South Warwickshire Jazz Festival

by AndrewG, 10 Jul 2016 The South Warwickshire Jazz Festival on Sunday 3rd July was a real treat. Held at Leamington Rugby Club, home to Leamington Jazz Club (www.leam-jazz.com) it was a joint venture with Kenilworth Jazz Club (www.kenilworthjazzclub.co.uk). Stewart Duthie (Leamington) and Dave Logan (Kenilworth) laid on some excellent Jazz covering a range of genres.

The afternoon kicked off with a great set of Funk, Blues and Fusion from a band led by organiser and bass player Stewart Duthie.

This was followed by the first of the afternoon's young talent in the Calvin Travers Trio www.calvintravers.co.uk Leeds-based guitarist Calvin is just that: young and talented. Playing his own compositions, Calvin demonstrated his guitar playing and compositional ability with some beautiful and thoughtful pieces.

Then to the classics as Roy Forbes delivered top quality versions of some Great American Song Book standards with some great sax from Ian Hill.

The second of the ‘young talent' outfits was bassist Sam Quintana's Wandering Monster www.samquintana.co.uk They were neither monstrous nor wandering; but instead produced some very accessible modern jazz which went down very well with the audience. Sam led the band – keys, bass, drums, and sax – in his own compositions with some serious musicianship demonstrated by the members of the band.

The evening finished back in jazz standards with vocalist Sheila Waterfield giving her expected high quality performance of well-loved numbers which again featured Ian Hill on saxes.

Stewart Duthie and Dave Logan certainly gathered together an excellent programme of jazz for this festival which they will both I am sure carry forward in the coming months in the programmes in Leamington and Kenilworth Jazz clubs.