Martyn Brothers Jazz Band

You may recall my computer received a ‘virus’!  The following information was completed as at 1st August 2012.  Apologies, this page will be update ASAP.

Diane, 2014

Taken from Adrian Cox’s website:  www.myspace.com/adriancoxmusic1

Adrian Cox for the past ten years has been on the road as a professional musician, playing saxophone/clarinet at festivals, clubs and music venues all over Europe. His style is influenced by many jazz greats but he is also at home working in all genres of music. His career started in 1999 at the age of 15 when he joined Richard Bennett’s New Orleans Jazz Band, which saw him tour the jazz clubs and festivals of England.

Then in 2004, Adrian joined the formidable singer, TJ Johnson with whom for the last 5 years has played at major jazz/blues festivals all over the place i.e. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, it goes on.

In 2010, Adrian began taking time out to promote himself as a freelance player, and began putting his own band together (to play now and then) as well as working on certain projects.

10 Years of playing has seen Adrian work with many bands and musicians some of these include, TJ Johnson and his Band, Tony Pitt All Stars, , Richard Bennett, Fallen Heroes, Tony Rico Richardson, Digby Fairweather, Shaney Forbes, Buster Blodvessel and Bad Manners. He has also recorded on the album of Jackson Scott’s band, Mano De Dios and played on Jo Whiley’s Live Lounge on radio 1 with Paloma Faith!

Taken from Julian Webster Greaves website:   www.myspace.com/juliangreaves

Tenor saxophonist/flute and harmonica player Julian has played with everyone from Shakin’ Stevens, Gilbert O Sullivan, Charlie Watts, Chris Jagger, Gerry and The Pacemakers to The Eurythmics and in September 2003 played for The Rolling Stones at the end of their world tour party at Shepherds Bush in London.

He has toured with Mike D’abo and Mike Pender from Manfred Man, also The Searchers, plus Brian Poole from The Tremmello’s.

Julian has played on the QE2 and travelled to Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, Japan, Las Vegas, as well as numerous performances in and around Europe playing his big, smokey distinctive tenor sax sound.  Recently Julian has played at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London supporting Van Morrison on the first leg of his UK tour.

He continues to work with Gilbert O Sullivan regularly touring Japan and Europe and played on the main ‘Pyramid’ and acoustic stages at Glastonbury 2008. He also played with Gilbert at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2009 as part of his autumn tour.

Julian is also a member of Shakin’ Stevens’ band as the horn section with fellow trumpet player Matt Holland (Matt played with Van Morrison’s Band for 13 years). Shaky continues to tour all over the world and UK.  Julian also played with Shaky and the band on ITV’s ‘Dancing On Ice’ programme on Xmas day 2008 from 8pm, closing the whole show with a ‘knock out’ performance of ‘Merry Christmas everyone’, one of Shaky’s four number one hits!

Julian was also on tour with Charlie Watts and Chris Jagger with Boogie Woogie giants Ben Waters and Axel Zwingenberger around the UK.

Here is a newsletter about Dad’s, (Barry Martyn) last evening at Farnborough Jazz Club.

Newsletter about 18th&25th February 2011

Oh! My gosh!  We are still reeling from Friday, 18th February 2011.  We were treated to a wonderful performance by ‘Barry Martyn and The Young Bloods’, what an exciting set up.  We had a huge turnout and understandably so.  The band is so entertaining, extremely professional and hugely talented.  How many ‘traditional’ jazz clubs would have expected the evening to blast off with a fiery rendition of Count Basie’s ‘Jumping’ at the Woodside’, fantastic!  A few open mouths amongst the ‘trad’ buffs, but they were so soon treated to something more to their liking, with a superb solo from Frank Brooker on clarinet of ‘High Society’.  Frank was a guest star, performing top notch clarinet and sax with some mouth watering solos, exciting the whole audience.  As the evening progressed, we were treated to great jazz in many styles, from ‘Swing’ to ‘Dixieland’ and ‘Latin American’, with even a bit of ‘Country’ from Graham Hughes on harmonica.  We cannot speak more highly of ‘The Young Bloods’.  Tom Kincaid’s piano playing is beautiful, clever and mind blowing all in one!  The same goes for trumpeter Alan Beechey (who also played the drums, whenever Barry sang – even though Barry can play and sing at the same time), trombonist Graham Hughes and double bass Ben Martyn (Barry’s son).   Ben sung the number he wrote, ‘My Heart is in New Orleans’, which he dedicated to Paul Bonner.  Ben got me to sing with the band, but I was caught off guard and (of course) couldn’t remember a single word of the song – so embarrassing as I do know them, (sorry audience, I had lost my voice (much to Keith’s delight) a couple of weeks ago with the dreaded lurgie and was a bit croaky) – ‘la la la’ is a great savour, isn’t it!  Barry sung numbers of Doris Day, Hoagie Carmichael and many more.  Someone asked Barry what style of jazz do they play?  He said “We play jazz man, just jazz”!  Their last number was ‘When the Saints go Marching in’, with the front line playing whilst walking around the whole audience and everyone (except possibly three), went home on an extreme high.  Thank you so much Barry, for honouring us by playing at our little club.  What is so upsetting is, as mentioned last week, this is Barry’s last tour here in England, so it was the last time he will be seen/heard at our Farnborough Jazz Club here in Kent.  Keith and I believe our lovely audience gave the band, in return, a wonderful send off with their appreciation and dancing.

If you wish to experience Barry again, you will have to travel to New Orleans.  But wait a minute, we do have something up our sleeves, The Martyn Brothers’ will be with us on 8th April 2011.  This will be Barry’s TWO sons & Co, as Emile is a drummer like his Dad.

So lets see the return of a huge audience (‘cause we did let you go home, trusting you to return!)

Live jazz (or any music) makes such a difference to how you face your next week.

Diane and Keith