October gigs: Monmouth and Abergavenny

October saw my second ever tribute gig to the great Shirley Horn.  I'm really struck by this tribute theme - it gives a cohesion to the gig that could otherwise be missing, and is a great way to find out about one's idol.  I'm going to think about doing this more once the album tour is over.

This particular gig was in Monmouth, at The Queen's Head, where regular gigs are every Wednesday.  The venue quite often attracts some great touring bands, and it was a pleasure to play there.  We packed the place out and it would be great to play there again sometime.  I have a growing fondness for South Wales!  So much so that I was back there within a month, this time at The King's Arms in Abergavenny for Black Mountain Jazz.

A jazz club run by local musicians, this venue attracts top-class acts monthly and no wonder - staged in the backroom of a pub, the venue is spacious and comfortable, sporting a midi piano (cross between a mini and a grand) well-stocked bar and complimentary tapas in the interval (for the band!).  The backdrop of the stage is even the old town wall.


For this gig I had booked a mixture of local and London-based musicians, to help ease the funding difficulties that the tour was presenting.  Darren, my drummer, and I drove down on the Sunday afternoon, and met Swansea based musicians Dave Cottle (who runs the superb Swansea Jazzland) and Alun Vaughan, one of the busiest bassists in the region.  The boys coped marvelously with my arrangements which led to an incredibly enjoyable gig for me.  Read the review here:
http://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/sarah-ellen-hughes-quartet-at-black-mountain-jazz-kings-arms-abergavenny-30/
Hopefully we'll be back in 2012 for a one-off festival so watch this space.

Crossing the Severn Bridge.

The band perform... with the old town wall in the background
(here adorned with skeletons for Halloween!)