Continuing its Autumn Season featuring a celebrated range of world class acts, The Capstone Theatre will welcome three established jazz ensembles to its stage. On Friday 11th October the Martin Speake Trio, an unusual trio of alto saxophone, guitar and drums headed by Martin Speake, will perform live. The second of our three performances, John Law’s Congregation will take place on Friday 25th October and drawing the jazz performances of the season to a close is Matt Ridley Quartet on Friday 8th November.
As founding member of the award-winning saxophone quartet Itchy Fingers, Martin Speake teams up with his favourite musical collaborators, Mike Outram, one of the UK’s foremost guitarist and upcoming drummer, Jeff Williams to create the Martin Speake Trio. A committed trio of talented musicians, which brings together all of Speake’s musical influences including meditative ballads, trance-like grooves, free improvisation, minimalism, jazz standard songs, Arabic-influenced music, heavy metal guitar and unaccompanied solos from each musician.
This is followed with the classical and rock fused stylings of the phenomenal jazz ensemble John Law’s Congregation, headed by one of Europe’s most creative jazz pianists and composers, John Law, joined with award winning jazz prodigy Tim Giles and long-term member of Robert Mitchell’s groups, bassist Tom Mason. The talented trio will be presenting some of Law’s best original material from his recent acclaimed trio CD Three Leaps of the Gazelle and forthcoming album, which will contain some of Law’s most popular compositions to date; hard hitting, exciting, powerful tunes with the simplicity of rock, mixed with the complexity and delicacy of classical music. Combining incredible precision and a wonderfully loose feel, the trio manages to steer a path between jazz, classical and rock, covering all areas from poised, classical-sounding ballads, through jazz grooves, to rock-like anthems. An evening guaranteed to feature the very best of the British jazz scene with sheer technical brilliance.
The jazz season draws to an end with an evening performance from Matt Ridley Quartet. Bassist Ridley is joined by prolific saxophonist Jason Yarde, Parliamentary Jazz Award-winner John Turville on piano and George Hart on drums. Together they perform cutting-edge grooves, beautiful melodies and exploratory improvisations. A fuse of modal and rhythmic elements of Middle Eastern music with the harmonic complexities, their music shows influences as diverse as funk, modern jazz and 20th century minimalism that’s both engaging and memorable.
A season fit for jazz lovers everywhere; these shows are not to be missed!
