Photograph of Major Swing with Remi Harris by Bob Meyrick.

Ian writes;

The indefatigable Lynne Gornall and her willing team co-ordinate the monthly jazz events held in the Brecon Jazz Club Bar at Theatr Brycheiniog in Brecon as well as helping with the promotion of jazz in Wales as a whole.

Lynne has recently begun to write a regular column called “Jazz Corner” for the local newspaper, the Brecon & Radnor Express. I’m indebted to Lynne and to Eryl Jones of the Brecon & Radnor Express for allowing me to reproduce the following article which originally appeared in the newspaper on 23rd May 2016 and finds Lynne examining the cultural links and spirit of co-operation between local jazz clubs and the wider international jazz community.

I think that it’s a fascinating read and it’s something that I wanted to share with the Jazzmann readership.

Lynne Gornall writes;

Brecon + Radnor Express
Jazz Corner column (Brecon Jazz Club)

JAZZ CORNER
23 May 2016    

BANK HOLIDAY JAZZ – AND ALL THOSE CULTURAL LINKS

So here’s some good news at last, and hopes of summer weather: a free jazz event and prospect of a relaxing afternoon on Saturday (28 May) from 2pm at the Wellington Hotel, Brecon.

Vocalist Debs Hancock is a favourite at Brecon Jazz Club and her trio sees some of the best-known and respected musicians around to join her – Brecon’s Mike Chappell on piano/keyboards, and South Wales’ Steve Tarner on double bass. Both have played many times at the club, in different lineups. Debs tells us that she is planning a programme with some of the most requested jazz vocal numbers from the ‘Great American Songbook’, the enduring melodies and classic lyrics that we all love. It’s also great to be introducing younger audiences to these great sounds. The music starts at 2pm - so not to be missed.

When the Wellington approached us at the beginning of this year, to discuss a way that they could play their part in keeping jazz alive all year round in town – part of the jazz club’s declared mission – we were delighted. They wanted to build up to the summer jazz festival and show that jazz and ‘Brecon’ were intimately linked.  Great thinking, which we totally support.

It is this kind of co-operation and partnership that has been so evident this year. Debs (Hancock) herself is part of the team at our ‘partner’ jazz club, Black Mountain Jazz over in Abergavenny. We regularly see friends coming over from the ‘Sugarloaf’ direction to our club events, and we get over there too whenever we can. BMJ (organized by Mike Skilton) now run their monthly Sunday gigs from the delightful ‘bijou’ Melville Theatre. Next up is the Manchester band Artephis on Sunday 26 June (8pm, £10/£8). We went over to the club earlier this year (in March) to see their new venue and to hear the amazing Olivia Trummer from Germany, and her vibes player Jean-Lou Treboux (from Switzerland). It was a stand-out gig. Olivia plays jazz in a ‘classical’ way, or to put it differently, she plays ‘classical jazz’. - original compositions inspired by the works of Mozart, Scarlatti and (especially) Bach. And played, as jazz, but in that style. You had to be there to get it!  It was wonderful, and quite a coup for a small jazz club to host such international talents. Debs (Hancock) was there too, not in this case as an accomplished jazz vocalist, but as part of the club team, introducing everyone and helping the evening go smoothly - we also have a great team supporting our Jazz Club. She’ll have her moment in Brecon this Saturday, and we’ll all be there to applaud her, won’t we?

‘Partnership working’ and the kind of mutual support we see amongst the jazz clubs community for example, is typically included in all of the strategic and policy objectives today of most of our public bodies – and lots of progressive commercial companies too. But achieving it is easier said than done. Some of the unsung heroes of this kind of thing – like Debs, Mike and our team - are also volunteers and community agents. So it is with the people who organize ‘twinning’ links between our towns with those in other countries. Whichever way you lean on ‘Europe’, the town-to-town partnerships, where people in business, community, tourism and residence co-operate with each other, learning and sharing ideas, exchanging visits and local data, can only be a good thing.

‘Twinning’ is a relationship for cultural exchange, visits and receptions and aims to promote strong social cultural artistic and sporting links with the twin town. It encourages individual, family and group visits, through staying with host families to make for greater understanding of each other’s way of life. Brecon is also twinned with the city of Saline in Michigan, US, an association that began in 1966. It is a city of some 8,000 inhabitants, and the bonds of close friendship with Wales are such that 4,000 trips by both sets of residents have been to date. Perhaps readers have taken part and will tell us more? Links with Gouesnou are also very active: last year, Breton residents came to walk in Wales, while Brecon residents visited their counterparts for ‘Welsh week’ in Finistère, with folk dancing performance, heritage visits, languages and crafts as part of the cultural offer.

Last year, as Brecon Jazz Club, we were lucky enough to be invited by Margaret Edwards, Secretary of the Brecon-Gouesnou Twinning Association, to meet the visitors who had come over on one of their annual visits. There in St Mary’s Church café, we met Philippe, the leader of the Gouesnou partnership and more than 30 Bretons who had come over for their latest Brecon sojourn. Some had been coming a long time and knew the area very well. One had learned Welsh. There was an exhibition at Brecon Library showing some of the similarities between Breton and Welsh languages in ‘100 words’.  It was all incredibly impressive – such energy, engagement, commitment, camaraderie. Well, partnership really.

