October 3, 2025 • 39 mins
This week Geoff is in Suffolk to catch up with the fabulous jazz pianist, singer, composer and author Chris Ingham.
Sitting at Chris’s piano in Suffolk, we trace how a kid who refused lessons became a singer-pianist, bandleader and repertoire obsessive who builds shows people actually want to hear. Chris takes us from The Beatles and Sinatra to Hoagy Carmichael and Dudley Moore, revealing why “themes” hook audiences, why standards are the best teachers, and how self-discipline sticks only when it's born from love rather than orders.
We get granular on practice that works in real life. Chris breaks down his tiers of using a playalong app: fast, fluent warm-ups on familiar tunes; awkward-key transpositions to stretch the hands and the ear, and ultra-slow when a tune like ‘Falling Grace’ has to be learned from scratch.
Then he opens up Bill Evans' ‘Very Early’ with a clear map: track tonal centres, hear the cadences, respect the sudden "brick wall" modulation, and let thirds and sevenths light the way. Comping becomes a story, not filler. His improvisation on this 1960’s standard (accompanied by the Quartet jazz play along app) provides a wonderful demonstration.
Between craft insights come the human beats that shape taste. Dave Frishberg's ‘Songbook’ shifted his compass. Sondheim still makes him tear up. He's honest about his reading abilities as a past weakness, the kind of nerves that only show up when preparation hasn't, and the chord colours he loves—sus 13 with the added third and those rich C minor 11/13 sonorities that hang in the air.
If you care about standards, tonal centres, and making audiences lean forward, this conversation brings both method and heart.
Enjoyed the conversation? Follow, share with a friend who loves jazz standards, and leave a quick review. Thank you.
Presenter: Geoff Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Geoff (00:00):
Hello, podcats.
Geoff Gascoyne here.
Hope you're well.
Today I'm out in the country,I'm in Suffolk, visiting Chris
Ingham, who is a terrific pianoplayer, singer, band leader,
performer music journalist andwriter, a very nice bloke.
And we're going to have a chatabout practicing, about
(00:20):
standards, about whatever comesup.
I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
Here we go.
Hello, Chris.
Chris (00:52):
Hello, Geoff.
Geoff (00:53):
Thank you for having me in your lovely home today.
Chris (00:55):
Well, thank you for being here.
Geoff (00:56):
So should we start by chatting a bit about what turned
you onto jazz in the firstplace?
Chris (01:00):
I think it was to do with my uncle's record collection.
All the Beatles albums, and hehad Oscar Peterson.
But he also had a lot ofSinatra and Mel Torme.
I mean, even earlier than that,we had a record by Paul
Robeson.
He did do a version of St.
Louis Blues.
And even as a child, and Iwouldn't have been older than
maybe seven or eight orsomething, when I heard these
(01:22):
kind of notes.
That kind of that sound there Ididn't know what it was, but I
just knew I just knew it had anatmosphere and it made me feel
something.
And of course, it's just theblues.
It's the sound of the bluenotes.
Geoff (01:43):
So did you have classical piano lessons or traditional
piano lessons?
Chris (01:47):
No, I was uh uh there was a pivotal moment in my
childhood uh when we just movedfrom Newcastle to uh a village
in Suffolk, and I was uh 10going on eleven, and my brother
was seven going on eight.
And my mother, I rememberdistinctly, my mother came into
(02:07):
the dining room and she said,There's a piano teacher in the
village who would like pianolessons.
And my brother saidimmediately, me, and I said
immediately, no, not me, becauseI'd already had a few violin
lessons and I hated them.
I'd already had a kind of uhinstitutional uh introduction to
(02:32):
uh uh the formal way of makingmusic, and I was already on at
the piano at age 10, 11.
I was still I was picking outthings.
Hey, Jude, don't be afraid.
You know, I was picking thatstuff out myself, right?
And I didn't want no teachergetting in the way saying, stop
(02:53):
messing around.
So I just said no.
Geoff (02:55):
So you had a problem with discipline, did you?
Chris (02:57):
I'm afraid so.
It's it's uh if there's anysense of uh authority telling me
what I should be doing, I'mlikely to run in the opposite
direction.
Geoff (03:06):
Yeah.
Chris (03:06):
Which has been it's part of, it's part of my personality,
it's part of the the way I'veI've dealt with life, probably
generally, and it has itsadvantages, but it has its
disadvantages.
I could have certainly, I lookback now, I certainly could have
done with a bit more groundingin in uh in just fundaments, you
(03:26):
know.
The discipline came later, andit was it was self-discipline,
it had to come from within me.
Geoff (03:32):
So you've clearly got lots of self-discipline because
you've got so many projects andthings that you do, which we'll
talk about in a minute, but allthese different projects that
you organized and stuff takes anawful lot of discipline, you
know.
Chris (03:44):
Yeah, but but it all came from um an innate sense of
enthusiasm and passion that camefrom me.
It was not imposed upon me.
And that is that, as far as I'mconcerned, makes all the
difference.
Geoff (03:56):
So when somebody discovers something for
themselves, it has more value,doesn't it?
And when it's imposed on them.
Chris (04:01):
Well, it's more energy, as far as I'm concerned.
Don't get me wrong, you know, II am now a teacher, and lo and
behold, I'm inclined to tellpeople what's good for them, you
know, while at the same timeunderstanding.
You're just gonna have to learnthat tune.
Now, if anybody told me, Iwould not have learned it thing.
Geoff (04:18):
You have to make them feel like they discovered it for
themselves.
Chris (04:21):
Almost, yeah, uh, or find another way in, or just do by
example.
You know, if you want to beable to play with a bit more
freedom and a little moreauthority and feel like you're a
bit more intimately connectedwith the music, I strongly
suggest you learn it.
Geoff (04:35):
So, can we go back to where did the writing come and
how did that tie in with yourmusic?
Chris (04:40):
Uh no, I was always an uh interloper in the music
journalism world.
I was a songwriter with afellow called Jim Irvin, who
used to be the lead singer inFurniture, uh, a band in the 80s
who had a uh a minor hit with atune called Brilliant Mind,
which just still pops up onRadio 2 every now and again.
(05:01):
And Furniture were breaking up,and he was looking for a um he
was looking for a collaborator,and we wrote a uh we wrote an
album which got long listed forthe first Mercury music prize
but didn't quite make itthrough.
And so if that had worked, I uhthe dream would have been I
would have been signed to apublishing company uh and
(05:23):
written songs, but it it didn'tquite take off in the way that
it should have done.
