Photograph by Lesley Aggar
When Jazzwise magazine asked a number of people to predict who to look out for in 2008, Alex Webb from the Barbican picked Sue Richardson for her big-toned, melodic trumpet playing.
Sue is one of a few female singer/trumpet/flugel horn players worldwide. As a child, she wanted to learn the clarinet - 'all the cool girls at school played clarinet' - but it was her mother, knowing that the school big band was particularly good and would need trumpet players, who persuaded Sue to take up the trumpet.
She grew to love big band music at school and so 'anything that swings always grabs my attention'. From a singer's point of view, Sue thinks Ella Fitzgerald is 'sublime', and her trumpet playing is highly infuenced by Chet Baker and Clifford Brown. '(Clifford Brown) can make something so complicated sound so easy.' Others that she admires include Miles Davis, Blue Mitchell, Sarah Vaughan and Carole King. 'The musicians I enjoy today are the ones who really communicate with their audience and really put themselves into a performance. I hate going to a gig and feeling that people aren't really trying, however great they are.'
Since leaving school Sue has toured the world. She sang at The Last Night Of The Proms some years ago and on a rap CD for a top South Korean Night Club, and you can even hear her recorded version of 'The Girl From Ipanema' being played in Rio in the famous bar where the song was written. She went to New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina had devastated the town and was there for the first Mardi Gras after the traumatic event. For her it was not only a pilgrimage, but one the great highlights of her career. She looks back on playing 'Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans' at a jam session on Frenchman Street with Uncle Lionel and Glen Andrews from the Treme Brass Band as a particularly special experience.
Photograph by Lynn Hilton
Sue has been playing in many UK venues in recent years including the Purcell Room, 606 Jazz Club, Birmingham Jazz Festival, Wakefield Jazz, Medway Jazz and The Stables, Wavendon. In 2002 she was chosen as a finalist at the Marion Montgomery Jazz Diva Awards.
In November 2007, Sue launched her new CD 'Emergence' (Splash Point Records) at the 606 Jazz Club and a few days later, she and her band opened the London Jazz Festival at the Royal Albert Hall. By December 2007, the CD was reviewed on Radio 3's Jazz Line Up and enough people wrote in to Jazz Record Requests for it to be played there as well.
Sue's travels through Rio De Janeiro, New Orleans and Havana provided the inspiration for the tunes 'I.O.U.', 'Spotted Cat' and 'I Just Can't Help Myself' on the new album, although the title track for 'Emergence' was written some years ago. The ballad 'Eclipse' was written when her new custom-made trumpets arrived from Eclipse, a company in Bedfordshire where she grew up. 'I just love the mellow sounds that the horns make and yet they spit out fast and furious notes too.' The track 'Spare Ribs' was dedicated to her father after he had fallen from a ladder and was lying in bed with six broken ribs!
Sue's band includes Andy Drury (guitar), Neal Richardson (piano), Jeremy Brown (bass), Matt Skelton (drums) and Sue (Eclipse trumpet), and some of the lyrics to her songs are written by Matt Henkes.
You can listen to snatches of Sue's playing and find out more about her by clicking on www.myspace.com/suerichardson, or www.SueRichardson.biz.
Sue took a break over the summer as she and Neal were expecting a baby, but since Oscar arrived in June - no doubt already in fine voice himself - Sue will be back playing in August 2008 (see the Myspace site for details) with bookings coming in for jazz festivals and a tour of Europe in the Spring of 2009.
© Sue Richardson / Ian Maund 2008
