In our customary belated style let us be one of the last people to wish you a Happy New Year! The 3rd of January seems as good a time as any (?) to reflect on the past 12 months, an amazing year for us as a band – things that happened in the first few months of 2011 seem such a long time ago now and maybe thats because so much else has happened as the year went on!
In January we played our first gig of 2011 and our first gig at Ronnie Scott’s in London, a gig that we all really enjoyed and that seemed to go down well too… Then in March we were off to Germany (kindly supported by the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund) to compete in the final of the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award in Burghausen – which we won! This meant that we got a giant novelty cheque (below) and the honour of opening the Burghausen Jazzwoche, performing a full set before Chick Corea & Gary Burton in a concert that was recorded for TV and radio. We all had an amazing time in when we were over in Germany, check out some of the best photos here (or if you’re really keen, here’s the complete gallery from days 1, 2, 3 & 4).
The next major thing on the horizon for us was in June when we played a really special gig at Band on the Wall in Manchester that was recorded and released as an extremely limited edition live DVD in October. We’ve still got a few left – head on over to our shop to get your hands on one! Here’s one of the tracks:
Over the summer we played in Norwich, in a field in Cheshire, and had a great day at Mostly Jazz in Birmingham, and then in August we were invited back to Ronnie Scott’s for their annual celebration of all things British in a double bill with the amazing Kairos 4tet - again this was another brilliant night, with some really nice reviews!
At the beginning of November we were busy recording our debut full length album, which was a hectic few days to say the least… Its all come together nicely though, and will be out in February – more information to follow shortly! Here’s us all at the end of the session at Livingston Studios in London with producer Tony Platt and engineer Simone Filiali – more photos from the weekend in our gallery here and on our tumblr blog here.
Finally, we ended our year at the London Jazz Festival with an amazing gig at Kings Place which was a fantastic way to round off 2011! As for 2012, we’ve already announced some gigs at some lovely venues and as I’ve mentioned above, our album will be released in February – its already shaping up to be an exciting year. Thanks for your support in 2011 and we hope you enjoy what we’ve got lined up for you in 2012!
Posted by on 03/01/2012 at 10:22 in misc and tagged 2011, band on the wall, burghausen, dvd, germany, kings place, london jazz festival, recording, ronnie scott's.
