Ok, we’ve not got him, but The Noise Upstairs is presenting a free workshop on Cobra, his most famous piece. The blurb follows…

The Noise Upstairs Workshops

John Zorn’s Cobra is either an often performed contemporary music composition, an improvisational game, a short attention span barrage of noise, a social experiment, or every piece of music you’ve (n)ever played or heard. The Noise Upstairs will be leading three rehearsals of this seminal piece concluding in a public performance, all for free and all at Fuel Cafe Bar, Withington

Rehearsal dates:
February 28th 2:00-4:30
March 14th 2:00-4:30
March 28th 4:00-6:30 (including performance at NUS Label Launch night @ 8:00)

For info, click here and e-mail workshops@thenoiseupstairs.com to sign up.

Anyway, we played a fund-raiser for the Peace In The Park festival on Saturday night/Sunday morning and it was an amazing night. 4 rooms churning out some incredibly bass-heavy reggae and dub and more, and the crowd we played to was fantastic, and they seemed to keep dancing even through the jazz bits we sneak in.

The next day saw us decamp to a studio at Sheffield University to record three tunes, thanks very much to Hannah for sorting that out for us. All being well, they should be online in a couple of months, and a mini-tour is being planned for October.

Jah.

Tues 2nd, 13.00 – Tom Arthurs/Jasper Hoiby/Stu Ritchie with Elysian String Quartet Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Thurs 4th, 20.00 – Beats & Pieces Big Band The Spin Off, Bar Santiago, Leeds

Thurs 11th, 20.00 – Kit Downes Trio + Troyka Band on the Wall, Manchester

Sun 28th, 20.00 – Trio VD + Buffalo Collision (with Tim Berne) Band on the Wall, Manchester

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head – hopefully see you at one or more of them!

Jan 20th Sheffield, The Lescar
Jan 22nd Edinburgh, The Jazz Club
Jan 23rd Ambleside, Zeffirelli’s
Jan 26th Liverpool, Parrjazz

Check out the group’s music and purchase the CD at their myspace page.

The main focus of the trip was the Efpi Showcase gig, featuring HAQ, local duo Sagolik, and Beats & Pieces Finland – a big band featuring the cream of Helsinki’s young jazz talent performing the Beats & Pieces charts. It was a great night, the band sounded great even though many of the musicians were sight-reading really tricky charts, and its was a pleasure meeting and performing with everybody! Unfortunately the audio recording of the gig didn’t work out but there’s some photos below.

The next day we headed home after sleeping off the drinking, only to find that our flight to Heathrow had been delayed cos apparently there’d been a little tiny bit of snow that was proving difficult to cope with; needless to say when we finally arrived back there was loads less snow than we’d been used to in Helsinki, how inefficient…

We had a great time in Finland though – cheers to everyone we met and played with, and hope to go back and play some more sometime!

Merry Christmas one and all! To thank you all for your support in 2009 we thought we’d prepare a lovely festive message to get you in the spirit of things… Best wishes for 2010!

We did however manage to do a few days recording with various groups before the end of term.

Firstly, Andreae/Tikkanen/Meier had a full day recording in Finnvox Studio last Friday. It was a really fantastic place to record and I think we got down some good tracks, even though it was the morning after the Beats & Pieces gig……. enough said. Also, big thanks to Markus for making the recording process so easy. The next day we went in to one of the studios in the Sibelius Academy with David, Mette, Kalle and Eero and recorded in various different formats (duo/trio/quartet/quintet). Another fruitful session, after a morning fraught with technical difficulties (our friend Jimmy was recording and worked some magic to make the thing happen, thanks), we got down to business like the professionals that we are ;-) We had a handful of compositions we wanted to record and then did a string of improvisations. If it all sounds as good as it felt to record it we may have a release in the pipeline so watch this space!

So me and Anton have been in Finland for the past few days visiting Sam and for a few gigs and jams and stuff with some Helsinki musicians. Its been great so far, but pretty cold…

We arrived on Sunday night/Monday morning around midnight when it was minus 12… But its all snowy and nice, which is loads better than it being in Manchester where its just cold and frankly a bit shit. Gig 1 was at the Arkadia Bookshop, a great little place just over the road from Sam’s flat in Toolo, featuring HAQ but with a continental twist – Anton and Sam were there (obviously) but on bass was Eero Tikkanen from Finland and drums was David Meier from Switzerland, both guys that Sam’s been studying with at the Sibelius Academy. Nice audience there which was lovely to see, even though it was still minus 12. Hardy folks, these Finnish jazz fans…

[Anton: felt really good to play these tunes again, and the crowd was really receptive and quite a mixed age range.  It's also been great to play with David again, we met about a year ago on a SIM course and by some amazing coincidence he and Sam are on the NOMAZZ course together for a couple of years.]

Earlier in the day we had a rehearsal for Beats & Pieces Finland, which is performing tomorrow night (Thursday 17th) at Cafe Mascot. This is a band comprised of a crack team of local musicians that Sam’s come into contact with, performing selections from the Beats & Pieces repertoire on very limited rehearsal. Sounded good on Monday though, so we’re excited about tomorrow! Even though it’ll probably be cold again…

Other exciting things we’ve done include going to the sauna with lots of big naked hairy Finnish men, and then standing outside in the snowy evening wearing only a towel (surprisingly not as cold as you’d expect it to be!) [Anton: it was exactly as cold as you'd expect it to be, my feet feel like they've blistered]. And we spent lots of euros in this amazing jazz record shop called Digelius (excited about my Earthworks vinyl…), as well as going for continental pastries at this little cafe by the (frozen) sea. We’re currently in Sam’s flat before going to watch a gig tonight, eating our way through a ‘Megapussi’ bag of crisps.

[Anton: other less-exciting things we've done include finding the Finnish equivalent of the Arndale centre and spending far too much time in there because it was warmer than outside.  Sam had left us on our own so we didn't know where the cool places were anymore...]

There’s some random photos below, which hopefully will convey how fun (and cold) Helsinki is! Keep an eye out for part 2, to follow soon…

Efpi is a small musicians-run label, documenting the activity of a rising generation of north west jazz musicians. The conception is modest, but the execution is confident. EP 1 by the Hunter/Andreae Quartet is by turn noisy and reflective, at its best when it strays from the theme and cuts loose whereas Beats and Pieces is expansive and structured, and realises Ben Cottrell’s large-scale compositions with the full resources of a big band. Vivid, bristling with ideas: what might not Cottrell and co achieve in the future? Mike Butler

Read the full review below – cheers Mike!