We’re massively excited to have the amazing Neil Cowley and Beats & Pieces coming to Lancaster Jazz Festival 2013 this year. Both are great names in UK jazz, both critically acclaimed and award winning and quite brilliant. They’re going to be two amazing gigs. The whole festival team is going to be blogging in the coming weeks and there’s going to be loads more info to follow on these gigs (and all the others as well) coming soon. While you’re here g o register your interest for tickets - we’ll let you know the minute they become available so that you don’t miss out and have a listen to the videos below - they’re great. Matt Robinson - Festival Director
 A solid week of programming completed and we’ve got a far clearer idea of how the festival will look in September. Time to start getting in touch with a million people. In the mean time, we (and I do mean absolutely everyone at Lancaster Jazz) are hugely excited by our brand new partnership with Lancaster Brewery. We liked them anyway because they brew amazing beer but now we love them as not only are they sponsoring Lancaster Jazz Festival, not only are they becoming a venue (and we’ve got some big plans on how to use their space) but they are brewing a very, very special, 7200 pints of Lancaster Jazz Festival beer. It’s going to be stupendous. They have a fantastic brewery site and beer hall just down the road from the Ashton Memorial and they’ve got some great events year round - if you’re in Lancaster go and pop round - it’s great. www.lancasterbrewery.co.ukWe’ll be announcing our plans soon... Matt Robinson - Festival Director
A very quick excuse for a blog. Firstly a massive thanks to Ian, Caspar, Maitland and the whole family and team at Atkinsons ( @coffeehopper) and The Hall for helping us with the brilliant first Lancaster Jazz Club on friday. Thanks to everyone that made it a full house to watch the awesome Stuart McCallum ( @stuart_mccallum), Peter Turner and Dave Walsh and to Jazz North who helped us afford it. Here’s to many more. (Photos on the way…) Secondly thanks to all the artists that have sent us things over the last 2 months - we’ve been swamped with stuff and that’s fantastic. We’re sitting down from today to listen to all of it and to programme the festival - we’ll let you know how it goes asap. If you’re really interested in how it’s all going we’re going to try and do updates on twitter (we’ll see) ( @lancasterjazz, @mrobinsonjazz, @bigdavethebass) Here’s to a highly caffeinated Easter Oh and if you haven't signed up to our very fancy new mailing list do it! And hello and massive thanks to Lancaster Brewery who are sponsoring the Lancaster Jazz Festival 2013. (We've got some very exciting plans!). Matt Robinson - Festival Director
 The lovely lovely Priory Hall This time of the year is insane but it’s one of the most exciting. Unfortunately it’s also the most stressful, more-so than during the festival itself, as now is the time it all has to come together. By September all the hard work will have been done and ‘all we have to do’ is manage and troubleshoot as it happens (sounds so easy when put like that) but it’ll only be successful if we get these two months right. So what are you doing in these cold January days I hear one possibly slightly interested person ask. Well. We’ve got two months before me and Dave lock ourselves in a room with enough coffee to swim in and programme the artists - this is one of my favourite parts of the year, where we start to curate the festival. Easter is a massive deadline for us then because in order to programme we have to have all the venues confirmed, we have to know exactly what our budget is, where the money is coming from and how big we reckon our audience will be - none of this stuff is easy or quick work. Promoting is, depressingly at times, all about risk - balancing that perfect festival that’s in your head with what you’ve actually got, or what you reckon you’ll have. The more work we put in now the closer septembers’ festival will be to what we really want to happen (we want it to be exciting, original, interesting and diverse, we want artists to be able to do what they want in the ideal spaces for their performance, we want audiences to have an amazing time and we want our beautiful venues to be happy). It’s like learning to juggle every year. I’m incredibly pleased to also say that we’ve partnered up with Atkinson’s Coffee and their brand new space, Priory Hall ( www.thecoffeehopper.com). We’ve got some mega plans for it both during the festival and very soon… watch this space. It’s a great opportunity for us to expand our range of top quality venues as well as have a venue with it’s very own Steinway grand piano :). We’re all very happy. Also watch this space for more blogs from the entire festival team and news on events coming soon (Morecambe Jazz Club is the 13th March) and keep the artist submissions coming in. Matt Robinson - Festival Director
Very exciting times at Lancaster Jazz Festival (I realise I may be saying that too often but it really is). Although the festival is ‘ages’ away, this is one of the busiest times for us as we set the groundwork for 2013.
