schooled and not having particularly good technique. He knows how to use space and I think the technique (or lack of it) plays a real part in that. I don’t have the time to really go into it right now but in short, my appreciation of Wes Montgomery has led to an acceptance of my own shortcomings which I think has led me to be comfortable with my own playing too, even though I know I’m nowhere compared to today’s crop of jaw droppingly nimble guitarists!"
With a wealth of material and Montgomery recordings to sift through I suggested to Nigel that it must have been a daunting task to pick the right tunes to revisit? "With regard to the material, I think it’s important to try to put your own stamp on something. To simply copy, then regurgitate seems to me to be a bit pointless" he explains. "I’m not ashamed of being known as a Wes Montgomery enthusiast, although I don’t think I play particularly like him, and this feels like a very natural way of being partly what audiences expect and partly what they were least expecting! The starting point was simply to choose a Wes composition, then sift through my memory banks, consider the feel of my favourite recordings and then try to gauge how well a particular tune could work in a particularly different way. I went down a few dead ends for a while but then I’d just put my thinking cap back on and try something else. Once the decisions had been made the tunes very quickly and happily adopted their new identities. ‘Far Wes’, for instance, works just fine as a brisk 3/4. ‘Jingles’ translates really well into a full-on samba (complete with surdo drum!) and ‘Twisted Blues’ almost feels like in could have been written as a boogaloo."
His indomitable spirit and determination that has served him so well in what is often a tough industry once again came to the fore when the Covid-19 pandemic hit these shores and decimated the live music scene. All of a sudden, the gigs were gone, diaries emptied, and opportunities to teach confined to online lessons.
Like so many, Nigel was hit hard by the sudden loss of his livelihood, and after the initial shock and a period of contemplation and adjustment to the new and imposed 'norm', he looked to channel his energies into a couple of new projects and produced the outstanding new album, Wes Reimagined. It was therefore a real privilege to have the opportunity to talk to Nigel about the new album, and how he has adapted to the current restrictions to enable him to keep working and stay creative.
On listening to Wes Reimagined I was initially struck by how fresh and original is sounds, so I begin by asking the guitarist why Wes, and how did he conceive the idea of reworking some of his tunes in such an imaginative way? "Every jazz guitar player will at some point be confronted with Wes Montgomery’s huge legacy and I think it’s fair to say that he’s pretty impossible to ignore", says Nigel. "In him we find so many solutions to problems and issues than affect all of us as guitarists. It’s the honesty in everything he does that draws me in. He’s got the most enormous tone of any guitarist for starters and that’s something that we all strive for in our own way. He’s not rolling off the treble though. It’s actually quite open and that’s something that, to my mind, many modern players can miss. " Elaborating Nigel says, "Wes conveys the message with incredible clarity. Some would say despite only having his thumb but I think it’s because he only has his thumb. He’s completely accepting of and at home with his shortcomings in the technique department. You never get the feeling that he wishes he was any better technically. He’s happily working to the absolute limits of what he’s got and that’s just fine. That resounds with me in a massive way, not having being schooled and not having particularly good technique. He knows how to use space and I think the technique (or lack of it) plays a real part in that. I don’t have the time to really go into it right now but in short, my appreciation of Wes Montgomery has led to an acceptance of my own shortcomings which I think has led me to be comfortable with my own playing too, even though I know I’m nowhere compared to today’s crop of jaw droppingly nimble guitarists!"
With a wealth of material and Montgomery recordings to sift through I suggested to Nigel that it must have been a daunting task to pick the right tunes to revisit? "With regard to the material, I think it’s important to try to put your own stamp on something. To simply copy, then regurgitate seems to me to be a bit pointless" he explains. "I’m not ashamed of being known as a Wes Montgomery enthusiast, although I don’t think I play particularly like him, and this feels like a very natural way of being partly what audiences expect and partly what they were least expecting! The starting point was simply to choose a Wes composition, then sift through my memory banks, consider the feel of my favourite recordings and then try to gauge how well a particular tune could work in a particularly different way. I went down a few dead ends for a while but then I’d just put my thinking cap back on and try something else. Once the decisions had been made the tunes very quickly and happily adopted their new identities. ‘Far Wes’, for instance, works just fine as a brisk 3/4. ‘Jingles’ translates really well into a full-on samba (complete with surdo drum!) and ‘Twisted Blues’ almost feels like in could have been written as a boogaloo."
