Art Themen Organ Trio / Live in Soho
Release Date: 22nd November 2024
CD & Digital Formats / UBU0167
Art Themen at Ronnie Scott’s (House Photo)
Ubuntu Music is delighted to announce the signing of the Art Themen Organ Trio, featuring Art Themen on saxes, Pete Whittaker on organ & piano, and George Double on drums. The album, Live in Soho, was recorded at Pizza Express in London and will be released worldwide on the Ubuntu Music record label from 22nd November 2024.
Described by The Observer newspaper as "one of the tiny handful of undeniably perfect jazz musicians”, Art Themen has been an appealing presence on the British jazz circuit for over 60 years. A previous winner of the tenor sax category in the British Jazz Awards, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and shortlisted for the Jazz Instrumentalist of the year in the recent Parliamentary Jazz Awards, this living legend has famously combined his role as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon with saxophone duties in the bands of Alexis Korner and Stan Tracey as well as recordings with Joe Cocker, Jack Bruce and even Bing Crosby.
George Double, Art Themen, Pete Whittaker (Photographer: Tim Hodges)
Art, Pete and George have been gigging as a unit since 2018. Over the course of a hundred-odd shots together, the sound has become characterised by a feeling of musical mischief, infectious groove and a palpable sense of shared fun. The trio have so far released two studio albums on Hadleigh Jazz Records - Thane and the Villeins (2019) and Dizzy Moods (2022). It was suggested that their third album should capture the spirit of the band in live performance and the opportunity arose at the historic Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho in August 2023. The trio was delighted with the outcome.
Art Themen, George Double, Pete Whittaker (Photographer: Tim Hodges)
The trio describes the music from the album: “’Live in Soho’ reflects a typical set from the trio. Shot through with the sense of capricious fun that has become the band’s trademark, the recording features tunes by jazz masters past and present, including Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Horace Silver, Zoot Sims, Abdullah Ibrahim, Duke Ellington and Sergio Mendez. It is a journey filled with contrast. From the impactful energy of ‘Chili Peppers’, through the bouncy joy of ‘Brahms…I Think’ and ‘Groovy Samba’ to the tenderness of ‘Country’ and ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’, the trio present a curated aural experience, placing the listener in the best seat in the house, as the evening is replayed.”
They comment further on their new relationship with Ubuntu Music: “Art and his bandmates are thrilled and grateful to be collaborating with Ubuntu Music for this new release and look forward to reaching a wider audience as a result of Ubuntu’s great experience in the realm of music production and promotion.”
Martin Hummel, Director of Ubuntu Music, concludes: “It’s both a privilege and an honour to be representing the Art Themen Organ Trio and their upcoming release, ‘Live in Soho’. The live recording captures the energy and excitement of the band, with their repertoire of past and current jazz classics to deliver a broad spectrum of songs. This is a gem, and we can’t wait to release ‘Live in Soho’. We welcome the Art Themen Organ Trio to the Ubuntu Music Family.”
For further information, please contact:
George Double/Artist: george.double@hotmail.co.uk
Martin Hummel/Ubuntu Music (Worldwide): martin@ubuntumanagementgroup.com
ART THEMEN INTERVIEW WITH JAZZ VIEWS
If Art Themen was a painter, the Tate would have an exhibition, and all the art cognoscenti would be queuing round the block at £20 a visit. If Art Themen was a film director, the NFT would have a monograph and a season of his work at the South Bank. But Art is none of these, he is just a great jazz musician whose work has illuminated the last sixty years at the same time as he specialised in orthopaedic medicine, eventually becoming a consultant. He really is someone to celebrate.
Art is a phenomenon. His career has spanned sixty years and the people he has played with are key figures in UK jazz. It all started in Manchester. Art saw Sidney Bechet with André Réwéliotty, Louis Armstrong, Stan Kenton, and Danny Moss with Johnny Dankworth at Sale Locarno. It was when he saw the effect that one smile from the handsome Danny Moss had on one young lady that Art abandoned his clarinet and determined to play the tenor.
One perceptive head teacher altered Art’s Life. “I was in a council school, my father died, and we lived over a fish and chip shop in Salford. The headteacher of the school saw something in me and got me into MGS (Manchester Grammar School). MGS had not just a headmaster but a high master, but they hated jazz.” However, by the time Art left he was playing the school functions. “Out of school there was a guy, Barry Dixon, my first inspiration, he played like Bix Beiderbecke, and he got me into jazz, and into a band called The Saints, that moved between New Orleans and Dixieland.”
