Listen to the Jazz Smugglers live!

The Jazz Smugglers will be performing at the Woolpack Inn at Fishbourne this coming Sunday evening, 13th December at 8.15 onwards.

We have a great line up of music for the evening and the pub assures us they have plenty of beer. The perfect excuse for escaping from X Factor!

Jazzin' Sussex returns

OK so we've all had a great summer (hopefully). Some of us have spent the summer months topping up our tans; some drinking beer ; but others have clearly spent the summer inside practising their ii-V7-I progressions in all keys, major and minor. Good to hear it - just wish someone would show me! Still, never mind I got a great tan and beer belly so all was not wasted.

The garage in Bosham has been cleared and the workshop is underway once again every Sunday evening. A few new faces have shown themselves already, so welcome to John, Don and Colin. There's always room for more though, particularly those with higher pitched instruments such as alto sax, flutes, clarinets and especially any brass players out there looking for the chance to expose themselves to the dangers of jazz improvisation!

3 new tunes added to the repertoire already, "What is this thing called love?", Georgia on my Mind" and "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free". All have a very different feel and represent the wide variety of music we're trying to play. The challenge is to learn our way around them.

A couple of other proposals for the next couple of weeks include "Afro Blue", "the look of love" and building riffs from a variety of blues heads. How diverse is that?

Quiet jazz music for Wedding Receptions

Quiet jazz for your wedding reception in the South of England

We've just posted a new page in the website, offering our band for weddings. We've done quite a few. Most wedding parties want a quartet or trio to provide background music for the Reception.

Our mixture of old Jazz Standards, and Show Tunes is perfect. "Oh, haven't I heard that somewhere?" they ask.

We can provide a quiet jazz trio, we can add a brilliant singer of classic jazz songs. We can even provide one of the country’s leading jazz piano soloists, Terry Seabrook

We can give you a list of songs to choose, beautiful songs by Ellington, or Jerome Kern, or Cole Porter, or George Gershwin, or Miles Davis. These are some of the most beautiful and lyrical songs composed in the past century. We can just play in the background while people talk.

Or you can dance the night away to the the country's leading Salsa and Latin Group. Cubana Bop.

Just ask by e-mail: john@thewinklers.co.uk - please put “wedding jazz “in the subject line

John Winkler.

Wedding jazz

Here are links to the band page, and the workshop page.
Jazz Smugglers Band
Play jazz with us on Sunday evenings in Bosham
Some tips for playing Jazz

JAZZ SMUGGLERS WORKSHOP TO START AGAIN JAN 11

Playing the Saturday afternoon set at the Jazz Festival in Chichester was great. The best gig we've ever had. 300 people, no one played a bum note. Wonderful. Pity the band split after that.



BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.

If you are coming to the new Jazz Smugglers workshop, then you need to be nice to each other.

That's all I ask.



Yeah, I know that sounds funny. But I'm serious.

If someone plays well - for the standard they are at, then please tell them. This is not about good players getting praise, yes they get told too, but they have to be playing above their usual standard. Everyone needs encouragement for the level they usually play.



Everyone is nervous at a jazz workshop, particularly when playing at one for the first time. We'll have all different levels of ability on January 11th from beginners to advanced. The advanced ones tend to drop out of their own accord after a couple of visits. I've got about 11 possibles, and I have not personally reached everyone yet.



WHAT WILL HAPPEN

I'll take a look at those folks who have said "yes" to coming - some I know, some I don't. I'll sort out some music and appropriate songs and try them out. No pressure - if someone does not want to take a solo they have no need to do so. So long as you can read a bit, you'll be fine. Raw beginners have too much of a problem though.



THE COSTS

For the first couple of visits, it will not cost anyone anything. After that we ask for £2 to go in to the kitty from those turning up. Nothing really, and the purpose of this is to cover costs which arise. Any surplus goes into a workshop meal fund.



THE TIME

Can you be ready to start at 7.30 on Sunday 11th Jan - set up around 7.00 perhaps?



SINGERS

Experience shows that having singers at a jazz workshop seriously limitis what the players do. Singers usually take the melody at the front and the back end, leaving the front line with just solos. But we can involve players far more than that, if they play the melody.



One evening we can have a special workshop for singers later in the year.



THE BAND

We might re-build the band from the new workshops, but that will take a couple of years. Trouble is, later on the band players become really good, that puts off beginners at the workshops. Then the workshops turn into rehearsal sessions for the band. That puts the nail into the workshop coffin except for experts. I prefer to be working with everyday people who want to get better and to practise playing in a group. That is a workshop.



WHO WILL BE THERE

Here are the acceptances so far

bass/drums/guitar/flute/horn (2)/alto/tenor (2)vibes



VIC/STEVE AND ROBERT, YOU'LL BE THERE WON'T YOU? I've deliberately not duplicated the rythmn section and have asked no other drummers, bass players or guitar players. But we need you there folks.