The album was recorded in September 2020 when there was a brief relaxation of the restrictions and social distancing measures that had been introduced for the UKs first lockdown. I ask Nigel how did he manage to plan the recording session so quickly, and did having such a small window of opportunity help focus the mind? "At the time we didn’t actually know it was a small window. I was actually quite surprised when I was trying to book the studio (the Fish Factory in Willesden) at how busy it was! It was perfectly legal to use studios over the lockdown because it’s considered a place of work so it was a struggle to line up dates with everyone.
"As regards focusing the mind, I don’t think there’s anything you can do to really prepare for that other than try to relax. That’s not a particularly easy thing to do when the clock is ticking at a very expensive hourly rate! I’ve never really felt that I enjoyed recording as much as I should because of this but I am getting more comfortable with it as I get older. The real secret of success is having a bunch of musicians around you who are absolutely incredible and that’s exactly what I had on the day: Ross Stanley just to my left absolutely eating up the music on the B3, Joel Barford totally nailing everything over in the corner and the dynamic duo - Vasilis Xenopoulous and Tony Kofi opposite me. You just can’t go wrong with a team like that and we had a really good laugh too. I think that’s important - to take the time to horse around a bit, even if the meter is running. Running around and stressing about every minute isn’t going to help anyone. These days I don’t even mind a couple of mistakes as long as the message gets across." Pausing he adds, "It’s so easy to beat yourself up and have regrets about a recording session, basically wishing you’d played better, but I think you have to accept that if you’d have played differently it would’ve been just that. Different. Not necessarily better. Sure, I’d like to have really busted some of the stuff I know I can do but it is, as they say, what it is. I wouldn’t change any of it, except maybe the last a section in ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’. I had some lovely but tricky chords worked out but when I got there was so much pressure that I bottled out! I felt a responsibility to everyone else to just ‘get it right’ and maybe that sums it all up - it’s a team effort and the overall success is what matters."
"As regards focusing the mind, I don’t think there’s anything you can do to really prepare for that other than try to relax. That’s not a particularly easy thing to do when the clock is ticking at a very expensive hourly rate! I’ve never really felt that I enjoyed recording as much as I should because of this but I am getting more comfortable with it as I get older. The real secret of success is having a bunch of musicians around you who are absolutely incredible and that’s exactly what I had on the day: Ross Stanley just to my left absolutely eating up the music on the B3, Joel Barford totally nailing everything over in the corner and the dynamic duo - Vasilis Xenopoulous and Tony Kofi opposite me. You just can’t go wrong with a team like that and we had a really good laugh too. I think that’s important - to take the time to horse around a bit, even if the meter is running. Running around and stressing about every minute isn’t going to help anyone. These days I don’t even mind a couple of mistakes as long as the message gets across." Pausing he adds, "It’s so easy to beat yourself up and have regrets about a recording session, basically wishing you’d played better, but I think you have to accept that if you’d have played differently it would’ve been just that. Different. Not necessarily better. Sure, I’d like to have really busted some of the stuff I know I can do but it is, as they say, what it is. I wouldn’t change any of it, except maybe the last a section in ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’. I had some lovely but tricky chords worked out but when I got there was so much pressure that I bottled out! I felt a responsibility to everyone else to just ‘get it right’ and maybe that sums it all up - it’s a team effort and the overall success is what matters."
