Play It Cool: The origins of Jazz at the Bristol Fringe

Clifton Village: think tourists, think retired gentility, think foodies, and think jazz. Why so?  Because at the back of a small Victorian pub along Princess Victoria Street lies the modern jazz club Fringe Jazz.  Run and promoted by the indefatigable Jon Taylor, and well known to local jazz aficionados, it meets every Wednesday, 8 until 11pm. That’s ‘jazz time’, give or take fifteen or twenty minutes.

Walk through the crowds clustered around the bar, head for the back, pay an admission fee at the door, and enter a smallish, dark room. Standing on the raised stage tonight is a quartet; drums, bass, sax, piano or keyboard.  It’s early and the musicians are tuning up and practising. The room ostensibly seats up to forty but like most things to do with jazz, that’s flexible. I’ve seen people lined up against the walls, other times the place half empty. It depends on who’s playing, whether they’re local and popular, or famous and nationally known, but the standard is invariably high.

Jon Taylor, the promoter of Fringe Jazz and also the proprietor of Treblerock, a Clifton shop for all things guitar, tells me, “We have to thank Sylvia Dagallier, the landlady of The Bristol Fringe who had the vision to create a dedicated music performance space in the backroom of what used to be the old Greyhound Public House.  It’s small but with a uniquely intimate atmosphere and superb acoustics. It gives you the chance to be up close and personal with the musicians. You can watch every note being played and hear and experience every subtle nuance of the performance.”

Art Themen invites international saxophonist Iain Ballamy and young rising talent Dan Newberry to join him on stage at Fringe Jazz

But how did this now promoter and guitar shop owner venture into jazz? He’s loved the genre since his youth, and his long involvement with jazz musicians runs parallel with the historical development of British jazz over the past fifty years.  It’s hardly an exaggeration to say his knowledge is encyclopaedic.

Growing up in Manchester in the seventies, he notes three impressionable albums; John McLaughlin’s Extrapolation (1969), Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew (1970) and Soft Machine Third ( 1970). Of course, there are more, and Jon knows them all. He knows how they crossed genre boundaries between blues, rock and pop. “The music then was truly crossover. It incorporated different genres with influences from blues, rock, folk and pop.  Now music tends to be one thing or another.”

But why has it changed? “After the early ’70s the various genres became compartmentalised at the convenience of the record companies. There was big money involved and little space for risk taking and innovation.” He continues, “What’s really encouraging is today, thanks to technological advances and the rise of independent and self-published recordings, the influence of the major labels has been reduced and this has been really good for jazz. There’s been an explosion of new music and a new interest in jazz.”

After working in advertising in London, Jon moved to Bristol in 1981 to work on the launch of Bristol’s first commercial radio station, Radio West. By happenchance, he ended up presenting their weekly jazz programme, where he showcased the talents of Andy Sheppard, Paul Dunmall, Bob Helson, Mark Langford, and some internationally known, like Keith Tippett and Larry Stabbins. But Jon was limited in how he could support their talents. “The problem was there were few places for them to play, so I used the jazz programme on Radio West as a platform to begin promoting jazz gigs. We called it Gorge Jazz and it was held originally at The Avon Gorge Hotel, then the Thekla, followed by The Moon Club, later called Lakota. The gigs were really successful and ran to 1987.”

Andrew Bain Quartet playing at Fringe Jazz

Meanwhile, jazz began to spread across the city, with Ian Storrer promoting modern jazz at The Albert in Bedminster which ran from 1984 to 2005, then The Hen and Chicken, and more recently a series of gigs at The old Vic. Andy Hague, jazz trumpeter and educator, from 1989 had also set up The Bebop Club in The Bear in Hotwells, and it’s still successfully running today.

It’s a phenomenon that still surprises and excites Jon today. “The pool of talented jazz musicians now living in or near Bristol is phenomenal.” He mentions James Morton, Ben Waghorn, Jim Blomfeild, Nick Dover, Mark Whitlam, Denny Ilett, Ian Matthews, John Pearce, and Nick Malcolm to name but a few. But what is it about jazz that gets Bristol ticking?

It’s been said, ‘Jazz, you either get it or you don’t.’ Whether that’s true or not, jazz is alive and well in Bristol. Jazz is the whole package. It’s more than the music. It’s a lifestyle, it’s anarchic, it’s informal, it’s inclusive, it’s sophisticated and it’s technically difficult. It requires the musician to take risks, to be musically adventurous and to improvise without knowing where it’s going. It takes people like Jon Taylor who live and breathe its artistry to support, promote and shout about it from the rooftops.

It reminds me of a quote from Thelonius Monk who said, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. For Jon, it jogs something the famous drummer Jeff Williams (ex Stan Getz, Joe Lovano) said when he played at the Fringe.  “Monk didn’t write his music to be played in Carnegie Hall, he wrote it to be played in dark little cellar bars and back rooms like this.”

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