One of the unique features of the Cheltenham Jazz festival is the annual collaboration between students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and groups of students from overseas. In the past this has involved Conservatoires in Norway and in France. This year the visiting students come from the Siena Jazz-Accademia Nazionale Del Jazz, with the addition of one student from Hamburg.
Groups are mixed between the two colleges. The students are put into three groups, given a day to work together and then each given 20 minutes to perform, first in Birmingham on the Friday, and then here at Cheltenham on the Saturday morning. It was interesting that all three groups had guitars, but only one pianist. And it was slightly disappointing to see that it was an all male line-up.
It is worth saying that the limited rehearsal time didn’t show at all, and that all three groups would grace any jazz club right now. Many students from earlier versions of the project have turned out to be highly successful and well known names. After the event there’s always chatter in the audience trying to predict who will emerge from this batch of students.
All three groups played a mixture of bebop and post-bop, with an occasional retro flourish. The quality of the musicianship was (as usual) extremely high. Everyone had their chances to solo, and they all took them well.
This sort of cross-border collaboration has become more difficult these days with Brexit and Covid, but we should do everything possible to make sure they continue.
The groups aren’t named – just given numbers. The musicians listed below are from Birmingham except where otherwise identified.
Group 1
Iacopo Teolio tpt Siena
Dan Lockheart tenor sax
Torin Davies gtr
Joe Kessell bass
Dom Johnson drums
Group 2
Zak Demou tpt
Lorenzo Simoni alto sax Siena
Guillermo Santimone pno Siena
Ben Love bass
Aidan Amann drums
Group 3
Oscar Lawrence alto sax
Dave Bustos tenor sax
Lucas Echeverria gtr Hamburg
Francesco Tino electric bass Siena
Andrew Duncan drums
Peter Slavid broadcasts a programme of European Jazz on mixcloud.com/ukjazz and various internet stations
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