Never one to take the easy option, I suggest to Nigel that he could easily have made a great album of Wes’ tunes with just his Organ Trio. But seemingly liking a challenge he set the bar even higher by deploying some rather inspired choices in bringing in other musicians. Laughing, the guitarist justifies his decision, "Every one of the previous seven organ trio albums I’ve made has been organised around an absolutely hectic schedule and there never seemed to be enough time to really stand back and consider every aspect of the recording, least of all any production ideas. I don’t mind that because the albums end up being a snapshot of the band at that moment but for ‘Wes Reimagined’ I had more thinking time. I have always self-produced my music and I reckon that extra head space made the concept much clearer. It was for this reason that the necessity to add more musicians became more obvious. Of course, I had to have percussion. How could I even have hoped to recreate a samba, a bossa nova or a boogaloo without it? And who better to ask than Snowboy? By the same token (and this was a much harder decision to make) how could I hope to put across the message that I wanted to acknowledge the latter part of Wes’s career without the inclusion of strings? Initially I just wanted to take the standard ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’, the ballad from Wes’ live album ‘Full House’ and turn it into a larger production to represent this period but I soon got to thinking that just having one track with strings would just be a bit, well, odd. This naturally led to thoughts about which other tracks could benefit from strings and with Wes tracks to reference like ‘Bumpin on sunset’ or ‘Up and at it’ that have quirky pads and lines interspersing kind of funky grooves I realised that ‘Cariba!’ could be a goer. I can’t do this kind of arranging myself. At least, I wouldn’t have the confidence to present anything I’d written to a real string quartet! I commissioned Callum Au to write three arrangements, for these two and the track ‘So Do It!’. I had worked with Callum before in the BBC Big Band and also in smaller groups, notably in Pete Long’s ‘Jazz at the Philharmonic’ which is basically a tear up for the horns while the rhythm section do their best not to snap the tendons in their arms! I soon became aware that Callum, despite his young years, is one of the best arrangers we have here so I thought I’d hire him whilst I can still afford him!
"It took a few weeks and when the charts arrived, I was totally knocked out. I became quite emotional just listening to the midi files so you can imagine what I was like when the Phonograph Effect strings came to the studio and laid them down live. I had a full out of body experience. The string players were just so incredible and Callum directed them amazingly, teasing out every nuance with respectful authority. It was a real treat to watch it happen."
While discussing the charts, I mention to Nigel that the arrangements for string quartet by Callum bring an entirely fresh interpretation to some beautiful melodies. I'm thinking in particular about 'So Do It', and a sublime version of 'I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face' on which his sound and touch on the guitar seem to lend itself well to the string quartet. "Well that’s really kind of you. The strings elevate the music to a higher plane for sure", comes the modest reply. Continuing Nigel adds "Callum wrote the arrangements after the band had laid the initial tracks down and he actually weaved the melodies around the solos, often picking out some of the phrases within the improvisations to create the lines. At other points he used his remarkable musicality and send of good taste to support the soloists in a subtle yet deceptively powerful way. What Callum has done here is nothing short of incredible! I loved every minute of the experience but I have to say, it’s not really an economically viable route to go down and not something I imagine I’ll every have the luxury of ‘getting used to’. It really was a special occasion and I’d love to do it again sometime. Anyway - I think the organ/strings combination is the real winner here. Ross’s solo on ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’ stops me in my tracks every time and the strings are the catalyst in making that truly wonderful section of music."
When listening to the album you can hear the rapport between the two . Sparks also fly between drummer, Joel Barford, and Snowboy, so how did the association and collaboration with Snowboy come about? "I first met Snowboy when I joined JTQ in 2005. He’s a good friend of James’ and he’d occasionally join us on gigs or we’d meet whilst on the same bill at festivals", explains Nigel. "I’d seen him play many times before and I was a bit star struck at first but he’s such a great guy and he’s a very unique, incredible interesting person who’s an absolute authority on more subjects than you might imagine. When I was in the Filthy Six we asked him to play on the album ‘The Filthy Six’ (Acid Jazz). I ended up directing that percussion session and we found that we worked together well. He also played on my album ‘Heads & Tales’ (Woodville Records) the following year. (Was that really 11 years ago???). Snowboy is a real music lover. He’s serious about it. He knows good music and it strikes me that we see him shine even brighter and become even more passionate about it when things are totally genuine, honest and coming from a good place. He’s no stranger to playing with authentic Latin bands (as you can imagine!) and although perhaps we don’t quite 100% fit the bill in that respect he really reacted to the energy and fire in Joel’s playing. Together they whipped up a real storm!"
