Like all the best festivals this double CD album of selected performances from the 2024 Scarborough Jazz Festival has something for everyone
Self released double CD
Sunshine Of Your Love (The Al Morrison Blues Experience); Life’s Work Family Band); Embraceable You (Elaine Delmar); VHS Poem (David Preston’s Blue / Black); Fairfield Isle (Fergus McCreadie Trio); A New Life (Alan Barnes’ Copperfield); Brigas, Nunca Mais (Jazz Samba); ‘Round Midnight (Benet Maclean Quintet); Pennies from Heaven (James Hudson (Octet)); You Don’t Know Me (Nigel Price Organ Trio); Coyote (Hejira (Celebrating Joni Mitchell)); Speedboat In Trouble (Tom Smith Big Band); Looking For A Quiet Place (ARQ Alison Rayner Quintet); Blackbird (Fay Claasen with Emma Rawicz and Barry Green); Dennis Irwin (Gareth Lockrane Big Band); Favela (3D Jazz Trio); Come Sunday (Big Ben: Celebrating Ben Webster with Tony Kofi and Alex Webb)
Like all the best festivals this double CD album of selected performances from the 2024 Scarborough Jazz Festival has something for everyone. Every one of the seventeen tracks is from a different set by different artists. So it is effectively a compilation of artist tasters, some of whom are likely to be new to many people; and even if the artists are familiar, the settings may be new – like Alan Barnes’ Copperfield.
Huge kudos to the organisers Mike Gordon and Mark Gordon for making this possible. Clearing the copyrights must have been a nightmare. Kudos too to Beckview Studios of Scarborough for doing such a great job of recording the music and getting it onto disc. A lot of the audio is studio session quality. Audience participation and applause is kept well in the background – the exact opposite of those old JATP recordings. I liked some of these live recordings more than commercial studio rereases of the same bands. Usually the opposite is true – what excites when heard live in a field or hall doesn’t bear close re-listening later.
The CD sleeves notes are bare essentials only; performer, track titles and composer. Doubtless because of time and cost pressures some of the track info is a bit muddled, as for instance with the Jazz Samba track on Disc One. But no matter, there are links to most of the performers’ websites, and I found that the original 2024 programme is still on the Festival website. So, listeners can do little homework to find out more about whatever takes their fancy at https://www.scarboroughspa.co.uk/whats-on/scarborough-jazz-festival-2024.
Festivals are a great place to discover new names by chance. The same goes for this CD. Alongside established artists like Nigel Price (with his organ trio featuring Ross Stanley on a great version of You Don’t Know Me), Elaine Demar (with her dreamy Embraceable You), ARQ the Alison Rayner Quintet (Looking for a Quiet Place) and big and biggish bands from Alan Barnes, Tom Smith, Gareth Lockrane and Tony Kofi/Alex Webb (doing a dleightful version of Come Sunday in a tribute to Ben Webster), there’s a lovely Fairfield Isle ballad from the Fergus McCreadie piano trio plus some nice and sunny samba and lovely Joni Mitchell tributing on Coyote from 7-piece group Hejira .The goodies just keep on coming
I shall now be doing some web digging to find out more for myself about who was playing what during what must have been a wonderful weekend. But my first priority is to write this and recommend this double CD as a great promo for the next and 22nd Scarborough Festival. It’s already scheduled for 26-28 September 2025, at the Spa Complex.
You can find out more at https://www.scarboroughspa.co.uk/whatson/scarborough-jazz-festival
