My friend Steph invited me out to Ealing on Friday night for their jazz festival. It is a low-key affair, held at the local park. Admission is set at £1, to keep the teenagers out and the old rockers in.
Our first stop was the Crypt Tent and the London Jazz Collective. This is twenty musicians on a tiny stage playing original compositions for the love of music. It went very well with a pint of lager:
The aroha came through in their playing, and was quite nice. The songs were poetic and upbeat. The groove was particularly good when the band was joined by a woman whose name I never did learn:
Sadly, I missed the last part of her set to wander off and find some nosh. Being London there is always a random curry kitchen somewhere, and this one let me put lots of extra chillis and coriander on my plate. It was pretty good food for a muddy field on a cold night:
The other women grabbed some moroccan foody assemblages and we wandered to the main tent to eat. This was a much more laid-back place, even though it had a massive stage set, really sophisticated light rigging, and some serious jazz buffs in the audience. There was about 500 years' worth of musical experience on stage as the old, old, old groovers improvised and interacted:
Way cool.
Sadly, this was to be my final stop in the festival, as the journey home to Lewisham was going to be almost two hours. I left a steadily thickening crowd, dodging picnic blankets unfolding all around me like parachutes as people settled in for a long night of cool. It would be wonderful to do the same myself next year.
The remainder of my weekend was fairly low-key, although Lucy and I had a random encounter with a Maori womens' music group playing at a children's fair in the courtyard opposite my work. That was choice!
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