JAZZ GUITAR CLUB
The JAZZ GUITAR CLUB is a monthly meeting dedicated to lovers of jazz guitar. Smooth sounds of jazz guitar in a warm and friendly atmosphere.
All relevant information including venue address, time of commencement and aims of the JGC, also write ups, now available on the website!
http://cheadlejazzguitarclub.wordpress.com/
Next Club Night: Thursday 11th June.
For further information tel: 07423 016888 or e-mail: jazzgtrschoolfes@aol.comFor photos & videos see MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jazzguitarclub
VENUE
Our gatherings are held at Bijou, which is situated just off Cheadle High St. The address: 9, Massie St. Cheadle Village, SK8 1BW, (directions below). Telephone Number: 0161 428 7177. It is warm and intimate, and has a great menu & bar. The meetings are held on the second Thursday of the month (except SPECIAL GUEST nights, when additional dates will be announced), and the club is open to non-members. The second Thursday of the month is now known as “CLUB NIGHT”. This is the evening when our regular members and non-members have an opportunity to play in front of a friendly audience. Come and listen or perform: Play solo, duo or bring your guitar group – listen, learn, enjoy the music and exchange ideas.
PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS
As it is a jazz guitar club, to perform you must be able to play a jazz standard, e.g. Autumn Leaves, Satin Doll, Minor Swing, Nuages, I’ll Remember April, Girl From Ipanema, etc.
EXPERIENCED PLAYERS
The club welcomes more experienced players performing in a mixture of styles.
WORKSHOP SESSIONS
Occasional workshop session will be introduced at some point during the evening where the less experienced players, who are not used to performing in public, play within a workshop situation in front of a friendly audience.
SETTING GOALS
The importance of the guitar club is to have something to aim for. Less experienced players can get together and form a duo or trio, learn two or three tunes and perform them, then learn another two or three tunes, and before you know it, you have a lengthy repertoire.
Here are a few tips:
Jazz has to be prepared for! Learn tunes that have an interesting harmonic sequence. Learn the melody and the chords well – It’s ok to have the music in front of you as a reminder. If you are an inexperienced player – do not dive into the fake book and pick a tune you are not familiar with – I’ve seen it happen so many times in jam sessions and it always ends in disaster. Remember: The improviser is only as good as his accompanist. Work on your accompaniment skills. Be well prepared. Improvisation wise you should have a base to build from which also acts as your safety net.
COST
For CLUB NIGHTS (second Thursday of the month) the admission is £4. For SPECIAL GUEST nights the cost is £5 For further information call Trefor Owen on 07423 016888, or e-mail jazzgtrschoolfes@aol.com
DIRECTIONS
Find Cheadle Village High St. and look for CARPHONE WAREHOUSE, which is on the corner of Massie St. Bijou is a few yards up Massie St, just before the main car park. Plenty of free parking, (after 6pm), a few yards from the venue. If you need any further directions please contact Trefor Owen on 07423 016888, or e-mail jazzgtrschoolfes@aol.com
IMPORTANT NOTE RE TIME OF COMMENCEMENT:
You may have noticed that on club nights at Bijou it’s very difficult to fit in all the players who want to play. One of the reasons is that, until recently, we started much later than 8pm. As those of you who have been at our recent gatherings will already know, we are now starting on time. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<0>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
JAZZ VENUES:
Try and support these venues as often as you can!
REMEMBER! SUPPORT THE VENUE AND THE VENUE WILL SUPPORT YOU!
The Southern Jazz Guitar Society are still very active.See their website: http://www.southjazzguitar.org/
HUDDERSFIELD JAZZ GUITAR SOCIETY meets every 1st Tuesday of the month. The Head of Steam, (next to Huddersfield station), HD1 1JB.
Wilmslow Conservative Club, 15, Grove Ave, Wilmslow, SK9 5EG. For further info. tel. 01625 528336. Jazz every Monday. http://www.myspace.com/grahambrookjazz
Every third Thursday of the month – 8.30pm -BULLS HEAD, 102, Church Street, Old Glossop Derbyshire SK13 7RN TREFOR OWEN & ANDY HULME -JAZZ GUITAR DUO with SITTERS-IN. For further Info phone 07423 016888. For directions see http://www.bulls-head.co.uk
The Railway, Wellington Road, Stockport. 9pm. For further info: Tel 0161 477 3680. This venue operates every Sunday with a varied programme. Hillary Step, 199, Upper Chorlton Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 0BH – For further info tel. 0161 881 1978. Jazz every Sunday 9pm. New venue!
The White Swan has unfortunately closed. Creative Space events are now at the SLUG & LETTUCE, Wilmslow Road, Didsbury. See creativespaceinfo.blogspot.com for full programme. Jazz every Tuesday 9pm.
If you have a gig which features jazz guitar, please let me know and it will be listed in all e-mail shots.
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LEARNING JAZZ GUITAR THROUGH INTERACTION!
As a student of jazz guitar, (you are a student for life), I’ve always been interested in the history of jazz and, specifically, jazz guitar. Talking guitaristically, the immense growth in ability and harmonic knowledge that happened after Charlie Christian, when he made it possible to play lines that could be heard in a band situation, (Gibson ES150 first production electric guitar), which later, in the late 40′s and into the 50′s, inspired innovators such as Barney Kessel, Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow, Billy Bean, John Pisano, Jimmy Raney and others to set incredibly high standards for us to follow. One wonders how these standards were achieved? After giving it considerable thought, one answer I came up with was that this was a time before recorded music was established and the general public were tuned in to live bands, (unlike today when they are tuned in to discos and recorded stuff). At that time if you wanted music, you would have to hire musicians! The scene therefore provided musicians with ample playing time which inspired development in the genre through interaction! These guys were sometimes playing three or four gigs a day, lunchtime gigs, tea dances, maybe some radio broadcasts, (live in those days), evening gigs and then, of course, playing at jazz clubs until the early hours of the morning. Also, you must remember that the pop music of the day was the jazz standards we play today.