14th - 22nd September
2013 is going to be a really high quality festival. We’ve read all your feedback, discussed and taken it on board, and, running out of all of this, we’re focussed on producing an inspirational festival with beautiful venues, awesome artists, integrated educational outreach and excellent events year-round (look out soon for Lancaster Jazz Club).
It won’t necessarily be bigger however. Across the arts sector budgets are tight and that’s no different at Lancaster Jazz Festival, this makes it incredibly important for us to focus on what we do well. 2013 won’t be lacking in ambition though (it could well be the most ambitious so far, even in our very short history). I think we have a clearer idea than ever about what we want to achieve and how the future will look. The festival team are more motivated than ever, we’ve learned so much from the risks we took last year and, most importantly, we’ve got a pretty good sense of how to get there.
An eight day festival with a focussed festival weekend - Friday 20th - Sunday 22nd September 2013.
(Early) New Year Resolutions
Once we’ve all got over our new year hangovers watch this space for more content from the Lancaster Jazz Festival Team. We’re going to be updating this blog and our twitter (@LancasterJazz) regularly with news, thoughts, happenings and things we want your opinions on. Please feel free to get in touch with us using the comments below, on facebook or twitter, or using the contact us page on this website.
A note for artists - we will be launching a submission process for the festival in the new year - please join our mailing list or keep checking back to find out the moment it happens, but please don’t send anything yet (we love your enthusiasm but we get at least twenty a week at the moment and we simply don’t have the time to respond). The submission process will be quick and painless for everyone.
We’re also going to have some very exciting news about new ideas, new venues and new events all in the new year. We’ll keep you posted.
Matt Robinson - Festival Director
2012 has been a great year for us and it's only our second one so that's pretty good going. Whey!
At the close of 2011's festival we had a year-round volunteer festival team of 4, now that's swelled to 9 with loads of other volunteers and members that come and help out during the festival itself - a huge heartfelt thank you to everyone who has given up their spare time for no money, no promise of food, no really nice cosy benefits or anything like that but have come anyway and helped because they want to see a jazz festival in Lancaster and they believe that what we're doing year-round is worth supporting. THANK YOU!
 A highlight It would be wrong to say that the entire festival was completely successful in everything that it set out to do – no event or project ever goes completely according to plan – but the vast majority of it was absolutely fantastic. I loved the music and all the artists, I loved the enthusiasm around the festival from people in town, I loved how some events were absolutely packed to the rafters, I loved talking to audience members who had travelled into Lancaster for the first time and were enjoying every minute of it, I loved talking to Trio Libero post performance and hearing their praise for the Lancaster audience.
We have some things to tweak, some things to rethink completely, some things to leave exactly as they are. We’re about to enter into a month or so of evaluation and you can help us with this – if you have any comments, suggestions, criticisms, reviews, thoughts or ideas please get in touch with us by using the contact form or on facebook or twitter or come see us at our next meeting. We do take on board everything that gets said to us and it really does inform what we do.
 Partner in crime - The Dave of Shooter During the Thinking with Jazz Symposium (which was awesome) I got asked why I did this, why put a year’s worth of work into a jazz festival for free? (I didn’t even get free entry to Trio Libero) And I said that I didn’t know. That’s not strictly true. I know that music has a great power to pull communities together so that they can do greater things, I know that I am stupidly passionate about music and the ways in which it works, I know that Lancaster’s a nice place to be and I know that contemporary jazz isn’t all weird and enjoyed by middle aged men with beards (although some of it is and that’s brilliant). If we can build something that even in the smallest way inspires, or allows an artist to develop or try new things, or brings a tiny group of people together so that they can go do amazing things then we’ll have done something that’s worth doing. Maybe that’s why I, or the team do it? All I know is that it’s definitely not what Steve Lewis said.
