Fleet Jazz Club holds monthly jazz performances from some of the UK’s finest jazz musicians on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, in a “jazz club” environment at the Harlington Centre in Fleet. The club has an enthusiastic and growing membership since it started in January 2013, and we are always very happy to see new people too. There’s more about who we are and what we do here.
Tickets are available online, by phone (01252 811009) or on the door on the night. For more details on each event join our mailing list and follow us on our Facebook page.
We have a growing gallery of wonderful photos of recent gigs thanks to our friends at Aldershot, Farnham & Fleet Camera Club (AFFCC). Also we have created short profiles of most of the artists who have performed at Fleet Jazz Club.
October 15th
GETZ: A MUSICAL PORTRAIT
CHRIS INGHAM QUARTET
featuring MARK CROOKS
A career-wide celebration of the great lyrical genius of the saxophone Stan Getz, from ‘Early Autumn’ (1949) to ‘People Time’ (1991), taking in the swinging 1950s, the bossa nova years of the early 1960s and the fruitful, daring collaborations with Chick Corea and Kenny Barron.
Featuring woodwind star of the John Wilson Orchestra star MARK CROOKS (saxophone) with CHRIS INGHAM (piano/commentary), MARIANNE WINDHAM (bass) and GEORGE DOUBLE (drums).
“Crooks’ tenor raises the hairs on the back of the neck…” LONDON JAZZ NEWS
From the late 1940s to the early 1990s, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz was one of the great, individual instrumental artists in jazz. As jazz itself went through many phases, Getz as a player was remarkably consistent, producing album after album of poetic, swinging music. While his accompaniments were elaborately varied, Getz’s playing was always unmistakable, characterised by his singing, luminescent tone, his unmatched facility for elegance, passion and lyricism and an almost supernatural melodic creativity.
Yet perhaps there’s a sense of Getz being somewhat underrated, perhaps even taken for granted. Firstly, he had the temerity to achieve several commercial successes in his career, communicating way beyond the jazz connoisseurship, an achievement which never seems to sit well with jazz posterity. Secondly, despite his dipping in and out of in-the-air jazz styles, his genius was very much of the invention-within-the-melodic-tradition variety, a much less musically flamboyant route than some other options available to him. His very consistency probably worked against him, posterity-wise. In the end, whatever he was playing, and as brilliant as it was, it was always just Getz being Getz…
However, for a man who could have toured lucrative Greatest Hits shows for most of his career, his choices in both in the material that he tackled and the musicians with whom he associated, show a notably intrepid attitude. Stan thrived on challenge and was dedicated to keeping his music fresh and vital, rarely taking the easy option. The result is a musical legacy among the richest in jazz.
“Another superb album…a musical love potion…recommended – highly”
BEBOP SPOKEN HERE
