Combustible sounds

Saw a fab gig the other night, courtesy of Chris Rodgers' big band, the Combustible Alarms, in Stoke Newington, north London. So many musical textures and harmonies to get your ears around, and all done so tastefully, as well. There were arrangements of songs by Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix and Paco de Lucia, as well as originals by Chris himself. These days you hardly ever see a big band in the UK, unless it's the BBC big band, or similar outfit playing the swinging songs you'd probably expect to hear, which is all well and good. But if you want to hear how amazing and fresh a contemporary big band can sound, check out their next gig.

In other news, Steve Lawson and I did our first New Standard-type set in a long while at a Freedom of Expression night. It was good fun to get those songs together again and remember - hey! We made some nice arrangements. It also keeps me on my toes, just having a bass as accompaniment - not much room for fluffing your notes when there's no piano / guitar to hide behind! Also, when you've got multiple echoes of your voice coming back at you because of the looping, it's a whole other experience.

I also saw a cool little gig at Ray's Jazz, Soho, this weekend - Jon Regen playing a solo set promoting his new album (Let It Go). I really like Jon's piano playing - he's got a great pedigree, having accompanied Jimmy Scott for years, but now he's performing in his own right, playing and singing his own songs. I guess you could say his songs are in the crossover between jazz and pop, which is the kind of territory I'm into. So it was great to see a top-class, New York pianist doing his thing in that genre.