Preview: London Trumpet Ensemble with Mark Nightingale 9th June Pizza Express Dean Street.

Preview: London Trumpet Ensemble with Mark Nightingale 9th June Pizza Express Dean Street.

Steve Fishwick writes:

This gig will mark the debut of the London Trumpet Ensemble, a co-operative group that we’ve set up to promote jazz and new music played on the trumpet. The aim is to feature special guests from the UK and beyond along with the core group. It’s quite a rare occurrence (in my experience at least) for trumpet players to play together in a small group context. Sure, we often get together in the ranks of a big band, but it’s an altogether different thing to be able to stretch out and bounce off each other in a small combo with a great rhythm section.

Percy Pursglove, Robbie Robson and I will be doing exactly this at the Pizza Express on the 9th of June. Percy and Robbie are two of my favourite trumpet players around today. Percy has a fiery and adventurous approach to the horn whereas Robbie has a more mellow lyricism, but with a contemporary edge.

And then there's trombonist Mark Nightingale. Mark is renowned throughout the music fraternity and beyond as one of the best trombonists in the world today. I first became aware of him in my college days in 1995 when another trombonist, Mike Feltham, played me his album, ‘What I Wanted to Say’, which features no less than Ray Brown on bass. My initial reaction was “are you sure that’s a slide trombone he’s playing?!” I’ve been an admirer ever since. I’ve been lucky enough to play with him many times in big bands and he never fails to play something that makes my jaw hit the floor. Plus he makes it all look so easy. This will be one of the few times I’ve played with him in a small group so I’m really looking forward to this one.

We’ll be playing some of Mark’s compositions specially arranged for this line up along with some of our music and the occasional re-imagined standard. We have a pretty fiery rhythm section too: Michael Janisch on bass, Andrew Bain on drums and Malcolm Edmonstone on piano.

Expect sparks to fly when you let four brass players off the leash like this. But these guys are also musicians of such quality, it's going to be far more than a higher-faster-louder competition. I'm looking forward to it.

Boookings at pizzaexpresslive.co.uk