"It took a few weeks and when the charts arrived, I was totally knocked out. I became quite emotional just listening to the midi files so you can imagine what I was like when the Phonograph Effect strings came to the studio and laid them down live. I had a full out of body experience. The string players were just so incredible and Callum directed them amazingly, teasing out every nuance with respectful authority. It was a real treat to watch it happen."
While discussing the charts, I mention to Nigel that the arrangements for string quartet by Callum bring an entirely fresh interpretation to some beautiful melodies. I'm thinking in particular about 'So Do It', and a sublime version of 'I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face' on which his sound and touch on the guitar seem to lend itself well to the string quartet. "Well that’s really kind of you. The strings elevate the music to a higher plane for sure", comes the modest reply. Continuing Nigel adds "Callum wrote the arrangements after the band had laid the initial tracks down and he actually weaved the melodies around the solos, often picking out some of the phrases within the improvisations to create the lines. At other points he used his remarkable musicality and send of good taste to support the soloists in a subtle yet deceptively powerful way. What Callum has done here is nothing short of incredible! I loved every minute of the experience but I have to say, it’s not really an economically viable route to go down and not something I imagine I’ll every have the luxury of ‘getting used to’. It really was a special occasion and I’d love to do it again sometime. Anyway - I think the organ/strings combination is the real winner here. Ross’s solo on ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’ stops me in my tracks every time and the strings are the catalyst in making that truly wonderful section of music."
When listening to the album you can hear the rapport between the two . Sparks also fly between drummer, Joel Barford, and Snowboy, so how did the association and collaboration with Snowboy come about? "I first met Snowboy when I joined JTQ in 2005. He’s a good friend of James’ and he’d occasionally join us on gigs or we’d meet whilst on the same bill at festivals", explains Nigel. "I’d seen him play many times before and I was a bit star struck at first but he’s such a great guy and he’s a very unique, incredible interesting person who’s an absolute authority on more subjects than you might imagine. When I was in the Filthy Six we asked him to play on the album ‘The Filthy Six’ (Acid Jazz). I ended up directing that percussion session and we found that we worked together well. He also played on my album ‘Heads & Tales’ (Woodville Records) the following year. (Was that really 11 years ago???). Snowboy is a real music lover. He’s serious about it. He knows good music and it strikes me that we see him shine even brighter and become even more passionate about it when things are totally genuine, honest and coming from a good place. He’s no stranger to playing with authentic Latin bands (as you can imagine!) and although perhaps we don’t quite 100% fit the bill in that respect he really reacted to the energy and fire in Joel’s playing. Together they whipped up a real storm!"
As a professional musician Nigel has encountered you have encountered just every scenario under the sun from hustling for gigs, being a promoter, and running a jazz club. Starting off with the hustling as he has a bit of a reputation for being able to arrange large tours, so I ask what is the reality for a working musician trying to generate work? Pausing for a moment, Nigel replies, "I’m sure that some people think this stuff lands in my lap. I guess it’s easy to look at someone’s big tour or someone else’s situation and think 'You lucky sod'! Let me tell you, I fought tooth and nail to get to the point where I could consider myself a ‘touring musician’. I started getting this stuff together about 22 years ago and basically inched my way up the greasy pole by getting out there relentlessly, putting ‘boots on the ground’ and driving thousands of miles to make it happen. It’s all there for anyone if you want to put in the effort. Even in this modern time when everything seems to be about social media, views, likes, shares etc, I still think there’s no real substitute for getting out there into the real world and playing real music in front of real people. It’s not actually for everyone, you know? Some musicians think they want it but the reality is that it can be an absolute slog. Somehow, I still have the energy for it! I guess it’s like a drug. The thought that there’ll come a time when I won’t be able to do it any more spurs me on to, well, I dunno, make hay while the sun shines? " Laughing, he adds, "Maybe that’s a bit morose. How about this? - I’d rather know that I tried to be all that I could be. To take it as far as it can go. I don’t see that there’s another option. Not for me anyway. Despite the gruelling nature of it I do love doing it and I love feeling that I’m connected in a real and tangible way to the thousands of jazz fans all over the UK and beyond. It is really, really hard work but, hey - if was easy everyone would be doing it, right?"
