Ghost Dance 2002
Some members of the new house band
Music

The standard of the music at Nunney Jazz Cafe is high - Miles Kington in The Independent compared us to Ronnie Scott's - and it is turning into a focal point for jazz musicians in this area, including some internationally known players.  The first Nunney Jazz Café CD, My Neighbourhood, was released in October 1999, featuring Pee Wee Ellis on tenor saxophone - the Bath Chronicle described it as "remarkably good".

The cafe is based on performance of high quality straight-ahead modern jazz and funk.  However, we try to vary the musical style from month to month - for example, recent and upcoming sessions are based on Brazilian music, Soul, the Chicago Blues, Calypso, Southern Blues, the Scandinavian sound, African influences, and Indian music.  As time goes on we plan to introduce more and more musical variations and crossovers, and particularly would like to work with more classical, folk and world players.

This is in addition to experimenting with the combination of jazz and poetry, which so far is going down well with audiences!  We integrate poetry into the music  when performing it at the cafe - apart from being interesting for poets and musicians alike, this approach suits the informal (and often noisy) atmosphere of the events.

Cafe gigs are not rehearsed beforehand, and the musicians either play standards or from charts brought along by the guests of the month - we have a short discussion before (or during) the gig as to what we will play  and how.  Some music clips from recent events are available on the site as streaming audio.

A full list of performers that have appeared, or are planned to appear, at the cafe is online.

If you are interested generally in the UK jazz scene, check out the Jazz Services website for an enormous variety of info.