Sandy Brown Jazz

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Jazz As Art

Lenore Raphael, Wayne Wilkinson and Chris Hodgkins

Alone Together

from the album at Pizza Express Live

When you listen to music, you sometimes conjure images in your mind. Our Jazz As Art series invites you to listen to a piece of jazz and as it plays, scroll down the page and see which of the pieces of art I have chosen comes closest to the pictures in your mind. Hopefully, this will introduce you to recordings and art works you might not have spent time with before.

In November 2016, American pianist Lenore Raphael, her regular guitarist Wayne Wilkinson and UK trumpeter Chris Hodgkins played a gig at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Dean Street, Soho. The club's sound engineer, Luc Saint-Martin, recorded the session and an album was subsequently released on the Bell label.

The album contains 12 Standards, from September In The Rain and Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams to Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia On My Mind and W.C. Handy's Careless Love. One track, PE Blues is by Lenore, Wayne and Chris. Like the live performance, the recording is a mix of solos, duets and the trio playing together. For this 'Jazz As Art' item, Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's Alone Together, Chris Hodkins takes a break and hands the stage to the pianist and the guitarist.

The album's liner notes by Joseph Price point out that the album began life as a duo recording but that the addition of Lenore's regular guitarist, Wayne Wilkinson, 'brings an extra percussive edge to the ensemble swing with some Freddy Green-style chording ..... The mood of the album reflects the chamber jazz approach that Chris Hodgkins is so fond of .... This is a good natured album with a classy song selection'

The album was released on 11th November 2017 - click here for details and to listen to some of the tracks.

So - listen to Alone Together, and take time looking at the paintings I have selected - (I think this only really works if you spend time with each painting) - and see which work for you.