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EVERYBODY DIGS BILL EVANS (AND THE BECHSTEIN)

If you have not seen the melancholy masterpiece Everybody Digs Bill Evans, I urge you to do so before it disappears from large screens. There have been criticisms of the movie from some quarters, such as how it concentrates on a single, brief and gloomy period of his life, but that gives the movie a focus most musical biopics don’t have. Some have lamented that there isn’t much of Bill’s playing in there, but that makes it all the more thrilling and cathartic when it does appear, as in the scene where his parents (brilliant performances by Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf) listen to the Sunday at the Village Vanguard album. And Anders Danielsen Lie, who also plays most of Bill’s piano parts, does a wonderful job of portraying a troubled, grieving genius.

Two very familiar faces on the London jazz scene also contributed to the movie. Bassist player Will Sach, a regular face at Jazz in Kentish Town (see https://jazzattheparakeet.com/), portrays Scott La Faro, whose death in a car wreck sent Evans into a dark spiral. And when the film flashes forward and bursts into colour to show an older, hairier Evans playing a wild, unhinged version of Suicide is Painless (Theme from M.A.S.H.), that is actually Welsh whizzkid Joe Webb at the keyboard.

You can hear this pair as part of new series of concerts at the intimate Bechstein Hall – which was the original name of its larger sibling, the Wigmore Hall, until anti-German sentiment in WW1 caused a change – on October 15. It is unlikely to be a Bill Evans tribute concert – the pair are exceptionally versatile, able to play music from any era of jazz – but it’ll be quite the gig by two players at the top of their game.
Other concerts at the 100-seat hall include Ronnie Scott’s MD James Pearson scoping out the history of jazz piano from Ragtime to Big Band (September 24); Ian Shaw bringing along his new show, Elton, Bowie, Waits, Ray & Me (October 29), with support from his well-honed wit, and young and highly rated NYC singer Anaïs Reno accompanied by our very own Jamie Safir on piano on November 17. The multi-talented hyphenate that is Nikki Yeoh, who has nurtured many of the current crop of jazz piano players, lands on November 19, followed by the ebullient, irresistible Liane Carroll on December 10, a pre-Xmas treat. For tickets and more details see: https://bechsteinhall.com/whats-on/. These shows are put together by a new outfit called All Blue Music, which combines the promotional talents of Joseph Paice and Simon Cooke. Together they helped shape London’s blossoming jazz landscape through their work at Pizza Express (Paice) and Ronnie Scott’s (Cooke). Keep an eye out for more shows from the pair.

Both Will Sach and Joe Webb have worked extensively with sax/clarinettist Giacomo Smith, notably in Kansas Smitty’s House Band. I have long admired Smith’s playing (and dress sense) – he can get me involved in areas of music I am usually pretty agnostic about, such as gypsy jazz (my bad, I know). He is a master virtuoso and technician, especially on clarinet, but it is the sheer joy and musicality of his playing that does it for me. I was looking forward to hearing his new quartet recently, but a house move got in the way, so I sent local sax man Danny Silverstone of the Equinox Jazz Quartet along to Ronnie’s to check it out. This is his report from the jazz frontline.

“56 years after my first visit to Ronnie Scott’s I went to the newly refurbished Upstairs. And what an amazing job they’ve done, with no expense spared to create a mid-50’s supper club vibe with all the trimmings great acoustics and sight lines. I was there to see the newly formed Giacomo Smith quartet. It was billed as the launch gig for Smith’s new album Artfullee, although Giacomo ruefully announced that the CDs he’d hoped to sign and sell had mistakenly gone to Denmark.

Smith is a multi-instrumentalist equally fluent on alto and soprano sax, clarinet, and bass clarinet, all of which were evident on the night. Born in Italy, raised in the USA and resident and omnipresent on the London jazz scene over the last 15 years, Smith is best known for his devotion to and reimagining of 1930’s era jazz, most notably through his Kansas Smitty’s band.

This is his first outing within a classic jazz format- his agent had apparently suggested it- and the packed house was primarily treated to original tunes from his non-launch album. Smith is an accomplished performer on each of his horns and his young backing trio performed well. I was particularly impressed with the playing, both reflective and percussive, of Tom Ward on piano.

The music was mainly located within a pre-bebop mainstream, with their ballad playing stealing the show for me. The standout tune- Largo Montebello – was written in Turin and could have been a soundtrack to a new wave Italian movie of the 1950’s. Expect to see and hear more from this quartet.”