Our involvement in this arose when (last year), we invited the group from Brittany, Major Swing, to play at the 2015 Brecon Jazz Festival. We had also attended a wonderful jazz festival in Brittany (at Châteauneuf-du-Faou), where we met the amazing guitarist Jean Guyomarc’h and his friends in the band. Leader Philippe (Cann), also originally from Brittany, and the others of Major Swing now live in Tours, which gives them access to Paris and wider regions for gigs. But they retain their strong regional links: Jean’s father speaks Breton, and they brought gifts over of local foods and wine for people who hosted them here in Brecon. The reaction was very positive. There was also a rather unique drink sent over later by special delivery– alcoholic and made with fermented honey – rather delightful but (like their music) with a special ‘kick’!

Such delightful people, we asked them to include a greeting in Breton at the gigs they played – we organized a special tour for them here. Jean duly consulted his father. Together, and with some help, we came up with a set of phrases - but please dear readers, all corrections on a postcard please! This included an ‘hello’ in four languages -

Kalz plijadur zo ganeomp da vezan deuet e Bro Gembre – Breizh/Breton

A great pleasure with us to have been in Wales - English

Noswaith dda o Gymru, a croeso i’r cyngerdd heno – Welsh

Beaucoup de plaisir est avec nous d’être venus au pays de Galles - French

(Breizh-à-Galles project summer 2015 – ‘Major Swing’)

In July last year, and to help set up this collaboration, we accompanied our friend the guitarist Remi Harris (and rhythm guitarist Caley Groves) on a Brittany Ferries trip to France. We we had arranged for Remi to headline with Major Swing in France, to be followed by a coming together again to perform in Brecon a month later. French festival promoter Trevor Stent of FestJazz wrote after the project, ‘Really pleased Major Swing were such a success over in Wales, am really pleased for them and you who did so much to bring it about. Interested in discussing future partnerships…Remi (Harris) [from UK] is an extraordinary talent and absolutely deserves his rising star status – thank you for bringing him over (to play), and introducing us to him’.

In turn, Aberjazz emailed, after hearing Major Swing at Brecon and then also hosting them in Fishguard as part of the curated tour, ‘it is great for us that we are working with Brecon jazz club, and co-operating in bringing events here by working together. The gig was a tremendous success and everyone we’ve spoken to has asked if we can have them back.’

Working together co-operatively made this ambitious idea easy to realize, and built strong bonds. There is a link here with the Wellington gig coming up on bank holiday Saturday. We last saw bassist Steve Tarner as he set off for Fishguard to play the concert with Major Swing (in the Ffwrn, old bakehouse) organized by our friends at Aberjazz. Steve, ever the professional, and with a long drive involved, arrived early and in very good time, complete with his draft set list, chord sheets and ipad, all ready to rehearse. The band arrived late – very late (but in time for the gig) – distracted and amazed by the beauty of Wales, and unable to resist numerous small detours. We can’t blame them!  They were entranced. They loved Wales and Wales loved them, Major Swing were an outright ‘major’ success in our jazz events calendar. When they returned, they wrote….‘We have been guided and supported by many careful and effective people and organizations…and credit all those we played with…these excellent musicians in this ‘Franco-Galloise collaboration’, organized by Brecon Jazz Club’ - “De riches rencontres humaines et musicales, en haut avec les organisateurs du Brecon Jazz [club], hôtes, et bien sûr les fabuleux musicians gallois!”

Philippe also wrote a diary blog even as they returned to France after the tour, on the ferry home: We…know that this collaboration will continue, and new places and promoters will want to book us as part of a ‘Celtic’ co-operation and exchange. The goal would also be to involve musicians (in both countries) – and perhaps more Breton festivals – in order to give further momentum and identity to this project.  The leading musicians we played with will also perform another event in Wales at the end of the month [28 Aug], to sustain and celebrate the coming together (Philippe Cann, leader of Major Swing, letter to promoters, October 2015 – ref. Breizh-à-Galles project).  He also, once home and on Facebook, created an identity for the creative co-working – ‘Jazz Inter-Celtique’.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, or wished for more.

Reviews of the concerts were also excellent, as were audience responses, and the musician-of-musician comments– ‘he has wonderful energy’, Jean Guyomarc’h said of Steve Tarner. Demonstrating that ‘collaboration’ can be objectively evaluated as of high value, reviews confirmed the musical excellence and also innovation by the players – brilliant but improvising and spontaneously developing their musical alliance ‘in concert’.  ‘This freshly assembled quintet had never played together before and the idea to bring them together first came from [the promoters of Brecon Jazz Club - ‘we knew it would work’. And in a programme celebrating the jazz guitar, it was perhaps appropriate that it was these two brilliant soloists [Remi Harris from the UK and Jean Guyomarc’h of France] who made the most lasting impression, with superb instrumental interplay..’ (Jazzmann Review, August 2015).

Having set this up, the mutual compliments by the Welsh/French counterparts, the positive reviews and seeing how the creative partnership between them developed was really rewarding. Of course, it was risky, and involved writing bids, persuading people and organisations, getting musicians and groups on board, and just trusting to instincts that these were amazing musicians who only needed to be introduced to each other for the magic to happen.  It did. So ‘vive’ partnership and co-operation. As the Spanish musician, Arturo Serra, also in a curated tour and visit here, commented in a post-tour interview – ‘I always trust in the new things that can come - collaboration is the only way!’. He went on to say that he is dedicating his life and work to this, a confirmation that he loves and believes in what he does (May 2014).

Next week after the bank holiday, a group are travelling to Brittany from Brecon on a return visit to Gouesnou, where there will be visits, encounters and furthering of the relationships, friendship and partnership between the two civic counterparts.  But before then, there’s just time to catch that great collaboration with Debs Hancock and the Trio at the Wellington. See you there – à bientôt!

Links;

Brecon Jazz Club http://www.breconjazzclub.org

Brecon & Radnor Express http://www.brecon-radnor.co.uk

blog comments powered by Disqus