Studying Medicine in Cambridge in the sixties, Art realised he was in the middle of a hotbed of jazz innovation and also realised that jazz could be modern. “There was Colin Purbrook, Dick Heckstall Smith, Dave Gelly and, most influentially, Lionel Grigson who eventually started the jazz course at the Guildhall s School of Music. I scraped through the studying, but I was no academic.”
Art eventually moved to a London hospital to continue his studies and his jazz playing in clubs. Heckstall Smith introduced Art to Alexis Korner who had a blues band, a wild passionate, raucous group influenced by Charlie Mingus Jazz anarchy! It was a cult band. Phil Seamen, the doyen of drummers was in the band, it was towards the end of his life. “We played at the Flamingo and some nights you would have Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts crowding around the bandstand trying to get a sit-in! Where did I go wrong?
“Later, I worked with Long John Baldry and drummer Eddie Taylor who was a particular friend of mine. The second singer was Rod Stewart. Also, at that time I was on the fringe of the session world. One of the sessions was playing with Bing Crosby. They wanted to put him in a separate part of the studio because he was a big star, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to be close to the musicians: he really was one of the boys. I understand he wasn’t a particularly nice guy with those who were close to him, but on that occasion he was great. I even played on a hit record: Joe Cocker’s ‘With a Little Help From my Friends’. I was in the backing band for that. I got £15!”
There was the period when Art was with Graham Collier. Graham was a bass player but mainly a composer. “He was sometimes difficult to get along with, but he was a great administrator, even managed to get the Arts Council to finance a big band so Collier could take it over to India.” Collier thought a great deal of Art’s playing and would leave generous solo space in his compositions. “There’s only one thing wrong with a soprano saxophone played on its own and that’s two soprano saxophones played on their own. Graham wrote something like that; it’s still in its cellophane packing and when I die it will still be in its cellophane packing.”
Art played with Stan Tracey for over 20 years. “I got the job courtesy of Jimmy Hastings. I was working with Jimmy in a pick-up big band and he encouraged me to solo and recommended me to Stan. Everything is serendipity! I was privileged to work with Stan, although you never really got to know him. He kept himself to himself. Underneath, you knew that what he did was full of integrity; he was the true real deal. We never knew what we were going to do. I remember one particular gig at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon: Stan winged it all the way through, he just had that ability. I was privileged. I was really fortunate working with the quartet, the sextet, the octet, the big band, working side by side with Tony Coe, Guy Barker, Peter King, Don Weller, very fortunate. I started with Stan just after the problems he had after working at Ronnie’s. He started casting around and set up an avant-garde band called Tentacles, ten people, musical anarchy, lasted about ten gigs! Stan finally folded it because during one set, at the last gig, he banged out ‘God Save the Queen’ throughout and nobody recognised it!”
The relationship with Stan Tracey continues. Clark Tracey, after his father’s death, made Art the Patron of Herts Jazz. “The work I do as Herts Jazz Patron is that I get to play with the young guys, the young guns. It’s a privilege and they tear me to shreds. There is a guy called Sean Payne, just 18, and he has a marvellous technical facility on alto. Sean is absolutely out of sight, brilliant.” Sean won the BBC Young Jazz Musician award. “In 2018’ the winner was tenor player Xhosa Cole. I’ve got a couple of gigs soon with Xhosa.”
“My other work is with the New Directions Quintet, we play occasionally, not enough. We got together for my 80th at The Spice of Life in Soho. It’s an old bebop quintet. There’s only one thing wrong with it and that’s the bandleader, me! The rest are brilliant: Gareth Williams, Steve Fishwick, Winston Clifford, Arnie Somogyi. With them, I just feel like an old fart.”
“I suppose my playing has changed. There’s the old buffer bit, you play slow, you play fewer notes and hopefully there is a lot more meaning in those notes. Something happens, could be maturity. Last night I heard Jerry Bergonzi playing ‘It Might as Well Be Spring’, he’s in his sixties, getting better. Wonderful.
“If you’re no longer cutting the mustard, you have to make sure that somebody tells you, pulls you off the stage like they did in the old Edw ardian music halls with the shepherd’s crook. I’ve got a dozen people ready to tell me the moment I’m not doing it anymore. Terribly important.”
As you talk to Art, he says often that he has been privileged. His audiences have been even more privileged.
--Jack Kenny
