Having left serious jazz performance on the back burner for a number of years, I was inspired to explore this avenue more vitally after at a gig that my long term music collaborator, Craig Rickards had organised featuring vocalist Nia Lynn and pianist Gwillam Simcock. Nia suggested Anita Wardell as the perfect tutor in the art of improvisation and scatting. Thank you Nia for this introduction – and the songs Twisted and this funky version of New York State of Mind have been particularly inspired by you. In addition to Anita’s skilled tutoring she has been wonderfully generous with her encouragement and championed this project. The Loire Vocal courses run by Tristan Mailliot, on which Anita has tutored, have also been an invaluable stepping stone and a fantastic introduction to working with yet more great jazz musicians Robin Aspland and Oli Hayhurst and of course Tristan himself. Thank you Tristan for your generosity in running and tutoring on these events, giving developing musicians this wonderful opportunity. Thought I’d give you something fun to do on Tout Droit – and thanks for helping me to try to make the pronunciation more authentic. And thanks to all three of you for bringing the arrangements to life – recreating exactly what I had heard in my head but with extra sparkles and opulence. So often with these projects there are plans that change and elements that evolve but the addition to the line up with Julian Ferraretto and Ben Castle have been true bonuses. Thanks to all of you for making this project so enjoyable. Its been great to choose some of my favourite songs, arrange them just the way I want to hear them and have such fantastic musicians playing them. And Roland Perrin, where would I be without your personal encouragement to me as a musician, and for letting me sound out the arrangements with you and for your invaluable input!
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