Uh and Jim took a left turninto music journalism, started
working for the Melody Maker,and then later on for Mojo
magazine, and when when it'sjust started, and when Mojo
magazine started, I heard thatthey just didn't want to uh uh
(05:45):
grab all the guys who wereworking on the Inkies, as they
used to be called, New MusicalExpress, Melody Maker, and just
bring them over to Mojo.
They were looking for newblood, and he remembered me
because we would sit up allnight playing records and he
would have his opinion and Iwould have my opinion, and and
he just remembered that I had aslightly different sort of take
(06:05):
on music, uh on how to thinkabout music or how to express
your appreciation of music.
And um he invited me to do uh,or rather, the editor invited me
to do an audition review to seeif I could write.
And my audition review was toreview Tony Bennett Unplugged.
And after that, I found myselfwriting for Mojo quite a lot.
(06:28):
It was a total distraction, butit was never what I intended to
do.
But they kept offering me nicelittle things like do you want
to fly to uh New York and meetSteely Dan and Yoko Ono and Paul
Simon?
So you're not gonna say no, areyou?
Of course, get on with it.
Would you like to review um KidA by Radiohead?
Me?
(06:49):
All right, you know crazy.
Until there came a point whereI was interviewing people, I
won't name him.
He was a guitarist in a band Ididn't even like.
And the guy was so full ofhimself, you know, and I'm
thinking, oh, what the hell am Idoing?
Giving this guy airtime, justso I can get paid 150 quid to
write a puff piece about it.
I'm not gonna do it anymore.
So I just stopped.
Geoff (07:09):
And that's when the music took its place.
Chris (07:12):
Everything was working in parallel.
Because I've always been asinger pianist, which meant that
I could always work in West Endhotels and things like that.
And when we lived in London, Iwas doing the Intercontinental
and the Savoy and places likethat, you know.
And when we moved out of Londonto have babies, I was still
schlepping down the M11 to do ituntil we realised that was
(07:34):
pretty untenable.
And uh I was on the verge ofhaving to get a proper job when
Centre Parcs opened in ElverdonForest, and they needed a singer
pianist five nights a week.
So I kind of dodged the properjob bullet.
All I had to do was turn up andyou know, coon a few Harry
Warren tunes, and it was it wasfine.
Then I started getting invitedto play at some of the local
(07:56):
jazz clubs until I was running ajazz club in Bury St.
Edmunds and put on an eveningof Hoagie Carmichael music, and
it took immense amounts of work.
You know, I thought this isgonna be easy.
I know loads of HoagieCarmichael tunes.
Turns out I knew about ten.
That was the beginning of metaking repertoire seriously
because then I dug, dug, dug,found another dozen tunes,
(08:20):
created an evening of magicalHoagie Carmichael music, which
went down a storm.
And and the the record that wemade, the first Hoagie
Carmichael album, just calledHoagie, uh, was miraculously
reviewed in the Sunday Times.
And they made it one of the topten jazz albums of 2014.
I'm talking about now.
Unbelievable.
(08:41):
We made the album as a souvenirfor the gigs, you know.
And then all of a sudden,people are going, oh no, we like
what you do, mate.
It's a bit like the Mojo thing.
We just like what you do.
So I'm afraid that encouragedme on to do the same thing with
the jazz of Dudley Moore, and Ijust spotted that no one was no
one was taking Dudley'sfantastic composition seriously.
Geoff (09:01):
So you note the value of a theme to an audience, is they
they love it, don't they?
Yes.
Chris (09:06):
Yeah, they do.
They love a theme, and you theyalso like being talked to.
Geoff (09:10):
Which you're very good at as well.
Can we talk a little bit aboutjazz standards and what part
jazz standards have played inyour development, how you
practice them, and what youruses of my apps might be?
Chris (09:24):
Standards have formed the absolute basis of my love of
this music, and it all datesback to listening to that Oscar
Peterson plays Frank Sinatraalbum, and then listening to
Frank Sinatra sing the very samesongs.
When I got into the music, thethe songs were in my head long
(09:46):
before I was ever playing them.
At the same time as I was uhdevouring Mel Torme and Frank
Sinatra and Oscar Peterson andany jazz I could get a hold of,
I was also devouring the Beatlessongbook.
And I remember noticing thatthe first two chords of
something like uh Sunny Side ofthe Street, where it goes from C
(10:09):
to E7, was the same shift as'if you don't take her out
tonight, I'm gonna change hermind'.
And and I was making thoseconnections.
So when I was playing rhythmguitar in a trad band at school,
I was 14 years old, and Inoticed that 'all of me' went
from B flat to D7.
(10:31):
And I was I noticed that, oh,that's the same as going from C
to E7 on Sunny Side of theStreet, which is the same as
going from C to E7 on 'you'regonna lose that girl'.
And it's a bit of a randomfiling system, because at the
time I wasn't going, well, we'regoing from one to three
dominant.
Geoff (10:49):
That's the start of the ear, that's your ear training.
Chris (10:50):
That's the start of the ear train, yeah.
Exactly right.
All those patterns, all thosehowever many uh conventional uh
chord shifts, I'd sort of I'dclocked them and filed them in a
in a bit of a haphazard way.
But if if given time, and ofcourse as I got better, given
less and less time, I could findthem.
Yeah.
And standards was was to me a anever-ending source of
(11:14):
fascination.
And I loved songbooks, that'spossibly why I'm in I've ended
up being the repertoire guy thatI am.
I just love the little, I lovethe little container of the
songbook.
And you know, if you're gonnamake me sit and you know
practice me my modal patterns,the chances are I won't.
Geoff (11:31):
It's much more fun to practice a standard, isn't it?
Chris (11:34):
Exactly right, which is why your app is, you know, it's
just a treasure trove.
Geoff (11:38):
Thank you very much.
So let's talk about the app.
How do you use it?
What's your method?
Chris (11:44):
Uh, there are different levels of use.
Sometimes I just want to movemy fingers so I will find
something I don't have to thinkabout because it's already
filed, yeah.
Uh, and I just want to warm up.
So I might play, I don't know,Will You Still Be Mine, a little
bit faster than I actually wantto play it.
Uh, but it puts you in a zone,right?
(12:06):
You know, it puts you in a in afluid zone, and and uh and so
uh there might be a bit of that.
There might be a little bit ofokay, let's play it, let's play
a standard.
I know very well, but I'm gonnaput it in a very awkward key,
which of course the app can do,you know.
Just put it down a semitone.
I tell you what, I tend not todo is look at your chords until
(12:26):
you play something that I'm notexpecting, yeah, and then I'll
just double check.
