Cactus Cafe - Looking Glass

First jazz gig on Wednesday with Andy the sax back at the Cactus Cafe - hot busy noisy night, but it was good to be back in the swing of gigging again.

The next night I went to see jazz pianist Mike Sole & his Illusive Trio across town at the Looking Glass. I've really been out of giggin much with jazz outside of restaurants & weddings so I went partially went to see how I felt about the vibe and whether I;d want to do more. Mike was kind enough to let me play one with his sax & drummer (old chum Dave Anderson) - which was fun. Odd to play with drums - I just never do that these days.

Old chum Sally dropped by too so it was a nice evening out. The jazz was world class - made me realise how cabaret my jazz had become. Mike has something of that jazz intensity I had in younger days when jazz was all I did. 

I think I could do with another jazz piano gig a month and it would be nice to get a serious trio together witha  double bassist - something I;ve wanted to do for years. But not too full on jazzwise _ I;m sure I couldn't resist singing or chatting to an audience at length...

Grandfather recording

Strange and wondrous. Listening to a recording of my maternal grandfather's voice recorded in about 1963 - a spoken letter to mom and a nonsense poem for my sister. He refers to me as "Little Christopher". I never met him so am hearing his voice for the first time. Cleaning the sound & transcribing to CDr. He is where the music comes from in our family - he played cello in the silent movie cinemas and once played at GK Chestertons garden party.

Strange to hear his voice - it;s  little like my uncle's though the Maidenhead accent is stronger.

Here's a snip of him reading the poem.
http://soundcloud.com/unclechristo/grandfather-recites-a-poem