Live Music – Bristol European Jazz Ensemble – Saturday 8th June

BEJE – Doors open 7.30 pm – Concert from 8 pm

Tickets: £12 on the door, £10 on line, £7 cons. (students/unwaged/income support)

This is BEJE’s 2^nd tour of the year, following an ACE-funded trio UK tour with South Koreans Yunmi Kang and Sangyeon Park. An album was made, BEJE’s third, and the search is on for a label and a European tour outlet following BEJE’s representation at Jazz Ahead in Germany in April.  David Mowat spent part of April in the West Bank, from which he created one of this tour’s performance pieces.

A highlight will be Len Aruliah’s epic ‘Jaffna Blues’, an exploration in words and a jazz approach to South Indian melody of Len’s multiple identities. Other influences in the tour, besides Miles and Coltrane are Brexit, Europe and Extinction Rebellion.

The Band:

Len Aruliah, altoist and composer from Canada and UK with Sri Lankan Tamil roots, who studied closely with Kenny Wheeler, Paolo Adamo drummer from Puglia South Italy who’s probably Bristol’s favourite jazz drummer, Federico Leonori from Rome Italy, an astonishingly diverse player who often works in Europe, Anders Olinder with Swedish and Syrian parentage, a soulful keyboardist in the Herbie Hancock-mode, world travelled. On Saturday Anders is replaced by Spanish classical-trained pianist Ana Gomez prominent in the Bristol Latin scene and BEJE is joined by the warm-toned French tenor of Julien Alenda.  Composer and band leader David Mowat on trumpet and flugel horn has Swiss and British parentage, an activist, community worker and performer in one.

BEJE always entertain, and this evening should be no exception!