Category: Radio 4
Date: 10.05.2005
Printable version
Ken Clarke MP, devoted jazz fan and aficionado, shares his enthusiasm for some of the big names from the world of jazz in his fourth series of Ken Clarke's Jazz Greats for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4.
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The subject of the first programme is founder of the bebop movement, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
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Ken is joined by, in his opinion, Britain's best jazz trumpeter, Guy Barker, who was taken under the wing of Gillespie as a young boy.
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The two met when the teenager asked his hero to autograph Barker's own hand written transcriptions of Gillespie's solos.
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The following week Richard Palmer shares with Ken his knowledge and admiration of the Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson.
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Palmer, Peterson's biographer and autobiography editor, talks of Peterson's long association and friendship with the impresario Norman Granz and also about the great Oscar Peterson Trios.
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In the third programme Ken is joined by young British saxophonist Tony Kofi. The two share a passion for pianist and composer Thelonious Monk.
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One of the greatly misunderstood figures in jazz history, Monk was nevertheless one of its true pioneers and geniuses.
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The final programme in the series is devoted to someone Clarke admits may have slipped through the net of his bebop infatuated teenage years.
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The name of the violinist Stephane Grappelli became synonymous with Parisian swing in the Thirties when he and guitarist Django Reinhardt established their group, Hot Club of France.
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In the Seventies Grappelli re-established himself on the world scene rekindling that old style.
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One of the guitarists to step into his old partner Reinhardt's shoes was British guitarist John Etheridge.
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Etheridge shares some of his experiences of performing and recording with this most elegant of French violinists.
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Ken Clarke's Jazz Greats: four part series starts on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 on Tuesday 24 May at 1.30pm and is repeated on the following Saturday at 3.30pm.
