An interval wasn't planned for last night's Tuxedomoon gig at the Purcell Room. But we had one before the event, when bassist Peter Principle's amp refused to work before the opening number, and Serious director David Jones politely ushered us back into the foyer for an extra drink.
And so I bumped into a few people, one of whom (a friend of a friend) said with a smile that he was booking tickets for all the festival events that weren't actually jazz. That's potentially a lot of gigs, including Joyce and Orchestra Baobab at the Jazz Cafe, Jon Hassell, Don Letts, Sonia Slany, Raul Midón and tonight and tomorrow's gigs by Barry Adamson.
Adamson, formerly a rock bass player (Magazine, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) is the Southbank Centre's artist in residence, and he's an intriguing character, jazzy, film noirish and keen on ambitious, jazz-flecked projects without actually being a "jazz musician". He's championing Matana Roberts, a serious jazz musician (supporting him tonight), by releasing her Chicago Project album on his Central Control label.
For intriguing and original artists such as Adamson, Tuxedomoon (jazzy post-punk), Hassell (ambient-world), Matthew Herbert (electro-dance) and so on, you get the feeling that jazz is a vast, fascinating resource from which to draw - but to keep at arm's length. Nothing wrong with that, but it's different to the jazz played by John Dankworth or Charlie Haden or, say, Tony Kofi or Roger Beaujolais - artists who have made a commitment to jazz as an idiom. Joe Jackson once wrote that "being a jazz musician was a serious business, like entering a priesthood. A beautiful thing, but not my thing."
I got a brief reminder of this when I dropped into the regular Monday jam session at the Bar Music Hall in Shoreditch, and chatted to a few players. You can sometimes hear superb vibes player Beaujolais on these regular Monday jam sessions, but most of his work is outside London, where he can command decent fees.
The metropolitan scene is full of committed jazz musicians - whether experienced, up-and-coming or undergraduates - and they're all competing for badly paid gigs! Which means that London fans are spoilt for choice.
