Tax, Coffee, and all that Jazz...

Much of my past fortnight has been spent in attending CA CPE sessions,  jumping out of my comfort zone into the 'essentials' of accounting knowledge such as Topical Tax tips,coffee and meetings with people about future opportunities, attending assessment centres on all sorts of psychometric tests and presentations, exploring how various organisations work and playing a part to its potential success...

In short, a bit too busy to blog although there's much to give in bite size servings if I had stopped! My brain has been stretched to the limit and so has my body too...coming down with a cold! :(

In spite of all this, I did manage to catch a few performances at the London Jazz Festival this year and dragging a few friends along. Particularly enjoyed the Barbican Freestage on Sat 12th November with Samuel Jon Samuelsson's Big Band, which was followed by the amazing McCoy Tyner Trio - with tenor saxophonist Chris Potter.. and vocalist Jose James...a concert at the Barbican that lasted til 10:30 pm!

My last taste of the Festival was a Sunday afternoon at 606 club near Imperial Wharf , a once-neglected part to the west of Kings Road in Chelsea. Pressed the buzzer and I was led to the basement and over a rather hearty lamb rump and starters to accompany a quintet featuring Barnaby Dickinson (trombone), Mark Fletcher (drums), Graham Harvey(piano), Nigel Hitchcock (alto sax) and Lawrence (bass) - my friend and I explored what it's all about.

Maybe they've never played together, some of the music freshly off the printer in the morning,however, it was most enjoyable, the drums set the scene, and off they went , following a form, and then improvising , and coming back together again towards the end. a most entertaining sunday afternoon!

So how do they get there?

I'd like to quote from LJF's festival's venue newspaper from an article by Edward Randell:

" How do you move beyond learning scales to being able to express yourself emotionally through music? [says Parlato:] "Sometimes its a matter of stepping away from the music for a second and doing a little soul-searching and kind of figuring out who you are and what you want, what your triggers are, how you communicate and how you react."


"Music, is a conversation which is give and take, it's listening to sound and space".


[Adam Wilson agrees:] " To make that conversation occur, one of the first things you've got to do is have confidence. You can't be scared to speak to somebody, you have to be able to say your name, and say who you are and explain what you want to do and what you're all about. And you have to be able to say this in music....


So I tell kids not to have any fears. I even ask them, ' say your name to me- no, I can't hear you. Say it again, much stronger, support it.' And that's the kind of thing that you have to do when you're playing music."

and stronger, I say, not necessarily just louder.  I think about the Topical Tax tips lecture, the Musician who was disallowed his losses by being a teacher after being a performer with a reasonable income in the previous year as well as all those tax evasion cases knocked back due to businesses operating without an intention to profit? Why? In the artistic world, is it easy to be commercial and also communicate well? Definitely! But there are so many fish in the pond...one just needs to work harder.

A thought propped up by a plunger of coffee - one that awakens for the journey ahead in the darker and colder days that is to come.