Oh, he's he's choosing to dothat.
Geoff (12:31):
Do you ever pick a tune you don't know from the
catalogue and play that?
Chris (12:35):
Yeah, that's another level of what I'm doing.
Uh I run a jazz club in BurySt. Edmunds called Jazz at the
Hunter Club.
Um, I run the house trio, uh,which is largely George Double
on drums and Malcolm Creese onbass.
And Malcolm knows Tim Garland.
Uh, but one of the tunes thathe wanted to play was he said, I
don't know what we'll play,we'll play Falling Grace.
(12:56):
Everyone likes that, don'tthey?
So I had to start from groundzero with that one.
If a tune hasn't gone inalready through osmosis because
I loved it, then all of a suddenit's a bit of a piece of work
that I've got to do.
Geoff (13:10):
Yeah.
Chris (13:10):
So, you know, uh right.
So I did what what everyonedoes.
I got the lead sheet out, uh, Ilistened to the recordings, of
course.
And your app was invaluablebecause uh I I just put it down
to beginner level tempo, youknow, plodded my way through it,
right, and little by little, Imust have done 200 choruses of
(13:32):
that because I it wasn'tsticking because it was a piece
of homework.
I was having to do it forsomebody else.
Yeah, it didn't come from myown enthusiasm.
Nothing wrong with FallenGrace, I actually really like
it, but it hadn't occurred tome.
So it was a piece of work thatI was doing, and it was such
hard work.
Geoff (13:57):
I asked you to pick a tune to play on.
Chris (13:59):
One of the um lifelong intrigues I've had in parallel
to straight-ahead guys who playgreat swinging versions of
standard tunes is the work ofBill Evans, who obviously had a
way with standard tunes andcould swing, but he also
composed absolutely fascinatingpieces.
(14:20):
And one of those pieces thathas always always intrigued me
from an early age was VeryEarly, which I believe is
something he wrote when he was ateenager anyway.
At first hearing, or at manyhearings, in fact, you just
think, What's happening?
What is actually happening, youknow?
So got the old Real Book out,you know, the old 70s inky Real
(14:42):
Book.
It comes back down to learnthat tune first.
Can you sing Very Early as amelody?
And it's not it's notstraightforward, and then do the
same thing with the root.
And once you realise that, youthink, oh, we're just looking at
a bunch of perfect cadenceshere.
We're looking at a bunch offive ones.
The trick is to know what theone is at any given point.
(15:03):
Because this is a tune thatchanges key every bar, every bar
and a half, every two bars.
And it's all about tonalcenter.
And if you understand tonalcenter, it gets you a long, long
way through these apparentlyimpenetrable chord sequences.
This is why jazz musicians loveAll The Things You Are.
(15:26):
They have to navigate fourchanges of key in the first 16
bars.
Geoff (15:30):
Yeah.
Chris (15:31):
And if if you're of a mind to, if you're inclined to
that sort of chord sequence,it's just brilliant fun to play,
aren't you?
And it's the same thing withVery Early.
If anything, Very Early is is,well, it's it's considerably
more dense than All The ThingsYou Are.
Geoff (15:45):
Way more difficult, yeah.
Chris (15:46):
Yeah, yeah.
But it's the same, it's thesame principle.
What key are we in at whatpoint?
Right.
So after that, then we'relooking at thirds and sevens in
order to start hearing theunfolding of the harmony in its
most basic forms.
Geoff (16:17):
Beautiful, isn't it?
It's gorgeous.
It's a spark, you know.
It is, isn't it?
Chris (16:21):
Yeah.
So I was doing it considerablyslower than that because what I
was trying to do.
I was trying to just allow thesound of the harmony make its
way into my in my favoured wayby osmosis.
And what what I often do, Idon't necessarily always steam
into linear improv or or orsingle note improv, particularly
(16:44):
on a piece like this.
It's great fun to practicecomping and use the use the
whole comping thing as a as astory unfolding in itself, you
know.
And that's another great thingabout the app is when you leave
the piano on and listen toGraham Harvey's lovely work,
it's a it's an inspiration and amaster class in itself, you
(17:05):
know.
Take it off, do your best.
Geoff (17:08):
Right, okay, you ready?
Chris (17:09):
Yeah.
Geoff (17:09):
Okay, so here we go.
Chris (19:39):
Yeah, well, it's
Geoff (19:40):
What a great tune.
That's fabulous.
Chris (19:42):
It is a it is, and it's it's a constant source of
inspiration and frustrationequally.
Geoff (19:49):
But that's what jazz is, though, isn't it?
It's that's that sums jazz up,to be honest.
That's why we love it so much,because it's you it's a constant
search, isn't it, in the wholeevery time you play.
Chris (19:58):
It is, but this one is particularly un unforgiving for
a uh a less than rigorousexploration.
I mean, if you're just gonnastart flapping your hand at
this, you know, and hope for thegroove, it you there'll be
something that'll catch you out.
You what you can do with thisis it's a great one for
(20:19):
analysing your way through theforest.
We're in C.
We're on one, we're on five, Bflat seven of E flat.
Geoff (20:28):
Alright, so immediately you've gone up from you've gone
up a minor third.
Chris (20:31):
Immediately you've gone from C and here's the five, and
we're in E flat.
No, we're not.
We're in D flat via A flatseven.
And no, we're back to C.
And this B flat seven could bethe flat seven of C.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Is it setting something up?
No, it ain't because we got abrick wall change to D major,
(20:54):
and that's the one that'll catchyou up.
It comes out of the blue,doesn't it?
Absolutely nowhere.
Absolutely no setup.
I think it's the only moment inthe piece that isn't a perfect
cadence.
I'm sure there's a cadence togo from the flat six to the one.
I'm sure there's a fancy namefor it.
I don't know what it is.
So yeah, you can analyse yourway through.
We're in C.
Now we're in E flat, now we'rein D flat, now we're back to C.
(21:16):
Here's the brick wall, we're inD.
There's the five minor, or isit?
There's the three, there's thesix, oh, there's the two.
We were in D all along, but nowwe're in D flat.
Yeah, so it's stuck.
It ain't straightforward, andit's the gift that keeps on
giving if you want to giveyourself a hard time.
Geoff (21:32):
Um and was it easy to play along with the with the
app?
Was it did it feel good?
Chris (21:36):
Very sweet.
Geoff and Seb are one of thegreatest rhythm sections in the
world.
And they just are, you know, intheir price range.
It's it's very sweet to playon, and uh yeah, it's hours and
hours of uh fun and agony.
