Clark Tracey’s JAZZ CHAMPIONS

Event information

Master drummer-band leader Clark Tracey celebrates the music of his late father, the pianist-composer-band leader Stan Tracey.

Clark Tracey is an internationally recognised jazz drummer, band leader, composer and arranger. With this outstanding quintet. he has revived the famous jazz suites written by his late father, the great pianist & composer Stan Tracey, bringing masterpieces such as “Under Milkwood” successfully to admiring younger audiences.

Simon Allen is a critically acclaimed and award winning tenor saxophonist, composer and educator. He leads his own quartets and quintets and in addition has recorded and performed with Sir Paul McCartney, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Phil Collins, Jamie Cullum, Beverly Knight and many, many more. “Allen…brings a searing urgency… [and] an anthemic soul-jazzy heat” – The Guardian

An exciting and inventive saxophonist, Art Themen has been an appealing presence on the British jazz circuit for over 60 years. His style originally owed much to the influence of Coleman Hawkins, Evan Parker and John Coltrane. A previous winner of the tenor sax category in the British Jazz Awards, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and shortlisted for the Jazz Instrumentalist of the year in the recent Parliamentary Jazz Awards, this living legend has famously combined his role as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon with saxophone duties in the bands of Alexis Korner and Stan Tracey (the ‘Godfather of British Jazz’) among countless others.

David Newton has been voted ‘Best Jazz Pianist' sixteen times by the Jazz audience of the UK. His exeptional jazz "chops" have sometimes been overshadowed by his work as accompanist for singers such as Marion Montgomery, Tina May, Annie Ross, Claire Martin and of course Stacey Kent, with whom he spent the ten years recording and travelling all over the world.

Andrew Cleyndert started out in the bands of Don Weller and Bobby Wellins and has since flourished on the jazz scene in the UK and beyond. He has played and toured with the cream of the UK’s musicians and a string of international soloists, including Bud Shank, George Coleman, Ray Bryant, Lee Konitz, James Moody and Junior Mance (with whom he played for Derby Jazz}. He was also closely associated with Stan Tracey in his many bands over fifteen years until Stan’s death in 2013.