TALK TO ME

Please tell me what you think, e-mail me, everyone has a chance to organise the thing if they want. I can't get it right unless you tell me what is wrong. (You can always put it into syrupy words)



JAZZ SMUGGLERS BAND

I've been asked what is the situation with the Jazz Smugglers band



What happened was that I used to send a congratulatory message to everyone who played, and picked out their best playing bits Then it was discovered last August, that I needed to have an slip road put around four arteries to my heart. No big deal, surgeons were wonderful. But I could not play the other six or so gigs we had lined up, but the rest of the band did.



We scrapped the workshops for the Autumn. I laid on the settee watching re-runs of Property Ladder wondering how people could be so stupid as to argue with Sarah Beeney about the property they were renovating.



(Property development is not an ego trip, it is about doing up places and selling them on. Why pay out an extra £5,000 for a high end kitchen, when you are going to let out the property anyway and it will mostly be destroyed after five tenants in two years.)



Anyway come December, I let the band go. Some of them wanted to do other things anyway, but I did nothing to keep them together.



You know why? Childish reason really. We started the first workshops in January 04. I got us some regular gigs at the Woolpack pub in Fishbourne. When we got to play well, the band asked if we could get some more gigs outside at other venues. So I did the work of publicising them, and making contacts all over the place - it is hard work as anyone who has ever done it will know. The band members got some private gigs themselves. We did about 20 Woolpack gigs, then about 8 others in our first year. We did over 22 gigs this year, 18 last year, and no one ever said thanks. Organising 60 gigs takes a bit of effort.



The band all have to be contacted each time, asked if they were free for the gig. Most replied without chasing, but two hardly ever replied. Can you imagine how tedious that is? No one gets paid for organising these things, the vast majority of gigs are done for free, for charity. Yet the band earned about £3,000 for paid for gigs in the past year. Still no one said thanks

They are a nice bunch of folks, personally very pleasant, but musicians are not good on the human relations bit. Steve, the guitar player, not only produced the CD recording for us in his studio, a huge amount of work, he also took all his amplification equipment to and from gigs. That is one really big job to do. But no one thanked him, unless I privately reminded them each time.

So, lying on that settee, I got fed up with it and let the band fall apart. Told you it was childish.

Hope to see you on Jan 11th.



John Winkler

Playing soon at the Woolpack, March 30, Fishbourne

Here the band is play at a charity gig - 5 girls in a boat. Good fun this one

We'll be playing at the Woolpack, High Street Fishbourne, from 8.00 on Sunday March 30th. Come if you can - it is free admission. Really a run out for the Summer gigs we have booked.

The rest of this blog is technical. I'm just posting this to get us listed in Technorati, and also to feed some links to find new pages in other sites. Lady Google likes this sort of thing

John

Technorati Profile

No Smoking self catering holiday properties Scotland

Smoking allowed in these self catering Scottish holiday properties

Pets Welcome in these Self Catering Scottish holiday properties

Pets not allowed in these self catering Scottish Holiday properties

All the facts you need about Self Catering Scotland

The facts about Scottish rain

How to find your ideal self catering property on the internet

Lochside cottage near Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland

Latin Jazz with Terry Seabrook, Cubana Bop Sunday 13th Apl

We have asked Terry Seabrook, the renowned leader of Cubana Bop to run our workshop on Sunday 13th April, at 7.30

Latin is a very specialised form of Jazz and really difficult to play properly. Easy enough to amble through a bossa or two with a bit of syncopation but that is a far cry from using complex montunos, edgy solos with a hard Cuban edge, complex hand percussion, and 60 bar songs with quite complex harmonies. Or modal with no changes at all.

We need help to do it properly!

We have a new Terry Seabrook song to do, called Into the Fire and it is stretching all of us.

Anyway we can take a maximum of ten people and the cost will be £10 each. If you'd like to consider coming then ask me. I'm leaving out the .co.uk from the end of my e-mail to avoid getting masses of spam. Just add it yourself please.

We meet every Monday evening at 8.30. Creek End Smugglers Lane, Bosham. 07717819846.
In the Jazz Conservatoire. (Shed)

John
ps We are to play at The Chichester Jazz Festival gig is on July 12th, Saturday, at Priory Park all afternoon

The weekly Jazz workshop for players and amateurs

We are to play in the Chichester Jazz Festival this year

Steve, our guitar player at his other job, recording producer.

The Chichester Jazz Festival organisers have just hired us to play this year. The gig is on Saturday afternoon July 12th in Priory Park, Chichester.

Following week we are playing there again fot the big St. Wilfreds Fair.

Perhaps we could camp out for the week.

Workshop at Creek end to-morrow eveniong at 7.30 if there are any players out the who want a blow or a tinkle. Actually, that does not sound very nice, but you can guess what I mean.

Busy jazz site, packed with music information for jazz players and followers
The Smugglers Jazz band for weddings and functions in the South of England
The weekly Jazz workshop for players and amateurs

John

the Jazz Smugglers mailing manager

Also, sorry about this, miles off topic, but this is just to help Google to theme another web site I run I just want to add this link to a new page. (For you web design aficianados I know it is not a relevant link, but every little helps)

The Vikings in Glencoe, the Terror, the Glencoe Battle