04/04/2012 Dick Armstrong

Providing a link to the Scarborough Literature Festival is now a well established event for Scarborough Jazz, and this year involved contributions from the local Poetry Workshop.
The poets seemed a straightforward, good natured group, with not one languid consumptive among them, or any eccentric clothing: I'd secretly hoped for long strings of beads tangled in crocheted shawls - at least among the men.
We were treated to a well chosen set of poems, many of them jazz related. Felix Hodcroft read one about Thelonious Monk. Jamie McGary read Philip Larkin's For Sidney Bechet and Jo Reed Turner recited her own poem about hearing Joe Harriott at Ronnie Scotts. This was enlivened by Matt Anderson's tenor sax adding colour to her words.
Material of a wider nature emerged. Stewart Larner read from Under Milk Wood with Mike Gordon improvising throughout in a sensitive manner. Rosie Larner read Marry The Man from Sitwell's Facade, going so far as to attempt the voice of Dame Edith.
Musically the evening began with two numbers from the Mike Gordon Trio. These ate into the time available for readings and excluded the two guest musicians booked for the gig. However the first number by the full band, Blue Monk, was excellent, with Matt Anderson's persuasive and assured sax and Chris Hodgkin's muted trumpet in wonderfully bluesy mode. Now fully warmed up, the band stopped while two poems were read. In fact, we didn't get two consecutive musical numbers, despite several times hearing two or even three consecutive poems. Was it a case of the poetry interrupting the jazz or the other way round? The jazz we did get was very good, with a feature for each front liner. Chris Hodgkins took the seldom played Black Butterfly and reminded us of what a lovely tune it is, while Matt chose It Could Happen To You which show-cased his beautiful sound.
It proved an interesting evening with something for everyone. There was an 'open' section where audience members could read, Patrick Henry and Rob Tyson took advantage of this. There were notices asking for quiet during the readings. Perhaps a crowd of school children had been expected. They couldn't apply to the audience of adults who had paid to listen, surely?
This event may well grow year upon year, and we look forward to the next link with the Literature Festival. 4th April 2012 by Dick Armstrong

06/04/2011 Dick Armstrong

Jazz and Dr. Johnson This event was part of the Scarborough Literature Festival and proved an interesting link between jazz and literature.
The evening consisted of movements from a jazz suite interspersed with readings by the actress Susan Sheridan, who had tailored various anecdotes and quotes from James Boswell's journal that chronicled Johnson's life.
Susan Sheridan read her parts in a conversational manner, employing a slight Scots accent for James Boswell and giving a slightly booming quality for Johnson's ponderous tones. If her voice sounded familiar, this may be from hearing her on Radio Four, or on several audio books. She has also voiced cartoon characters on TV and played a character in the Walt Disney film The Black Cauldron.
The jazz was ably played by The Chris Hodgkins Quartet. Chris had co-written the suite with Eddie Harvey with the exception of two movements, one by accomplished guitarist Max Brittain, the other by saxophonist Diane McLoughlin.
Without piano or drums, the music had an 'open', fleet and lively quality, revealing the double bass to be the pivotal driver of the group. Alison Rayner's bass playing was strong and interesting throughout.
Despite the eighteenth century source of the readings, the music was very much of the moment. We heard a bluesy number on which Chris Hodgkins used a plunger mute to great effect, several tunes were given a lithe, bouncy tempo and the final surprise was a calypso.
Whether there was enough jazz for the jazz fans, or enough Dr. Johnson for his fans, the audience seemed very pleased either way.