Geoff (21:51):
Alright, so can we finish off with a few questions?
Starting off with what's yourfavourite album?
Chris (21:56):
The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume One.
I don't think I'm exaggeratingto say it changed my life.
And you know, I bought itabsolutely blind.
I was in Garon Records inCambridge, which uh vintage East
Anglian's will remember withfondness.
And uh there it was.
It was it was green, and it wasthe Dave Frishberg Songbook,
and of course it it attracted mebecause I like songbooks.
(22:19):
And I went, I don't even knowwho Dave Frishberg is.
Of all his own songs, though,not anyone else's songs, yeah,
because he's a great writer.
Fantastic.
Geoff (22:26):
Did you ever see him live?
Chris (22:28):
I didn't, but I did write to him.
It's one of the few fan lettersI ever sent was to Dave
Frischburg when I knew he wascoming to the Pizza on the Park.
I said, if you need anywhere tostay, Dave, we're nice living
in Suffolk, and I really likewhat you do.
Geoff (22:43):
I came this close to meeting Dave Frishberg.
Did you?
I played in Portland, Oregonwith Jamie Cullum.
Oh yeah.
And he came to the gig.
What?
And he sat at the front row.
I saw him, him and his wifesitting in the front row, and he
left before the end.
But he left he left Jamie asongbook, a signed songbook.
Oh, did he a music book, yeah.
Oh wow, because Jamie hadrecorded a couple of Frishberg.
(23:05):
Yeah, because I I introducedJamie to Frishberg and Bob
Dorough, of course, who I know,who I know very well.
Chris (23:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Geoff (23:12):
I think we recorded Devil May Care, which is a Bob
Dorough.
Yeah, but Frishberg as well wasa huge, huge influence.
Chris (23:19):
Well, I tell you, I'll tell you something.
Uh I may or may not have toldyou this before, but uh um the
band I co-ran with KevinFlanagan, the tenor player, the
Flanagan-Ingham Quartet in the90s.
We did uh our first album wascalled Zanzibar in 1995, which
is a Frishberg tune, and on thesecond album we recorded You
(23:41):
Would Rather Have the Blues,which is a Frishberg tune.
And also, on the first album werecorded Walk Between
Raindrops, and on the secondalbum we recorded Maxine, two
Donald Fagan tunes.
To me, it's all the same, it'sall the same lineage, you know,
jazz, wit, literacy, all thatbusiness.
Now, here's something is what Iwant to tell you.
(24:02):
We were after this hip New Yorksmall group kind of vibe, you
know, people who knew loads ofsongs and had a sort of slightly
hip take on them.
And we got sort of the nicekind of reviews, and then I
heard Pointless Nostalgia, theJamie Cullum album arranged by
you, yeah.
And I just turned to Kev and Isaid, I think we're done, mate.
Geoff (24:26):
Really, why?
Chris (24:27):
I just thought it was everything that I wanted uh that
band to be.
And you nailed it with theJamie album, and I just thought,
yeah, that's a bit ofmisstiming there.
We just missed the boat.
I think I'm gonna take a littletime off and regroup.
Geoff (24:40):
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, that's ,exactly hopefullyit was inspiring though, right?
Chris (24:44):
Of course it was.
It was it was a great record,right?
And you know, all power to allof you, you know, it was it was
fantastic, but it was just a bittoo close to what I was after.
Oh, wow.
So there you go.
Geoff (24:55):
But anyway, I came close this close to meeting Frishberg.
I saw him sitting in the frontrow, and if we hadn't played for
over two hours long in our set,I'm sure we would have met him,
but we didn't get to meet him.
The second question is, isthere a favourite musician alive
or dead that you would like toplay with?
Chris (25:11):
Chris is now has his head in his hands on the piano.
Charlie Hayden.
The album he made with PatMatheny, Beyond the Missouri
Sky.
I revel in his discretion andhis aptness.
Geoff (25:24):
That album is is a is one of my favourite albums too,
actually.
Um is there a highlight of yourcareer?
Chris (25:31):
You know what?
We are talking on on the 19thof September 2025, and on the
18th of September 2025, you andI played uh the Steely Jazz Show
to over 200 people in the DissCorn Hall.
And the night before we playedto a full house uh uh the Pizza
(25:53):
Express Jazz Club Soho, uh theSteely Jazz Show.
Um and if you'd asked me onThursday what the highlight of
my career was, I would havesaid, oh, last night at the
Pizza Express.
Really?
Yeah.
And because you're asking me onthe Friday, I'll say it was
last night at Diss Corn Hall.
Because, as we discussed, theSteely Jazz Walter Donald
(26:18):
project has been a massivemountain to climb for me.
I've been working on it sinceJanuary last year.
An enormous learn.
Uh the gigs up to now, we'vedone about six or seven gigs,
have been a little bit whiteknuckle-y.
The last two gigs, I just feellike we've hit a peak of comfort
(26:39):
and and still having anintrepid attitude to the
material as well, though.
And it feels like flying, it'sabsolutely extraordinary.
And when you have uh anaudience as tuned in to what we
were up to as we had last nightat Diss Corn Hall, there's
nothing better.
So it really is.
I would say last night was ahighlight.
Geoff (27:01):
Well, that's that's a great answer.
Okay, what was the last concertyou attended?
Chris (27:05):
Oh, it was the Britten Sinfonia at uh Bury St.
Edmunds Cathedral, and they dida whole load of Arvo Pärt and a
bit of Taverner, and it wasabsolutely mesmerizing.
I'm a little bit sceptical whenit comes to minimalist
composers until they catch me inthe right mood, in the right
(27:26):
setting, and with the rightorchestra.
I was so moved, uh transportedin a way that music, I didn't
think music could ever do thatfor me.
Amazing ever again.
This was so far away from whatI do that I just forgot myself.
I never looked at the orchestraonce.
I had my eyes closed the wholetime and I was transported.
(27:46):
Did you cry?
Not quite, but I got close.
I got uh there were lumps in mythroat throat, that's for sure.
Geoff (27:54):
Do you ever cry at music?
Chris (27:56):
Yeah, I remember very clearly stacking the logs with
my headphones on, and I waslistening to a documentary about
Stephen Sondheim, and theyplayed the recording of With So
Little to Be Sure of from AnyoneCan Whistle, which my daughter
sang uh when she was at thesixth form.
(28:17):
She played um the the lead, thefemale lead in Anyone Could
Whistle, and she sang it in theshow, and you know, ten years
later I was listening to it, andI just crumpled.
