BRECON JAZZ TASTER DAY, 08/06/2023.

With the 2023 Brecon Jazz Festival due to take place over three separate weekends in August it was decided to hold a ‘Taster Day’ publicising the event to both local residents and visiting holiday makers.

The Taster Day is a product of the partnership between Brecon Jazz Festival and the BTec students at Brecon Beacons College (part NPTC group of colleges - Neath, Port Talbot and Coleg Powys).

On a brilliantly sunny June day musical performances took place at two nearby locations in the town, Bethel Square & the Cwtch Building, the latter the former Tourist Office but now home to Brecon Beacons College, or Coleg Bannau Brycheiniog.

The students, and not just those studying music, have been fully involved in the planning of the Taster Day, designing the publicity posters and becoming involved with the staging of the music, the dissemination of information to the general public and generally helping to promote, publicise & gain visibility for the forthcoming BJF2023. Central to these efforts was fund raising and on the Taster Day a total of £200 was raised for Festival funds through a street collection organised and conducted by the students. An excellent effort.

Jazz music itself was, of course, central to the day’s activities with two separate live performances taking place.

The first of these was in Bethel Square, a busy thoroughfare and shopping area  where shoppers and passers by were entertained by the duo of vocalist Debs Hancock and pianist Eddie Gripper.

Hancock is a popular presence on the South Wales jazz scene and has performed in Brecon on numerous occasions. She is also closely associated with the Black Mountain Jazz Club in nearby Abergavenny.

Gripper, originally from the Cotswolds, is a graduate of the Jazz Course at Cardiff University and is still based in that city. Also a regular performer on the South Wales jazz scene he has recently released a stunning début album for the London based Ubuntu record label.
“Home” features Gripper’s original compositions exclusively and sees him playing alongside two more young Cardiff based musicians, bassist Ursula Harrison and drummer Isaac Zuckerman.  It’s an impressively mature first release and an album that has captured the attention of the national jazz media, including the esteemed Jazzwise magazine. My own review of “Home” can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/eddie-gripper-home

Gripper has also established close ties with Black Mountain Jazz and has performed there with drummer Alex Goodyear, bassist Clem Saynor, vocalist Marvin Muoneke
and saxophonists Alex Clarke and Dan Newberry.

The pianist has also been working regularly with Hancock, often in a duo format. Here the focus is on standard material, much of it sourced from the ‘Great American Songbook’  but with a dash of Brazilian samba and bossa thrown in.

This morning’s good natured performance saw Hancock and Gripper serenading the many passers by, with just a handful of jazz club stalwarts sitting to watch the whole performance. But this wasn’t a formal concert and the duo certainly caught the eyes and ears of people going about their business with many pausing to listen briefly and to pick up the flyers advertising the forthcoming Festival. This was exactly the kind of reaction the organisers were looking for and some listeners also made a financial contribution with a donation to the student’s collection buckets.

Hancock sang with great assurance and engaged with the passers by, skilfully accompanied by Gripper who also undertook a number of excellent solos on his Nord Grand electric keyboard on an acoustic piano setting.

The first set began with the standards “Lover Man” and “The Nearness of You”. These were followed by “On Green Dolphin Street”, which included Hancock’s accomplished scat vocalising. An extended passage of unaccompanied piano then introduced a yearning “Someone To Watch Over Me”. 

A breezy rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bossa nova song “Wave” was a perfect encapsulation of the sunny weather, we could almost have been in Rio rather than in Bethel Square.

“Cry Me A River” then saw a return to ‘torch song’ territory, or maybe it was a ‘revenge ballad’ after all.

The first set concluded with more scatting on the rarely heard “Devil May Care”.

A celebratory “Our Love Is Here To Stay” opened the second set, followed by “Nature Boy”.

“Alfie” was performed as a tribute to the late Burt Bacharach, who had famously performed at the ‘old’ Brecon Jazz Festival.

“The Girl From Ipanema” then represented a homage to the recently departed Astrud Gilberto (1940-2023). “Ipanema” also included Hancock’s improvised lyrics name checking Brecon and its Festival.

Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” featured further scat vocalising and the set also included an emotive “Willow Weep For Me” and a playful “Embraceable You”.

The performance concluded with a similarly playful “Take The A Train”, with Hancock even encouraging a little audience participation (“Mind The Gap!”).

Those who watched the whole show thoroughly enjoyed a fine performance from this excellent duo. As well as acting as a ‘Taster’ for the Festival in August the show also acted as a trailer for Gripper’s appearance with his regular trio at Brecon Jazz Club’s regular monthly event at The Muse Arts Centre on Tuesday June 13th 2023. This will feature Gripper with Ursula Harrison on bass and Patrick Barrett-Donlon at the drums playing music from that exceptional “Home” release. In addition Gripper will have the luxury of playing the venue’s upright acoustic piano.
Tickets for this event, which also incorporate a Festival preview, nibbles and a jazz quiz, are only £8.00 and are available here;
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/breconjazz-jazzlivecymru/t-xmyxlzo

An absolute bargain.

The second performance of the day took place on the steps of the Cwtch venue and featured the musicians of the NPTC College Big Band comprised of students & staff from NPTC’s Music Department.

Featuring students from NPTC’s colleges in Brecon and Neath the band was directed by tutor Ceri Rees, a musician perhaps best known to jazz audiences as the alto saxophonist and musical director of Cardiff’s Capital City Jazz Band, themselves regular visitors to Brecon Jazz Festival.

I have to confess that I saw very little of the College Band’s performance. After sitting out in the sun in Bethel Square for well over an hour I felt the need to go indoors and cool down over a coffee and a sandwich. By the time I re-emerged the NPTC Band were coming towards the end of their set and I only caught a couple of numbers. One featured the impressive young vocalist Molly. The other was a raucous romp through “Tequila!” with everyone shouting along. My apologies to Ceri and the band for not catching more of their set. Everybody seemed to enjoy it though, students, tutors and audience alike.

I’m informed that the public reaction to the NPTC Big Band performance was highly positive and that they will now be making a return to Brecon to play at the main Brecon Jazz Festival on Friday August 11th 2023.

After the show the band members packed their instruments away and boarded the bus to go off and play another show in the evening! Well done to them.

The general consensus was that the Taster Day had been a very worthwhile event, raising awareness of the forthcoming Festival and adding some very welcome funds to the Brecon Jazz coffers.

The musicians that performed seemed to enjoy it and the day was also an invaluable educational experience for the students who had been involved in all aspects of the organisation of the event, as well as performing in it in some cases. Credit is due to lecturer Carolyn Davies, who oversaw the entire process.

For those like me who just turned up to watch and listen it was a very enjoyable day out.

I’m now looking forward to Eddie Gripper’s return on Tuesday (see above) and to the Festival itself in August. Details of the forthcoming Brecon Jazz Festival and appropriate ticket links can be found at;
https://www.breconjazz.org

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