A huge massive enormous thanks to all these people that made it happen:
Dave Shooter, Jen Benson, Lucy Banks – the very scary festival team
Nick Gebhardt, David Fatkin, Paul Froggatt, Kathyrn MacDoanld, Pete Hyde – our lovely trustees who are only scary occassionally
Alan, Amanda, Annie, Arthur, Barrie, Ben, Chris, Darren, Eliza, Graham, Rick, Ruth, Sam, Steve, Victor – the people that made it all happen!
Everyone at The Borough, The Dukes and More Music. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
The lovely managers, landlords and staff at St Nicholas Arcade, The Stonewell Tavern, Lancaster Baptist Church, LICA, The Gregson.
All of our artists!!!
And to everyone that supported us – THANK YOU – see you next year!
- Matt Robinson - Festival Director
What an awesome night last night! TRIO LIBERO'S music was just achingly beautiful and talking to the band afterwards - they truly enjoyed the gig and the audience - massive thank you to all that came. Today is the final day and we go out with a huge amount of music and workshops at the Gregson Centre, with workshops from 10am and then performances from 2pm. We've got great local bands doing new things, critically acclaimed quintets and mercury prize nominated trios. Tickets are just £10 from 2pm which is a bargain (regardless of how much you come and see!) 10am Boogie-Along (workshop for ages 1-4) 11am Jazzin' About (workshop for ages 5-7) 12pm Off the Rails Gigshop (workshop) 2pm Local Heroes feat. Off the Rails (Created for Lancaster Jazz Festival 2012) 2.45pm ACV3.45pm Palladium4.45pm Adverse Camber5.25pm Roller Trio (Mercury Prize Nominated) 6.25pm Burst Horns6.55pm Stuart McCallum8pm Phil Meadows Group See you all there! Matt Robinson - Festival Director
We've worked for the best part of a year to bring three of the best musicians in the world to Lancaster and that day is today! From 7.30pm at The Dukes - TRIO LIBERO - Andy Sheppard/Michel Benita/Seb Rochford. I've listened to their album countless times since we booked them and it is truly brilliant - musically accessible whilst subtly complex and just beautiful. Its going to be great tonight and there are tickets still available ( http://dukes-lancaster.org/music/trio-libero) - we'd love to sell it out and put Lancaster on the 'jazz map' (apologies for the cheese just then) That's not the only thing today - we have a whole afternoon of bands in the garden at The Borough with Grammy nominated Neil C Young and !POPiJAZZ! - a project created for Lancaster Jazz Festival 2012 as well as the fantastic Eliza Ramsey Trio and Billionaires. Moving to The Dukes for 6pm with the Matt Anderson Quartet - from Leeds and a truly great player (I went to college with Matt and he was always way ahead of anything most of us were doing). Then TRIO LIBERO and finally a post show jam session at the Golden Lion. The fantastic Swerve Trio are the house band (if you heard them earlier in the week you'll know how good they are) - bring an instrument and sit in with them - they'll happily move aside or help you out - whatever you want to do. It's going to be a great day and even the sun in shinning! See you later! Matt Robinson - Festival Director
We're super excited about tonight. Created for Lancaster Jazz Festival 2012 - DEEP CABARET presents 'CHEERIO' - TOP TEN TIPS FOR A GOOD DEATH.The sequel to a fabulous work from Manchester Jazz Festival a few years ago it's got some top musicians, great songs and fantastic sounds.
"Sequeling 2005's near legendary Top Ten Sex Tips, Cheerio will feature players and material drawn from Orchestre DC Dansette, Deep Cabaret 3, DC Vox and Deep Clutter with words taken from sources as varied as Buddhist meditations and BBC sitcoms. Re-mastered for a group of instant improvisers, with live samples fed back into the mix and a parallel film shot by Wired In maestro Richard Davis, it will become a meditation on landscape, death and meaning; a moving but optimistic take on "knowing, not knowing and sort-of-knowing".
Steve Lewis has been blogging throughout the rehearsal process - follow whats happened on the LJF blog (www.lancasterjazz.com/news.html)
And if that wasn't enough we've also managed to tear STEPHEN GREW away from world tours with Evan Parker to do a solo piano set.
LANCASTER BAPTIST CHURCH, NELSON STREET, LANCASTER (next to the town hall), 7.30PM, £5
See you there!
Matt Robinson - Festival Director
|
RSS Feed