It is the most romantic,full-hearted song about intimacy
(28:40):
and being involved withsomeone, a significant other,
with so little to be sure of.
I was in floods, and it's stillto this day, I'm thinking about
it now and I'm welling up.
I can see, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's extraordinary.
Geoff (28:55):
Amazing.
Chris (28:55):
And you know, if if it came to it and I was on a desert
island and I could only listento one sort of music, I would
take Sondheim with me.
I would take everything he did,and I've been caught out
blobbing at the end of Company,you know, being alive.
That's philosophy and wisdomset to a fantastic tune.
You know, anyone who's stilldry-eyed at that, uh at the end
(29:16):
of that needs to check theirpulse.
Geoff (29:18):
The the power of music, I love it so much.
Um, next question.
What would you say your musicalweakness was?
Chris (29:25):
That's reading, isn't it?
Of course it's reading.
It always is, isn't it?
I mean, I'm I'm a bit betterthan I was.
I used to freeze, you know, Ididn't even like it.
I remember I did a gig once inthe uh in the early 90s.
And uh I was running the housetrio in a local in a local
restaurant, and uh we had we hadguest blowers, and one of the
guest blowers was Dick Walter,the great BBC arranger, you
(29:48):
know, big band arranger andcomposer.
And he plunked In Your OwnSweet Way on in front of me, and
first called was a circle witha line through it.
I didn't know what it was.
I said, What's what's thischord, Dick.
I'm sure he was really lookingforward to the rest of the gig,
you know, when I said sorry,what is a A circle of the line
through it?
(30:08):
A half diminished?
I went, What's that?
A minor seven flat five?
Oh, that.
Is that what it is?
Because I didn't have any ofthe kind of American theory
symbol stuff.
I've got it all now, you know,so I'm better than I used to be.
Play in Paul Higgs's Pavaneband, which is all scored out,
you know.
Uh not not everything, notevery note is scored out, but
(30:30):
there are quite a lot of veryparticular uh things he wants me
to play.
Okay.
And I've kind of met that, metthat challenge.
I've faced the fear and I gotthrough it.
Geoff (30:38):
Um, do you ever get nervous on stage?
Chris (30:40):
Uh not if I am entirely prepared.
If I get nerves, all they areare anticipatory nerves of
looking forward to to doing thisthing, which is intense, it's
super intense.
But when it turns intobutterflies because you're not
sure that you're going toremember the 28th chord in the
(31:00):
middle of Your Gold Teeth II,then that's no fun.
Yeah.
Geoff (31:04):
And uh what about when you play with you know musicians
that you might revere or sortof people like that?
In big venues or something likethat?
Chris (31:12):
No, not big venues, uh certainly sometimes uh
musicians.
I was a bit nervous by playingwith Tim Garland because he's
you know he's a bit of aheavyweight, but we got through
it.
It was it was alright.
I I think maybe 20 years agowhen I was playing with Tina May
for the first time, I was a bitstarstruck, you know.
So that that's a very strangefeeling to have when you're
(31:34):
playing with people that you'vebeen listening to for a long
time, and now all of a suddenyou're making music together,
you know.
That can it didn't make menervous, but it certainly um it
put me on high alert, uh, whichis probably a good thing, you
know.
Geoff (31:49):
A few other questions now.
What's your favourite sandwich?
Chris (31:52):
When I was at university, I invented a sandwich which was
wholemeal bread, marmite,cheese, and marmalade.
And before you all judge, I'mnot judging, I'm gonna try it.
I would try it.
It's quite an intense sandwich,and I I must say I didn't eat
it a lot and I didn't eat itevery day, but sometimes it
(32:16):
really hit a very uh unusualspot that you didn't even know
you needed hitting.
Geoff (32:20):
Yeah.
Good luck with that, listeners.
I heard um an interview withPaul McCartney.
Don't remember when it was, but
Chris (32:26):
Oh, that was the Adam Buxton one.
The Adam Buxton, yeah.
Yeah, where is his his uhsandwich is his hummus bagel?
Geoff (32:32):
Hummus hummus and marmite in a bagel.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one.
So I I went through and triedthat, yeah, of course.
You like Paul McCartney?
And is it does it delicious,isn't it?
Toasted bagel, marmite, andthen and then the hummus on the
top.
Chris (32:47):
All right, thank you, Paul, and thank you for
everything else.
Yes.
Geoff (32:51):
Right, um, what's your favourite movie?
Chris (32:53):
You won't believe this, Geoff.
I think it might be TheTalented Mr.
Ripley.
What?
You're just saying that.
I'm not just saying it, mate.
I didn't even know you were init.
Geoff (33:02):
I was in it.
Chris (33:03):
I think uh it's either it's a toss-up between that or
Vertigo.
We don't need to talk about whyVertigo is is brilliant, but
The Talented Mr.
Ripley is is um it's absolutelyabsorbing, I think.
The uh the three leads arecompletely credible and
completely uh compelling as youwatch them play out their their
(33:26):
peculiar game and their peculiarworld.
And then in the middle of themovie, Philip Seymour Hoffman
comes in and explodes the thingonto a totally different level,
and it's the most electrifyingentrance in any movie I've ever
seen.
Yeah where he drives onto thepiazza.
You just can't take your eyesoff him.
(33:46):
And because he's so beady-eyedand he's got his eyes on Tom
Ripley, it's terrifying, it'sthe most incredible performance.
So I'd go with that.
Geoff (33:56):
Wow, what a great movie! That was an amazing experience
for me to be in that film.
I mean, we just had a day inRome, just outside Rome filming,
but leading up to it, recordingall the soundtrack and the cues
and stuff, um, working withAnthony Mengela, he was such a
lovely man and really hands-onas well.
He wrote some of the melodies.
Gabriel Yarid was the composer,he was along in all the
(34:17):
sessions as well.
Wow.
And um, we actually did a tourof premiers.
So we went to America and didthe Hollywood premiere, played
at the party, and then we did itin New York and we did it in
Milan, in about 10 differentcities.
Chris (34:31):
Oh man.
Geoff (34:32):
And then we went to Isle of Wight, where um Anthony
Mengela was from.
Yeah, he's he's like anEnglish-Italian family who made
ice cream.
We stayed in his house andplayed at a private party with
Anthony Mengela.
What a lovely man, and what asad loss.
Oh, awful.
And my part is very tiny in it.
Chris (34:49):
Yeah, yeah.
But you're there, it is a greatfilm.
And that that that scene withJude Law singing uh
Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano.
