Spike's Place at The Jazz Centre UK: Alan Barnes and Philip Degreg

Alan Barnes is a mainstreamer, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist who’s at home with the jazz repertoire of 30s and 40s swing, and the subsequent “modern” jazz style of bebop. He’s also very much at home in the British jazz environment that preceded the post-70s shift to arts centres, recital halls and cultural funding, with their accompanying new agenda of world jazz and genre-blending. Barnes is a legend in that British jazz community . . . spends his life criss-crossing the country, playing provincial jazz clubs and local pubs, endlessly reinventing the song-based lyricism and swing of Duke Ellington’s or Charlie Parker’s music. He’s one of the UK’s key figures keeping the non-metropolitan jazz scene alive, and in the work he does with regional youth bands, he’s a continuing inspiration to the next generation too.

Admission £10. Students £5.