22/01/2011 Jazzlives

His music answers questions: how to make art new without abandoning the tradition; how to have one’s own voice while honouring your ancestors and colleagues.
You’ll hear that his music is, on one hand, rooted in a Mainstream tradition: I hear Braff, Lyttelton, Buck Clayton, echoes of Horace Silver and Blue Note recordings of the Sixties, of Henry Mancini and occasionally Strayhorn . . . in a streamlined instrumentation (a trio of trumpet, guitar, and bass on two CDs, enlarged into a quartet on the third by the addition of tenor sax). Chris himself is a singular player; his tone ranging from the silken to the edgy, his lines winding and floating over the ringing lines of Brittain’s guitar, the deep pulse of Rayner’s string bass, and on BOSWELL’S LONDON JOURNAL they all get along nicely with the lemony alto saxophone of McLoughlin. By the way, Chris loves the assortment of sounds and timbres that mutes give to his horn (as well as playing open) so the three discs never sounded like more of the same.
I get a bit nervous when confronted with CDs that are all “original” compositions — whisper this: many musicians, stalwart and true, do their best composing on the bandstand, not on manuscript paper (but don’t say it too loudly) so that I was delighted to see some Kern and McHugh, Lyttelton, an Ellington blues, YOU’RE A LUCKY GUY and IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN. Moving a little beyond the “songbook” tradition, I noted that Chris delights in a wide variety of composers and songs: Neil Sedaka’s BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO, lines by Conte Candoli, Sahib Shihab, Thad Jones, Harry Edison. And then there are the originals – varied and lively, in many different moods and tempos. (How could you do anything but admire a man who titles a song SWINGING AT THE COPPER BEECH? And if you don’t get the in-joke, I’ll explain.)
BOSWELL’S LONDON JOURNAL is a real pleasure — and I am not speaking as a still-active professor of English, but as a jazz listener. I admire Chris’s awareness of his emotional and spiritual roots in the literary / cultural past, and his joyful audacity. The first track on the CD, THE MACHINE, describes a stagecoach ride taken by Boswell. Chris’s original lines fall somewhere in between the twelve-bar blues and OLE MISS, and the sound of the band perplexed me — light, airy, yet serious — until I recalled its analogue: Buck Clayton’s Big Four for HRS in 1946: trumpet, clarinet, electric guitar, and bass (Scoville Brown, Tiny Grimes, and Sid Weiss, if I recall correctly). What follows is not exactly program music: had I lost the liner notes explaining what each composition referred to, I would have still enjoyed the music — but knowing the artistic structure underneath made this a much-more-than-usually pleasing musical travelogue, veering here and there from updated Thirties rhythm ballads to hints of Horace Silver and Hank Mobley as well as very hip film soundtracks and Sixties pop of the highest order (AUCHINLECK). I don’t know if I would have guessed the subtext of the winding, pensive REPENT IN LEISURE (referring to Boswell’s having caught gonorrhoea), but the historical / musical connection works for me. It is great fun to listen to the music on this disc — full of feeling, subtlety, and charm — whether reading the notes at the same time or as an after-commentary.
Chris Hodgkins is a fine trumpet player, small-group leader, and composer; he has good taste in his musical friends and in the music he chooses to play. As a professor of mine used to say over thirty years ago, “I commend him to you.”

06/10/2010 Peter Vacher

Dr Johnson’s House sits quietly behind the bustle of Fleet Street like a haven of calm, just the place for the live premier of Chris Hodgkins Quartet’s set of themes, co-written with Eddie Harvey, linked to events in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
Anchored by Alison Rayner’s purposeful bass lines, with guitarist Max Brittain and the saxophonist Diane McLoughlin alongside trumpeter Hodgkins, this was chamber jazz, tuneful and clever, with light-touch narration by actress Susan Sheridan. Performing on high in the garret, alongside mementoes from the likes of David Garrick and Boswell himself, the audience close at hand, the quartet was jaunty and solemn by turn, each player interlocking craftily, with McLoughlin holding the reins while Hodgkins let rip. Tailor made for the literary festival circuit, this project deserves to do well.

06/10/2010 James Hogg

On the premier of Jazz and Dr Johnson at Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, London: A beautifully conceived suite, beautifully executed and so marvellous to hear it.

04/10/2009 Alison Kerr

Chris Hodgkins and Eddie Harvey his co-composer and arranger pulls one off in style….enjoyable, witty and swinging album….and some terrific ensemble playing from the mellow horn of Hodgkins plus Diane McLoughlin - Alison Kerr,

05/12/2008 Jack Masserik

...talented trumpeter, Chris Hodgkins, who plays in the unfashionable classic style of Ruby Braff and the great Louis Armstrong... this is his best album yet... a tuneful tribute to Dr Johnson's biographer, craftily arranged and gracefully playedJack Massarik on Boswell’s London Journal, Evening Standard Jazz CD of the Week