In the meantime you can see more of Giacomo and his superlative clarinet work with The Entertainers, featuring Joe Stilgoe, Upstairs at Ronnie’s on October 6 and November 10 (https://www.ronniescotts.co.uk/find-a-show/joe-stilgoe-the-entertainers-2 ) and also with his own big band performing his brilliant version of Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite (and more, including original compositions) at Cadogan Hall on December 14 (https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/giacomo-smiths-big-band-presents-ellingtons-nutcracker-suite/). We’ll give you a heads up about Giacomo’s album Artfullee when it finally turns up.

For updates on performances by the Equinox Jazz Quartet with Danny Silverstone see https://www.equinoxjazz.org/gigs. You can read his thoughts on jazz here: https://mylifeinjazz.co.uk/. I wrote a piece about Bill Evans for GQ almost a decade ago, when jazz was still in its uncool phase. It’s a little dated in its reference points, but the basic Bill facts are there: https://robtryan.com/2016/11/16/everybody-digs-bill-evans-composer-of-the-week/

ONE COOL CAT

THE OUT CROWD

MIXED UP MILES

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An expanded version of this piece will appear in the Camden New Journal.

Theo Croker’s “Miles Davis Mixtape”

Southbank Centre x Montreux Jazz Festival Residency. Royal Festival Hall. 13 March 2026

“I’m not going to talk very much,” announced Theo Croker near the start of his Royal Festival Hall concert, before adding, with a chuckle, “Miles didn’t talk much.” Which is, of course, very true – in his later years you were lucky if the trumpeter even looked at the audience. This non-speaking gig was a double celebration – of Miles Davis’ centenary and of a collaboration between the Southbank and the venerable Montreux Jazz festival, which came to town for the weekend. There was lots going on but – for me at least- Theo and Miles was the centrepiece.

(Photo: Pete Woodhead) The concert began with a beautifully full toned Concert de Aranjuez from the Gil Evans-helmed masterwork Sketches of Spain. Miles used a flugel in the opening on disc; Theo has a Monette trumpet, but no matter – that horn sings. It soon became clear that the pure-voiced singing was going to just part of its role here, as delay and reverb (Croker used a double microphone set up), scrunchy electronics and voice samples came to the fore as the Rodrigo segued into Croker’s own 4Knowledge. This was no slavish reproduction of Miles’ music, but a Theo Croker “mixtape”, with all the experimentation that suggests from a man who is one of the best and most forward-facing of the current crop of trumpeters. He included a good number of his own compositions in the mix – notably Amen Waters (where his playing reminded me of that other Miles admirer, Mark Isham) and 64 Joints, which is from his last album Dream Manifest. And they fitted perfectly.

So, those hoping for Kind of Blue played in its entirety were destined to be disappointed, but we did get some exhilarating deep cuts. Very deep, one of them being Yaphet from the underrated Big Fun album from 1974, a pulsing track which could have acted as a blueprint for the whole gig. The band were on top form as it essayed the changes in tempo, atmosphere and harmony while Croker manipulated the sound in real time. Eric Wheeler was a powerhouse on bass, young drummer Koleby Royston subtle and far from overwhelmed by the demands of the ever shifting soundscape and Tyler Bullock was on keys. Although the latter also played synths, he also gave us some welcome, energetic passages on acoustic piano that offered us a definite human touch amid the electronic processing.

(Photo: Pete Woodhead).

But it was special guest Gary Bartz who often took the limelight and ran with it. Looking like he had based his hairstyle on Doc from Back to the Future, the 85-year old began his contribution a little tentatively. I was a little concerned, as I have seen my fair share of jazz vets who no longer had the chop for a full-blown concert experience. No so Gary, who played with Miles in the early seventies (see Live-Evil) and led a pioneering fusion band called Ntu Troop (you’ll probably know Celestial Blues), and who showed here that he had the power and energy of a player half his age. Guest singer Ego Ella May also acquitted herself beautifully on two songs, including Croker’s Somethin’ which she sang on his album By the Way. I could have listened to more – but I guess I’ll have to catch one of her solo gigs.