The current pandemic has had a devastating effect on musicians and their ability to work. Live gigs dried up overnight and teaching became a technical exercise in running online lessons. How have you managed to adapt to the current climate? "Yeah. I was totally knocked sideways in March 2020. Being primarily a ‘live’ musician, I think I was hit as hard as anyone else out there and it took its toll on my morale, for sure. In fact, I don’t mind admitting that I have never been so low. To go from 300+ gigs a year to pretty much zero took some serious adjusting." Stopping to contemplate a moment , Nigel continues, "Every cloud has a silver lining though. For a couple of years previous to 2020 I’d been planning to construct an online platform through which I could pass on the things I have learned. Not teaching directly but more based around video courses. I’d already done a lot of the thinking before things took a downward turn and although I was really down for the first couple of months of the pandemic, I eventually picked myself up and threw myself into making it happen.
It was an incredible amount of work but I now have dozens of tuition videos up there on the ‘Patreon’ subscription site (which I’m sure we’ve all heard of now). It’s been a steep learning curve and I guess it’s like anything - you have to genuinely enjoy it to make it work. At first, I just saw it as a means to an end but now I’m interacting with actual humans it’s actually a right laugh. I run a monthly Q&A via the site which gives me a better idea of what everybody would like me to do for them, be it a lesson or a performance or whatever, and we send each other messages too. I like it and I think it’s here to stay. In that sense I guess I’ve played a bit of a blinder because this will still be running when the gigs come back properly. I still have to put a lot of time and effort into it though. You can’t expect your garden to stay looking nice if you don’t water it!"
Now that lockdown restrictions are starting to ease the opportunities to perform are starting to present themselves once again. However, the knock-on effect is that many venues that have been forced to close during the pandemic have now permanently closed and unable to re-open. I know that you have been affected by this as regrettably Shepperton Jazz Club that you had been running has also had to close its doors. How do you see the future for live music over the next few years as we hopefully come out of the pandemic and restrictions continue to ease? "Many venues have closed but perhaps not as many as you might think. I would say that the majority of jazz clubs are run in places that aren’t dedicated music venues so in that sense they’ve just been ‘lying dormant’. Of course, the larger clubs are dedicated venues and they are the places that need the most help. That said, I think the pandemic really highlighted just how beleaguered the arts are in general. The government need to decide whether it wants its citizens to have access to culture or whether it’s happy just to have them walking around like zombies. The ‘cultural recovery fund’ seemed like a lifeline on the face of it but a lot of that money went astray and it strikes me that the larger organisations who already had the money to pay professionals to put in bids are the ones who were most successful, often in receiving eye watering amounts of money. Shepperton Jazz Club has gone, yes. The irony there is that I fought to keep it open and in doing so accidentally uncovered a licensing problem with the venue thereby making it impossible to use in the future.
I should have just kept my mouth shut! That’s something I don’t find very easy."
Bringing our conversation to a close I ask Nigel about his own plans moving forward. Does he you hope to be able to tour the music from the new album, and what else does he have lined up for the future? As ever, Nigel seems to have things under control as he relies optimistically, "I already have about 20 dates lined up for this autumn/winter. Many of those dates are kind of ‘left over’ from the massive number of cancellations we had last year. I’d spent 18 months organising a 60-date tour for 2020 which was totally wiped out (that’s part of the reason I found it hard to motivate myself at first last year). We’re going to tour the album and whatever else we want to do. Keeping it fresh is so important so I reserve the right to play any new stuff that might pop up before then. The most important thing is to get out there. We managed to play 14 dates at the back end of last year and it was immediately apparent that jazz fans are just as enthusiastic as jazz musicians to get out there and return to living like normal human beings again. Remember what it was like to be in a room where the music is hanging so thick in the air that it almost feels like you could cut it with a knife? Jazz is a celebration of life. It helps us, all those of us who have grown to love it, make sense of the human experience. It’s important and perhaps it’s only through being forced to live without jazz for this long that we realise just how important it is. As for the future? Well, if I can keep on doing what I’m doing then you’ll hear no complaints from me."