I’ve been told that a number of guitarists lived in the same apartment block in New York, therefore if they weren’t gigging they would be jamming. With all this activity their ability as jazz guitarists grew at an incredible rate. So, what’s the important aspect of all this? In my opinion it is INTERACTION!!! Jazz is an INTERACTIVE MUSIC. Your ability as an improviser depends on interacting with other musicians! In recent years fashion has had an impact on our music, e.g. the introduction of modes into the teaching of jazz improvisation, although personally I do not endorse this system of teaching! Now we are in the computer age and it has become fashionable to learn off the web. Is the teaching of jazz guitar off the web good or bad? Well, how many of you have bought so called jazz guitar tutors and got very little out of them? Yes, as in books you will pick up a lick or two, but sorry guys, it just doesn’t gel with me! To play jazz successfully both from the accompanying and improvising point of view, you are going to have to play in public sooner or later and your preparation for that moment has to be with a tutor or a player who is more advanced than yourself. From what I have seen on the web there is very little information about a structured approach to the teaching of jazz guitar and, as I mentioned before, the important word is INTERACTION. If you are learning off the web you can’t interact with a machine! If you are having individual or group tuition you are INTERACTING WITH OTHER MUSICIANS, and I feel that our jazz guitar club is already helping many of you in that way!
TREFOR OWEN.
SPECIAL GUEST NIGHT REPORT ON THE DAVE CLIFF CONCERT BY MIKE DEVLIN.
Dave Cliff at Bijou; 12/05/11.
The record player is the University of the Jazz Musician.
A memorable quote from the amiable Geordie Dave Cliff, one of the finest jazz straight-ahead musicians to hail from these shores. Few people outside of the jazz cognoscenti would recognise his name but to those in The Life, Dave Cliff embodies all the reasons why we love this music. Dave was one of the first students to undertake the first jazz course in the UK at Leeds University in 1967…..but as the man himself freely admits, it was listening to his father’s collection of Count Basie and Benny Goodman records that converted him to the dark side of popular music. In our brief conversation during the interval, he disclosed that university only formalised what he already knew from playing along to records slowed down to 16 rpm (younger readers, look away now. A record player would seem as archaic as the Ford Popular does to my generation.). One glaring fact emerges from speaking to the elder sages of our music, such as Trefor and Dave. Ours is not an easy discipline. Try to memorise a thousand scales, improvise (improvise!) in any key and also memorise the melody and bridge of at least 200 tunes…then you will be a jazz musician my son. Oh, and while you’re at it…try to avoid fast women, alcohol, drugs and gangsters like Al Capone. Fats Waller didn’t, and died a mercifully early death. Miles Davis lived somewhat longer. So why choose to love this music? Or does it choose us? Tonight’s gig was an object lesson in how a drummer less trio can make truly great music on the hoof. The band adhered to The Standards, those infinitely mutable toons that constitute America’s great gift to the twentieth century. I suppose a great many younger readers groan and wonder why us old stagers still cleave to the music of Gershwin, Ellington and Jimmy Van Heusen. Well here’s news for you, youngster….I was conceived to the sound of Songs For Swingin’ Lovers by Frank Sinatra. You were probably conceived when your mum and dad were listening to acid house. Who got the best deal? In tonight’s gig I was taken by the contrast in dynamics of the two guitarists on show. Dave Cliff superbly illustrated the beauty of a warm, mellifluous tone wrung from six strings and a plank. A classic jazz sound referencing Django, Christian, Wes; yet also unafraid to quote from be-bop sources, maintaining a narrative flow in all of his solos. Whatever Dave Cliff plays, it all makes beautiful sense. Little wonder he’s the best kept secret of jazz guitar…..but part of me enjoys that. You either get it, or you don’t. Like Louis Armstrong once said; if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. It won’t be news to any of you that I’m a fully paid-up member of The Trefor Owen Comping Club….Trefor could simply play passing chords to me all day and I’d be a very happy man. His sheer drive and facility leaves me slack-jawed, but tonight he traded solos with Cliff. It reminded me how important it is for jazzers to be up and ready for the scrap. To witness two lions of jazz guitar, claws out and ready for work, testing each other on numbers such as Stella by Starlight and I’ll Remember April was joy unconfined. Trefor’s staccato, sometimes atonal attack contrasted with Dave Cliff’s long, bluesy lines. To those who wish to play modes all the time…the blues is the DNA of our music. Never consign the blues to the bin that says; old hat. Charlie Parker didn’t. As for Dave Turner on bass fiddle? To quote Sonny Rollins, when playing in the UK with a young Stan Tracey; Does anybody know how good this guy is? Right now, Dave Turner is probably the most exciting bass player you’re lucky enough to hear. A pulse like God’s heartbeat, a drive like a bulldozer, and a soloist to compare with anyone in America. Guy Boden and myself have watched this fella for years, and like Ryan Giggs he never has a bad game. Every time he gets up on stage DT invokes the joie de vivre of the music we love. Even when executing a solo only few of us can aspire to….. DT smiles, winks, and then takes the listener home.And all for a fiver. Although it’s unacknowledged in the popular press, jazz musicians create more music over five bars than most rock groups manage over three albums. The cost of a pop CD would have bought your entrance fee to Bijou and several drinks. Oh, and by the way, the company of Trefor Owen, Dave Cliff and Dave Turner…..some of the greatest jazz musicians these islands have produced. For a fiver. Think through this. If there’s a better night out in the North-West of England, I’d love to know where it is.
Pip pip! Mike Devlin