Show Notes
Geoff is in the coastal town of Deal in Kent to meet with the wonderful jazz singer and lyricist Norma Winstone. A childhood steeped in radio, a cinema crush on Lena Horne, and a record collection that swung from Ella and Louis to Sinatra’s ‘Only The Lonely’—Norma charts how a voice finds its own gravity. We talk about the hinge moments that redirected the road: pub sit‑ins that led to John Taylor, the New Jazz Orchestra and Michael Garrick inviting the voice into instrumental roles, and Kenn...
More from The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast
You can tell a lot about a musician by the jobs they keep getting called for, and renowned bassist and musical author Phil Mulford has built a career that spans session bass, West End theatre pits, TV work, pop touring, jazz fusion, and film recording. Geoff meets Phil in his South London studio and starts right at the beginning: picking up bass at school because it was the only instrument left, then levelling up through youth big bands, serious listening, and the kind of early opportunities ...
Perfect pitch, bebop, and the hard reality of a badly formatted big band chart all collide in this week’s episode. Geoff chats with the brilliant Alex Clarke, a young UK alto saxophonist (and multi-instrumentalist) who already sounds like she has lived inside the music for decades. Geoff welcomes Alex into his South London home and gets straight into the choices that shaped her career from Cheshire school bands to Ronnie Scott's Jazz Orchestra and beyond. Alex talks openly about dropping out ...
Geoff is in Croydon, South London to meet the accomplished British bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and musical director of the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra, Pete Long. One record can reroute a whole life, and for Pete it was Glenn Miller’s version of the Joe Garland hit ‘In the Mood’ (1939). Pete follows the sound from swing into the deeper waters of Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, where big band jazz becomes a lifelong obsession with colour, craft, and joy. Pete talks candidly about c...
Geoff is backstage at Hadleigh Jazz Club in Suffolk, England with the celebrated jazz singer, guitarist and bandleader Denny Ilett. Denny begins the conversation talking about growing up on a council estate with his trumpet-playing dad, a house full of Louis Armstrong and big band records, and the moment guitar finally cuts through via T-Bone Walker and then Jimi Hendrix. If you care about jazz guitar, swing feel, and where real musical taste comes from, this chat lands right in the gut. We d...
Geoff is in Camden, North London to meet with the legendary jazz pianist, singer/songwriter, producer, author and renowned interviewer Ben Sidran. A $3 school-dance gig. A teenage obsession with Horace Silver. A lifetime of paging through the fake book and letting songs teach you who you are. The conversation quickly turns into what jazz does best: stories, swing, and the kind of hard-won clarity you only get after decades on the bandstand. We talk about how Ben first fell in love with jazz i...