Is Brighton the UK’s best city for jazz? Peter Chrisp, who’s been going to jazz gigs here since the 1970s, gives his Verdict. (Verdict. It’s a jazz club. Oh, never mind) 

Ever feel like the sun is spent, and now his flasks send forth light squibs, no constant rays, the world’s whole sap is sunk; and you are every dead thing, re-begot of absence, darkness, death: things which are not? Jeez Loueeze lighten up buddy, it’s just the usual January bullshit of darkness…Get your dispirited ageing meat envelope along to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH and feel the surge of molten Vril coursing back to put that spring back in your step…”

That’s from bassist Eddie Myers’s ‘beat’ifully written weekly posting promoting the Monday night jazz jam he hosts at the Bee’s Mouth in Hove. Here Eddie always contrasts the misery of the season or the bleak news cycle with the life enhancing pleasures of listening to, and playing live jazz.

The Bee’s Mouth jam is just one of more than thirty regular weekly jazz gigs across our finger-popping city. On a typical Sunday, there are eleven of them. As an experiment, you could try sampling a few minutes of each Sunday gig, starting at the Walrus at 12.45 and ending at the Hand in Hand at closing time. When I posted a list of Brighton gigs online, even the musicians were surprised at how many there were. Saxophonist Arabella Sprot said, “I’ve never seen this density of jazz gigs anywhere else I’ve lived and that includes Bristol, Birmingham and Berlin.”

To make a jazz city, you need venues, musicians and appreciative audiences, and we have all three. A big turning point took place in March 2012, when Andy Lavender turned Drury’s tea and coffee shop in Edward Street into the Verdict, our city’s only purpose-built jazz club. Managed by the drummer Tristan Banks, the club hosts jazz jams on Thursdays and international acts on Fridays and Saturday. In 2024, the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Group gave the Verdict their Jazz Venue of the Year award.

New Generation Jazz, set up in 2015, is an Arts Council funded Brighton organisation whose aims are “to help young artists develop audiences outside the capital, and introduce young people in Brighton and the South-East to jazz and demonstrate what a vital, living tradition it is today.” Partnered with the Verdict, they run the September Brighton Jazz Festival, with sold out shows in Horatio’s Bar on the Palace Pier.

Brighton has always been a great place to hear jazz in pubs. Growing up in Essex, I thought that modern jazz was something that happened in the past, on an old Charlie Parker LP my dad bought by mistake. Soon after I moved here as a student in 1976, I came across Geoff Simkins playing lyrical alto sax in the King and Queen. Geoff is still regularly gigging, and I make it a rule never to miss him if I can help it. 

More than twenty pubs now have regular jazz, and most of them are free. The pubs pay the musicians, to bring in pubgoers. Several are organised by guitarists Jason Henson and Paul Richards, trumpeter Chris Coull, saxophone player Alex Bondonno and bass player Nigel Thomas. You can also hear jazz in churches, such as All Saints and St Andrews’ in Hove, where Chris has an early Friday evening concert. The audiences at these gigs listen attentively and applaud the solos. The jazz community is also a good place to make cross-generational friendships. I love listening to the old timers’ stories of magical nights at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1960s.

As for musicians, we have loads, the most numerous being the bass players, followed by guitarists and keyboard players. There aren’t so many drummers, so Angus Bishop, Milo Fell and Joe Edwards are kept busy. Look out for the female singers too: Sara Oschlag, Sam Carelse, Lucy Pickering, Rachel Myer, Ela Southgate and Imogen Ryall. There’s a shortage of male singers, apart from swinging crooner Dave Williams.

Once a month, on Sundays, big bands play in the back room of the Brunswick, and everybody should listen to the mighty sound of a big band playing in a small room at least once. 

Another thrilling sound to hear in a pub is that of the massive 1964 C3 Hammond organ, played by Bobby Aspey with his band the Lost Organ Unit. Their tunes sound like 1960s classics, yet they’re all Aspey originals. Check Bobby’s feet, always in red socks, bouncing over the bass pedals as he plays.

The quality of Brighton rhythm sections and the enthusiasm of audiences attracts visiting horn players. Saxophonists Alan Barnes and Simon Spillett both regularly make a 100 mile journey to Brighton to play gigs here, and Simon has been known to stay for mini tours. Following them from one pub gig to another, I like to imagine that I’m not in Brighton in the 2020s, but bouncing to bebop along 52nd Street in 1940s New York, and that the Brighton pubs are clubs like the Famous Door and Birdland.

Most locals I know don’t realise that they’re living in a jazz city. But wasn’t that probably true also of most New Yorkers in the 1940s?

https://thejamboreebag.blogspot.com/2024/12/brighton-jazz-listings.html

https://www.verdictjazz.com

https://www.newgenerationjazz.co.uk/about