The current pandemic has had a devastating effect on musicians and their ability to work. Live gigs dried up overnight and teaching became a technical exercise in running online lessons. How have you managed to adapt to the current climate? "Yeah. I was totally knocked sideways in March 2020. Being primarily a ‘live’ musician, I think I was hit as hard as anyone else out there and it took its toll on my morale, for sure. In fact, I don’t mind admitting that I have never been so low. To go from 300+ gigs a year to pretty much zero took some serious adjusting." Stopping to contemplate a moment , Nigel continues, "Every cloud has a silver lining though. For a couple of years previous to 2020 I’d been planning to construct an online platform through which I could pass on the things I have learned. Not teaching directly but more based around video courses. I’d already done a lot of the thinking before things took a downward turn and although I was really down for the first couple of months of the pandemic, I eventually picked myself up and threw myself into making it happen.
It was an incredible amount of work but I now have dozens of tuition videos up there on the ‘Patreon’ subscription site (which I’m sure we’ve all heard of now). It’s been a steep learning curve and I guess it’s like anything - you have to genuinely enjoy it to make it work. At first, I just saw it as a means to an end but now I’m interacting with actual humans it’s actually a right laugh. I run a monthly Q&A via the site which gives me a better idea of what everybody would like me to do for them, be it a lesson or a performance or whatever, and we send each other messages too. I like it and I think it’s here to stay. In that sense I guess I’ve played a bit of a blinder because this will still be running when the gigs come back properly. I still have to put a lot of time and effort into it though. You can’t expect your garden to stay looking nice if you don’t water it!"
Now that lockdown restrictions are starting to ease the opportunities to perform are starting to present themselves once again. However, the knock-on effect is that many venues that have been forced to close during the pandemic have now permanently closed and unable to re-open. I know that you have been affected by this as regrettably Shepperton Jazz Club that you had been running has also had to close its doors. How do you see the future for live music over the next few years as we hopefully come out of the pandemic and restrictions continue to ease? "Many venues have closed but perhaps not as many as you might think. I would say that the majority of jazz clubs are run in places that aren’t dedicated music venues so in that sense they’ve just been ‘lying dormant’. Of course, the larger clubs are dedicated venues and they are the places that need the most help. That said, I think the pandemic really highlighted just how beleaguered the arts are in general. The government need to decide whether it wants its citizens to have access to culture or whether it’s happy just to have them walking around like zombies. The ‘cultural recovery fund’ seemed like a lifeline on the face of it but a lot of that money went astray and it strikes me that the larger organisations who already had the money to pay professionals to put in bids are the ones who were most successful, often in receiving eye watering amounts of money. Shepperton Jazz Club has gone, yes. The irony there is that I fought to keep it open and in doing so accidentally uncovered a licensing problem with the venue thereby making it impossible to use in the future.
I should have just kept my mouth shut! That’s something I don’t find very easy."
Bringing our conversation to a close I ask Nigel about his own plans moving forward. Does he you hope to be able to tour the music from the new album, and what else does he have lined up for the future? As ever, Nigel seems to have things under control as he relies optimistically, "I already have about 20 dates lined up for this autumn/winter. Many of those dates are kind of ‘left over’ from the massive number of cancellations we had last year. I’d spent 18 months organising a 60-date tour for 2020 which was totally wiped out (that’s part of the reason I found it hard to motivate myself at first last year). We’re going to tour the album and whatever else we want to do. Keeping it fresh is so important so I reserve the right to play any new stuff that might pop up before then. The most important thing is to get out there. We managed to play 14 dates at the back end of last year and it was immediately apparent that jazz fans are just as enthusiastic as jazz musicians to get out there and return to living like normal human beings again. Remember what it was like to be in a room where the music is hanging so thick in the air that it almost feels like you could cut it with a knife? Jazz is a celebration of life. It helps us, all those of us who have grown to love it, make sense of the human experience. It’s important and perhaps it’s only through being forced to live without jazz for this long that we realise just how important it is. As for the future? Well, if I can keep on doing what I’m doing then you’ll hear no complaints from me."
For more information visit Nigel's website at nigethejazzer.com
Click on the album covers to read our reviews
Click on the album covers to read our reviews
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