The concert ended back on solid Miles ground with Wayne Shorter’s Water Babies and a tender, acoustic Round Midnight that raised a few hairs on my neck, before Croker had the last word with his Hero Stomp. A couple of the two thousand plus audience expressed disappointment to me over a post-gig drink (they’d seen me taking notes) at the Croker-to-Miles ratio and the treatment of the sound. As someone who got on board with Miles at around Bitches Brew, I enjoyed the sonic manipulation which seemed entirely appropriate. After all, plenty of Miles’ music was heavily restructured in the studio by producer Teo Macero (look at the number of tape edits on the In a Silent Way album). I gave them my considered verdict on Theo’s mixtape: Miles would have loved it.

JACK BOND

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It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that film director Jack Bond had died at the age of 87 on December 21^st, 2024. It was a shock, because I had last spoken to him a couple of months ago on the phone, and he seemed as irrepressible as ever. We said we would meet up soon, but soon never came.

I first met him back in the mid-nineties, when researching a short story for Esquire. It was about “Williams” the man who won the inaugural Monaco GP in 1929 and who later became a Special Operations Executive operative in wartime France, alongside two other talented race drivers – Robert Benoist and Jean-Pierre Wimille.

I had begun my research by contacting Gervaise Cowell, the SOE Advisor to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, an archivist role, SOE itself having been wrapped up with possibly undue haste at the end of WW2. Frustratingly, the files I obtained were heavily redacted. At the time I thought Cowell was simply being wilfully obstructive, although after his death in 2000 I discovered that he was something of a Smiley figure – he had been Our Man in Moscow in the early sixties. I think secrecy was in his blood.

One day Valerie, who was Cowell’s assistant in the SOE office, called and told me someone else, a Jack Bond, was researching the same resistance circuit, at which my heart sank. (In fact, there were three of us – Joe Saward, whose non-fiction The Grand Prix Saboteurs book on the drivers is highly recommended – was already taking an interest.) Valerie offered me Jack Bond’s name and number. I rang him and he invited me to his office near the British Museum.

Somehow (that word features a lot in any account of Jack’s career), somehow he had managed to persuade a well-known hotel chain to open a film division, with him in charge, and they funded the offices. The company’s first project was to be Early Morning, named after a painting by William Orpen, who was a character in the real-life story of Williams (in reality William Grover-Williams) and his wife Yvonne. It quickly became modified to Early One Morning.

At that meeting Jack and I discussed the story. I had been chatting to Peter Howarth, my editor on Esquire, and had told him about my difficulties in extracting the exact facts from SOE. “Make it up,” he said. “we’ll publish it as fiction.” Which I did, and it appeared in Esquire as The Man with One Name. Jack wanted to do something similar but didn’t have a script. Would I write it?

I had never tackled a sceenplay before, but Jack had, of course – he had a long string of successful projects behind him.

(See https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/24/jack-bond-cult-british-director-pet-shop-boys-collaborator-dies.)

What was he like? At that first encounter, he reminded me of a cross between Terence Stamp, Richard Harris and Ian McShane in Lovejoy (Jack loved a leather jacket). There was a disarming, almost rogue-ish charm and a sophistication about him that made you happy to be in his company. He was also a born storyteller, most of them tales drawn from a life well lived. There was always the feeling that here was a man who had enjoyed a rich and varied life, both creatively and personally, and that yours was somewhat dull in comparison.

An accountant at the hotel company eventually asked Why have we got a film division? Good question. So, the offices and financing disappeared. But we did write a script and its fate became another picaresque story among the many that dotted Jack’s life. It was bought by Granada Film who subsequently went bust – not because of how much they paid us, but due to the poor performance of several of its films. We went into the dreaded turn-around. At one point Jack phoned me and told me he had sold it on to an Irish film company that had never made a film. And, as it turned out, never would.

Frustrated at the lack of progress, I decided, with Jack’s blessing, to combine the short story with some plot points from the script and produce a novel, also called Early One Morning. It was my fourth book, and the first to become a Sunday Times bestseller. I still get calls asking to option it as a movie and I have to explain that, thanks to its chequered history, it comes with some baggage.

Jack carried on making films and I carried on writing books, but we would meet now and again to discuss ways to revive the project and Jack never lost the ability to surprise me. I remember us drinking a coffee on Wardour Street when an elegant 1960s Bentley glided by. “I used to have one of those,” Jack said. “When?” I asked. “When I was a millionaire,” came the reply.

But that’s another story for another time. Goodbye, Jack.

*The picture of Jack was taken by his partner, cinematographer and photographer Mary-Rose Storey