Hi everybody, welcome back to jazz@davenham for the 2017 / 2018 season – we have some fantastic music on offer for you.

Booking as always, here by e mail, Harry (01606 74502) or Dave (01606 44253)

All concerts start at 8 pm and will be £10 (advisable to book as always) From now, we regret that we are “suspending” our “free concert” offer as we are not sure this is sustainable – we may review later in the season.

Bookable now are

Thursday 28th Sept – The Tom Millar Quartet – (one of 16 concerts in Sept for the band!)

Tom Millar is a London-based pianist, composer and bandleader. He was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up in London. After reading Music at King’s College, Cambridge, he studied Jazz Piano and Composition for a Masters at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and with Django Bates in Bern, Switzerland.

His debut album with his quartet, Unnatural Events, will be launched on September 20th 2017 at the Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho, London. The quartet plays Tom’s original music, inspired by places and people that are important to him. Tracks include the soulful ballad ‘Park Hill’; his setting of the proto-environmentalist poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Inversnaid’; and rock-out grooves in ‘The Seafarer’, ‘Power Chord Thing’ and ‘Woad’. It features some of the most in-demand young jazz musicians in London: Matt Ridley on bass, Alex Munk on guitar and Dave Storey on drums. (Singer Alice Zawadzki features on two tracks on the album).

Thursday 26th October – The Philip Clouts Quartet

Philip visited Davenham a couple of years ago and was very well received indeed.

The dancing exuberance of South African Township music, the convivial groove of gospel-influenced soul jazz, the joyful sway of Cuban guaguanco rhythms, the bluesy melodies of middle eastern praise songs and so much more all come together in pianist Philip Clouts’ superbly accomplished quartet.

New CD Umoya captures this wide-ranging music superbly and in concert, Clouts (piano), saxophonist Samuel Eagles, bassist Alex Keen and drummer Dave Ingamells bring it alive with tremendous imagination, vim and vigour.