MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

IT WAS the summer of 1973. The Victoria and Albert Museum in plush South Kensington was showing Val Wilmer’s powerfully evocative exhibition of jazz and blues photographs, Jazz Seen: The Face of Black Music.
There too for a rare and final London recital was the veteran virtuoso New Orleans clarinettist Albert Nicholas, who was to die that year. In his younger days he had been tutored by the master Crescent City clarinet genius Lorenzo Tio, and had played in the bands of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong.

CHRIS SEARLE encourages you to go hear a landmark performance, and introduces some of the musicians

CHRIS SEARLE hears the ordeal of the Palestinian people in the improvised musicianship of a UK jazz trio

Reviews of the Neil Charles Quartet, the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, and the Olie Brice Quartet

CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Chris Laurence, bassist and bandmate of saxophonist TONY COE