Jenkins-Of-Ewelme Web Site

Jazz

Start of the Blues?
 Jazz of a wide but more modern style is probably our most favourite form of music. It might have something to do with the fact that within a short time of "becoming an item", Margaret and I became regular members of the Barnet Jazz Club. Here we saw all the popular traditional bands of the day, such as Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk, Lonnie Donegan  etc. It was not so long after this phase, that our jazz tastes matured somewhat, when treating ourselves to concerts at the Royal Festival Hall to see the likes of The Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) and the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond.

Hear Here
 An interest in Hi Fi and electronics prompted the building of amplifiers and loudspeaker systems, where the aim was to produce as much bass as possible, although in those days a lot of it was mains hum! Linked to a tape or record deck, provided the opportunity to copy and purchase the wide range of music we both enjoyed. Although we both appreciate classical music, most of our collection contains a tinge of jazz in one form or another.

Revival
 In recent years, jazz has gone through somewhat of a revival, especially in Oxfordshire, and a lot of pubs in the area, including our own Shepherds Hut, bring in various modern groups to entertain customers. We are also fortunate to have some very good Danish friends, who introduced us to the Silkeborg Riverboat Jazz Festival, and we have been privileged to have been invited to this event for a number of years. It is these same friends who discovered that Bude in Cornwall also run a jazz festival, which also seemed to be an ideal location to hold a sales conference.

Sound Streaming
 The real purpose of this section is to experiment with the ability of a web site to hold downloadable (and thus playable) sound files. The examples here were recorded at various live gigs using a PDA (handheld computer) of the Compaq iPAQ variety. On transferring to a PC, such a file is formatted as a .wav file (the sort used by Windows for playing sounds). For say a 5 minute piece, this can be as large as 10M bytes. However, converting this to MP3 format (used extensively for music files on the Internet) can compress this by as much as 10 times. The quality is not quite as good as the original, but is more than adequate for enjoyable listening - especially with a glass of wine or two!. To play, just click on a link of your choice below. Your media player should open and automatically start playing while the rest of the file "streams" in. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this may take a short while, since each music file uses about 1M byte. With a Broadband connection however, this should only take a few seconds.

Video Streaming
Five years later, the opportunity arises to try a similar experiment with a video file, although the size of download is rather larger. How could I refuse the opportunity to publish a couple of videos taken when playing kazoo with a riverboat jazz band at the Silkeborg Jazz Festival? Although three years apart, the quality of the playing hasn't improved much, and better heard after a couple of glasses of wine!

Jazz Library

Audio

Shepherds Hut Ewelme - July 2003 - Modern Quartet (Not everyone listening!)

Bude Jazz Festival - Hartland Hotel - August 2003 - Traditional Septet

Bude Jazz Festival - Bude Bistro - August 2003 - Modern Quartet

Bude Jazz Festival - August 2003 - Modern Quartet part 1

Bude Jazz Festival - August 2003 - Modern Quartet part 2

Video

Silkeborg Jazz Festival 2008 - Riverboat - Saintly Kazoo (YouTube video)

Silkeborg Jazz Festival 2011 - Riverboat - Blackbird Kazoo Take 1 (YouTube video)

Silkeborg Jazz Festival 2011 - Riverboat - Blackbird Kazoo Take 2 (YouTube video)

© Sea Jay Records