Martin Speake - alto saxophone
John Parricelli - electric and acoustic guitars
Mick Hutton - double bass
Tom Skinner - drums
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett is a pianist and composer and is one of my main inspirations in music. His vast output includes early trio recordings in the 1960's with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, the American Quartet with Dewey Redman and the European band with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen in the 1970's, solo improvised concerts, the Standards Trio, performances of classical repertoire and also his own classical compositions. He is a supreme melodic composer and improviser.
Waiting For You
This track is for my partner Sara. We were boyfriend and girlfriend at school for a year when we were twelve years old. Then I left school at sixteen and we didn't see each other until more than twenty years later. We hit it off again and are still together six years later - a classic romantic story.
The Inner Game
This is influenced by the book, The Inner Game of Music, the point of which is to reduce mental interference that inhibits the full expression of human potential. Human beings basically get in their own way. I speak from experience.
Hullabaloo
I just like the word and thought it would be a good title. As the piece is freely improvised after the melody and has the potential for an uproar, maybe the title could be programmatic.
The Poet (For Bill Evans)
Bill Evans is another of the other great pianists in jazz. I stole the first four chords from his tune 3/4 Skidoo.
JT's Symmetrical Scale
I don't seem to dedicate any tunes to saxophone players. This is for pianist/composer John Taylor who likes using the intervals in this scale (along with Messiaen).
The Bellringer
My partner's son Chris became a bellringer at the local church at the age of twelve. I think he realised the potential of earning good money by just ringing the bells at the end of a wedding. It seems that jazz and bellringing are not compatible. Whenever I play this tune I ask the audience if anyone has ever been bellringing. I have yet to find someone who likes both (or admits it).
Arco Iris
This means rainbow in Spanish. It is the name of an apartment block in Los Boliches where we stayed on holiday a few times.
Pumpkin
After years of a bad diet I started to find out the health benefits of foods I had never even heard of, such as pumpkin seeds. Patrick Holford's Optimum Nutrition Bible changed my life, just as hearing Ornette Coleman’s playing had twenty years previously.