Oh, is that an Italian kind ofstandard is just you know, it's
electrifying, it's fantastic.
Geoff (35:04):
It's a good film.
Okay, uh, is there a favouritevenue you like to play in?
Chris (35:08):
The last two venues I've just played in the Dean Street
uh Pizza when it's full andtheir interview, that takes some
beating.
Uh, but it was beaten, I'mafraid, last night at the
Corn Hall.
Everything about it was wasjust delightful.
Geoff (35:22):
Corn Hall in Diss, which is where we're close to where we
are now.
Um, is there a favouritecountry or city that you like to
visit?
Chris (35:31):
No, I am unafflicted with wonderlust.
My idea of adventure and escapeis to go to my caravan in
Norfolk.
Uh which which just keepsunfolding its mystery and beauty
to me and Tracy, my wife, andmy beautiful dogs.
(35:53):
Every time we go up.
I'd like to say, oh well, ofcourse, it's Nepal.
Yeah.
But I just I'm not bothered.
I'm a bit like you.
Uh I really dislike flying.
I really dislike it.
Geoff (36:05):
Right.
Chris (36:05):
And I think I dislike it so much I'm quite prepared to
never fly again.
Geoff (36:10):
So a final question is what's your favourite chord?
Chris (36:14):
I think it's the sus chord, the 13th sus chord, but
with the third in it as well.
So you're talking about thatone.
Some of the notes?
Uh well, there's various waysof voicing it.
(36:35):
And I I think that the the themost beautiful example of it
that I can remember is it's theopening chord on the Genesis
track called Dusk on their albumTrespass.
(36:58):
And it's done on acousticguitars.
It does sound like a veryguitaristy kind of chord.
That's the one.
Yeah.
It's the SUS with the thirdpresent as well, and it's it's
uh it sounds great on guitar.
And you if you listen to Duskby Genesis uh on their first
(37:19):
proper album, uh Trespass, youget that chord there.
I like its ambiguity, I likethe fact that it is suggestive
without being directional.
There's there's there's nothingthat this suggests it needs to
(37:42):
go to other than just to hoverthere and be.
Geoff (37:46):
Because it doesn't want to resolve anyway, does it?
Chris (37:48):
It's just it's just got a kind of life.
It's got its own little thing.
Mind you, in the in the Steelything, I've come across another
lovely chord that I love.
Uh it's and it's uh it's inYour Gold Teeth II, because
you've got uh after this chord,that one, which is it's C minor
(38:26):
thirteen sus four.
You've got the seventh, thethird, you've got the fourth,
and the thirteenth.
Yeah.
So I make that C minor elevenstroke thirteenth, and that's
unusual.
That's that that that's what Ilike about it.
Geoff (38:42):
Oh, we love chords.
Wow, okay.
Well, I think that'll do it.
Thank you so much, Chris, foryour time.
It's been great.
Chris (38:49):
It's been uh a delight.
I think it's a fascinatingthing that you're doing.
Because to to basically go andtalk to a bunch of musicians,
but essentially ask everybodythe same stuff.
But you're getting, you know,entire different worlds coming
at you from because everybody'sgot a different story.
Geoff (39:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Chris (39:06):
It's absolutely brilliant, really fascinating.
Geoff (39:09):
Well, there you go.
I'll see you soon.
Bye.
Pleasure.
Chris (39:13):
Bye, bye.
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Hello, podcats.
Geoff Gascoyne here.
Hope you're well.
Today I'm out in the country,I'm in Suffolk, visiting Chris
Ingham, who is a terrific pianoplayer, singer, band leader,
performer music journalist andwriter, a very nice bloke.
And we're going to have a chatabout practicing, about
(00:20):
standards, about whatever comesup.
I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
Here we go.
Hello, Chris.
Chris (00:52):
Hello, Geoff.
Geoff (00:53):
Thank you for having me in your lovely home today.
Chris (00:55):
Well, thank you for being here.
Geoff (00:56):
So should we start by chatting a bit about what turned
you onto jazz in the firstplace?
Chris (01:00):
I think it was to do with my uncle's record collection.
All the Beatles albums, and hehad Oscar Peterson.
But he also had a lot ofSinatra and Mel Torme.
I mean, even earlier than that,we had a record by Paul
Robeson.
He did do a version of St.
Louis Blues.
And even as a child, and Iwouldn't have been older than
maybe seven or eight orsomething, when I heard these
(01:22):
kind of notes.
That kind of that sound there Ididn't know what it was, but I
just knew I just knew it had anatmosphere and it made me feel
something.
And of course, it's just theblues.
It's the sound of the bluenotes.
Geoff (01:43):
So did you have classical piano lessons or traditional
piano lessons?
Chris (01:47):
No, I was uh uh there was a pivotal moment in my
childhood uh when we just movedfrom Newcastle to uh a village
in Suffolk, and I was uh 10going on eleven, and my brother
was seven going on eight.
And my mother, I rememberdistinctly, my mother came into
(02:07):
the dining room and she said,There's a piano teacher in the
village who would like pianolessons.
And my brother saidimmediately, me, and I said
immediately, no, not me, becauseI'd already had a few violin
lessons and I hated them.
I'd already had a kind of uhinstitutional uh introduction to
(02:32):
uh uh the formal way of makingmusic, and I was already on at
the piano at age 10, 11.
I was still I was picking outthings.
Hey, Jude, don't be afraid.
You know, I was picking thatstuff out myself, right?
And I didn't want no teachergetting in the way saying, stop
(02:53):
messing around.
So I just said no.
Geoff (02:55):
So you had a problem with discipline, did you?
Chris (02:57):
I'm afraid so.
It's it's uh if there's anysense of uh authority telling me
what I should be doing, I'mlikely to run in the opposite
direction.
Geoff (03:06):
Yeah.
Chris (03:06):
Which has been it's part of, it's part of my personality,
it's part of the the way I'veI've dealt with life, probably
generally, and it has itsadvantages, but it has its
disadvantages.
I could have certainly, I lookback now, I certainly could have
done with a bit more groundingin in uh in just fundaments, you
(03:26):
know.
The discipline came later, andit was it was self-discipline,
it had to come from within me.
Geoff (03:32):
So you've clearly got lots of self-discipline because
you've got so many projects andthings that you do, which we'll
talk about in a minute, but allthese different projects that
you organized and stuff takes anawful lot of discipline, you
know.
Chris (03:44):
Yeah, but but it all came from um an innate sense of
enthusiasm and passion that camefrom me.
It was not imposed upon me.
And that is that, as far as I'mconcerned, makes all the
difference.
