Had a nice productive recording session today with vintage swing band The Swinging Magpies. It’s an old-school line up and feels funny recording with no bass player, as we tracked the 'rhythm section' first. Now finally a break in my diary so I’ve booked tickets to go to home to enjoy some of the Edinburgh festival.. Also might have picked up a show to play on each day, that’d be a nice way to subsidise my holiday!

Had a fun gig yesterday with a function band led by Polish singer Agata Maliszewska. The bass player Vincenzo De Fraia was great and really solid to play with. I only started doing function gigs last year and the first few were a lot of work - you get sent a 30-40 tune set list and have to learn the music at short notice then turn up to play with musicians you have never met. It's getting much easier now though as usually there's a lot of overlap with the set lists so they ar

Looking forward to playing with Cygnus Flare at Pizza Express Jazz at the Pheasantry this evening. From 7pm, tickets £20. ps yep I forgot to post yesterday - from now on the blog will be a less than daily, it's been a fun challenge to post every day for a whole month though!

Two gigs today - first up is with the TV themes jazz band at an afternoon gig in Kent. Then I’m really looking forward to playing with Cygnus Flare this evening at The Junction bar in Brixton from 8pm.. All originals - come along!

Looking forward to playing jazz today with a pianist that I met at the Ronnie Scott’s jam session a while back when he was in the house band.. He’s a burning player and has organised some other good musicians to come along too. I’ve got to just be honest, it’s going to be waay out of my league - love his playing though and am flattered to be asked along, I’m really looking forward to it. Minimal setup too - snare, hi hat and ride, time for a roast!

Rehearsed with Cygnus Flare today - we have gigs coming up at The Junction jazz bar in Brixton this Sunday and Pizza Express Jazz at the Pheasantry next Tuesday. It feels like we’re past the first hurdle in that we’ve finally finished writing and arranging two sets worth of original music - the hard part now is trying to memorise and be able to play it all well. We have a couple of tunes that are over 10 minutes long with lots of time signature and feel changes, and we’re all

Gig tonight at a swing dancing event with vintage jazz band Swinging Magpies. At the Hideaway, Archway, from 8pm. From a drumming point of view it's a fun band - I just play snare drum (usually with brushes), cowbell and splash cymbal and there's no bass player (there's a bassoon!). Check out our recent promo video:

Had a good rehearsal this evening with the MO Jazz Orchestra. We had a guest conductor and spent the whole rehearsal working on 3 tunes in a lot of detail. He had some really good ideas for things that I can play to help the band during tricky sections. In general it was just nice to have a conductor for the night - we don’t usually have one.

Starting today with a duo jam with Arman the pianist from Cygnus Flare - we'll work on some of the trickier parts of our set. Then later I'm rehearsing with the Theme Team for a gig this weekend, they are a 10 piece band that plays original jazz arrangements of TV themes. Had a really great time playing timpani on Mozart's Requiem last night - we had a full orchestra, choir and soloists, and the sound in the concert hall was just beautiful, everybody played well and the music

Concert tonight at St Bartholomew’s playing timpani for Mozart’s Requiem with a full choir (really can’t wait, the music is unbelievable!). Today started with a Cygnus Flare rehearsal to get ready for some upcoming gigs.