Geoff (03:56):
So when somebody discovers something for
themselves, it has more value,doesn't it?
And when it's imposed on them.
Chris (04:01):
Well, it's more energy, as far as I'm concerned.
Don't get me wrong, you know, II am now a teacher, and lo and
behold, I'm inclined to tellpeople what's good for them, you
know, while at the same timeunderstanding.
You're just gonna have to learnthat tune.
Now, if anybody told me, Iwould not have learned it thing.
Geoff (04:18):
You have to make them feel like they discovered it for
themselves.
Chris (04:21):
Almost, yeah, uh, or find another way in, or just do by
example.
You know, if you want to beable to play with a bit more
freedom and a little moreauthority and feel like you're a
bit more intimately connectedwith the music, I strongly
suggest you learn it.
Geoff (04:35):
So, can we go back to where did the writing come and
how did that tie in with yourmusic?
Chris (04:40):
Uh no, I was always an uh interloper in the music
journalism world.
I was a songwriter with afellow called Jim Irvin, who
used to be the lead singer inFurniture, uh, a band in the 80s
who had a uh a minor hit with atune called Brilliant Mind,
which just still pops up onRadio 2 every now and again.
(05:01):
And Furniture were breaking up,and he was looking for a um he
was looking for a collaborator,and we wrote a uh we wrote an
album which got long listed forthe first Mercury music prize
but didn't quite make itthrough.
And so if that had worked, I uhthe dream would have been I
would have been signed to apublishing company uh and
(05:23):
written songs, but it it didn'tquite take off in the way that
it should have done.
Uh and Jim took a left turninto music journalism, started
working for the Melody Maker,and then later on for Mojo
magazine, and when when it'sjust started, and when Mojo
magazine started, I heard thatthey just didn't want to uh uh
(05:45):
grab all the guys who wereworking on the Inkies, as they
used to be called, New MusicalExpress, Melody Maker, and just
bring them over to Mojo.
They were looking for newblood, and he remembered me
because we would sit up allnight playing records and he
would have his opinion and Iwould have my opinion, and and
he just remembered that I had aslightly different sort of take
(06:05):
on music, uh on how to thinkabout music or how to express
your appreciation of music.
And um he invited me to do uh,or rather, the editor invited me
to do an audition review to seeif I could write.
And my audition review was toreview Tony Bennett Unplugged.
And after that, I found myselfwriting for Mojo quite a lot.
(06:28):
It was a total distraction, butit was never what I intended to
do.
But they kept offering me nicelittle things like do you want
to fly to uh New York and meetSteely Dan and Yoko Ono and Paul
Simon?
So you're not gonna say no, areyou?
Of course, get on with it.
Would you like to review um KidA by Radiohead?
Me?
(06:49):
All right, you know crazy.
Until there came a point whereI was interviewing people, I
won't name him.
He was a guitarist in a band Ididn't even like.
And the guy was so full ofhimself, you know, and I'm
thinking, oh, what the hell am Idoing?
Giving this guy airtime, justso I can get paid 150 quid to
write a puff piece about it.
I'm not gonna do it anymore.
So I just stopped.
Geoff (07:09):
And that's when the music took its place.
Chris (07:12):
Everything was working in parallel.
Because I've always been asinger pianist, which meant that
I could always work in West Endhotels and things like that.
And when we lived in London, Iwas doing the Intercontinental
and the Savoy and places likethat, you know.
And when we moved out of Londonto have babies, I was still
schlepping down the M11 to do ituntil we realised that was
(07:34):
pretty untenable.
And uh I was on the verge ofhaving to get a proper job when
Centre Parcs opened in ElverdonForest, and they needed a singer
pianist five nights a week.
So I kind of dodged the properjob bullet.
All I had to do was turn up andyou know, coon a few Harry
Warren tunes, and it was it wasfine.
Then I started getting invitedto play at some of the local
(07:56):
jazz clubs until I was running ajazz club in Bury St.
Edmunds and put on an eveningof Hoagie Carmichael music, and
it took immense amounts of work.
You know, I thought this isgonna be easy.
I know loads of HoagieCarmichael tunes.
Turns out I knew about ten.
That was the beginning of metaking repertoire seriously
because then I dug, dug, dug,found another dozen tunes,
(08:20):
created an evening of magicalHoagie Carmichael music, which
went down a storm.
And and the the record that wemade, the first Hoagie
Carmichael album, just calledHoagie, uh, was miraculously
reviewed in the Sunday Times.
And they made it one of the topten jazz albums of 2014.
I'm talking about now.
Unbelievable.
(08:41):
We made the album as a souvenirfor the gigs, you know.
And then all of a sudden,people are going, oh no, we like
what you do, mate.
It's a bit like the Mojo thing.
We just like what you do.
So I'm afraid that encouragedme on to do the same thing with
the jazz of Dudley Moore, and Ijust spotted that no one was no
one was taking Dudley'sfantastic composition seriously.
Geoff (09:01):
So you note the value of a theme to an audience, is they
they love it, don't they?
Yes.
Chris (09:06):
Yeah, they do.
They love a theme, and you theyalso like being talked to.
Geoff (09:10):
Which you're very good at as well.
Can we talk a little bit aboutjazz standards and what part
jazz standards have played inyour development, how you
practice them, and what youruses of my apps might be?
Chris (09:24):
Standards have formed the absolute basis of my love of
this music, and it all datesback to listening to that Oscar
Peterson plays Frank Sinatraalbum, and then listening to
Frank Sinatra sing the very samesongs.
When I got into the music, thethe songs were in my head long
(09:46):
before I was ever playing them.
At the same time as I was uhdevouring Mel Torme and Frank
Sinatra and Oscar Peterson andany jazz I could get a hold of,
I was also devouring the Beatlessongbook.
And I remember noticing thatthe first two chords of
something like uh Sunny Side ofthe Street, where it goes from C
(10:09):
to E7, was the same shift as'if you don't take her out
tonight, I'm gonna change hermind'.
And and I was making thoseconnections.
So when I was playing rhythmguitar in a trad band at school,
I was 14 years old, and Inoticed that 'all of me' went
from B flat to D7.
(10:31):
And I was I noticed that, oh,that's the same as going from C
to E7 on Sunny Side of theStreet, which is the same as
going from C to E7 on 'you'regonna lose that girl'.
And it's a bit of a randomfiling system, because at the
time I wasn't going, well, we'regoing from one to three
dominant.
Geoff (10:49):
That's the start of the ear, that's your ear training.
Chris (10:50):
That's the start of the ear train, yeah.
Exactly right.
All those patterns, all thosehowever many uh conventional uh
chord shifts, I'd sort of I'dclocked them and filed them in a
in a bit of a haphazard way.
But if if given time, and ofcourse as I got better, given
less and less time, I could findthem.
Yeah.
And standards was was to me a anever-ending source of
(11:14):
fascination.
And I loved songbooks, that'spossibly why I'm in I've ended
up being the repertoire guy thatI am.
I just love the little, I lovethe little container of the
songbook.
And you know, if you're gonnamake me sit and you know
practice me my modal patterns,the chances are I won't.
Geoff (11:31):
It's much more fun to practice a standard, isn't it?
Chris (11:34):
Exactly right, which is why your app is, you know, it's
just a treasure trove.
Geoff (11:38):
Thank you very much.
So let's talk about the app.
How do you use it?
What's your method?
Chris (11:44):
Uh, there are different levels of use.
Sometimes I just want to movemy fingers so I will find
something I don't have to thinkabout because it's already
filed, yeah.
Uh, and I just want to warm up.
So I might play, I don't know,Will You Still Be Mine, a little
bit faster than I actually wantto play it.
Uh, but it puts you in a zone,right?
(12:06):
You know, it puts you in a in afluid zone, and and uh and so
uh there might be a bit of that.
There might be a little bit ofokay, let's play it, let's play
a standard.
I know very well, but I'm gonnaput it in a very awkward key,
which of course the app can do,you know.
Just put it down a semitone.
I tell you what, I tend not todo is look at your chords until
(12:26):
you play something that I'm notexpecting, yeah, and then I'll
just double check.
Oh, he's he's choosing to dothat.
Geoff (12:31):
Do you ever pick a tune you don't know from the
catalogue and play that?
Chris (12:35):
Yeah, that's another level of what I'm doing.
Uh I run a jazz club in BurySt. Edmunds called Jazz at the
Hunter Club.
Um, I run the house trio, uh,which is largely George Double
on drums and Malcolm Creese onbass.
And Malcolm knows Tim Garland.
Uh, but one of the tunes thathe wanted to play was he said, I
don't know what we'll play,we'll play Falling Grace.
(12:56):
Everyone likes that, don'tthey?
So I had to start from groundzero with that one.
If a tune hasn't gone inalready through osmosis because
I loved it, then all of a suddenit's a bit of a piece of work
that I've got to do.
Geoff (13:10):
Yeah.
Chris (13:10):
So, you know, uh right.
So I did what what everyonedoes.
I got the lead sheet out, uh, Ilistened to the recordings, of
course.
And your app was invaluablebecause uh I I just put it down
to beginner level tempo, youknow, plodded my way through it,
right, and little by little, Imust have done 200 choruses of
(13:32):
that because I it wasn'tsticking because it was a piece
of homework.
I was having to do it forsomebody else.
Yeah, it didn't come from myown enthusiasm.
Nothing wrong with FallenGrace, I actually really like
it, but it hadn't occurred tome.
So it was a piece of work thatI was doing, and it was such
hard work.
Geoff (13:57):
I asked you to pick a tune to play on.
Chris (13:59):
One of the um lifelong intrigues I've had in parallel
to straight-ahead guys who playgreat swinging versions of
standard tunes is the work ofBill Evans, who obviously had a
way with standard tunes andcould swing, but he also
composed absolutely fascinatingpieces.
(14:20):
And one of those pieces thathas always always intrigued me
from an early age was VeryEarly, which I believe is
something he wrote when he was ateenager anyway.
At first hearing, or at manyhearings, in fact, you just
think, What's happening?
What is actually happening, youknow?
So got the old Real Book out,you know, the old 70s inky Real
(14:42):
Book.
It comes back down to learnthat tune first.
Can you sing Very Early as amelody?
And it's not it's notstraightforward, and then do the
same thing with the root.
And once you realise that, youthink, oh, we're just looking at
a bunch of perfect cadenceshere.
We're looking at a bunch offive ones.
The trick is to know what theone is at any given point.
(15:03):
Because this is a tune thatchanges key every bar, every bar
and a half, every two bars.
And it's all about tonalcenter.
And if you understand tonalcenter, it gets you a long, long
way through these apparentlyimpenetrable chord sequences.
This is why jazz musicians loveAll The Things You Are.
(15:26):
They have to navigate fourchanges of key in the first 16
bars.
Geoff (15:30):
Yeah.
Chris (15:31):
And if if you're of a mind to, if you're inclined to
that sort of chord sequence,it's just brilliant fun to play,
aren't you?
And it's the same thing withVery Early.
If anything, Very Early is is,well, it's it's considerably
more dense than All The ThingsYou Are.
Geoff (15:45):
Way more difficult, yeah.
Chris (15:46):
Yeah, yeah.
But it's the same, it's thesame principle.
What key are we in at whatpoint?
Right.
So after that, then we'relooking at thirds and sevens in
order to start hearing theunfolding of the harmony in its
most basic forms.
Geoff (16:17):
Beautiful, isn't it?
It's gorgeous.
It's a spark, you know.
It is, isn't it?
Chris (16:21):
Yeah.
So I was doing it considerablyslower than that because what I
was trying to do.
I was trying to just allow thesound of the harmony make its
way into my in my favoured wayby osmosis.
And what what I often do, Idon't necessarily always steam
into linear improv or or orsingle note improv, particularly
(16:44):
on a piece like this.
It's great fun to practicecomping and use the use the
whole comping thing as a as astory unfolding in itself, you
know.
And that's another great thingabout the app is when you leave
the piano on and listen toGraham Harvey's lovely work,
it's a it's an inspiration and amaster class in itself, you
(17:05):
know.
Take it off, do your best.
Geoff (17:08):
Right, okay, you ready?
Chris (17:09):
Yeah.
Geoff (17:09):
Okay, so here we go.
Chris (19:39):
Yeah, well, it's
Geoff (19:40):
What a great tune.
That's fabulous.
Chris (19:42):
It is a it is, and it's it's a constant source of
inspiration and frustrationequally.
Geoff (19:49):
But that's what jazz is, though, isn't it?
It's that's that sums jazz up,to be honest.
That's why we love it so much,because it's you it's a constant
search, isn't it, in the wholeevery time you play.
Chris (19:58):
It is, but this one is particularly un unforgiving for
a uh a less than rigorousexploration.
I mean, if you're just gonnastart flapping your hand at
this, you know, and hope for thegroove, it you there'll be
something that'll catch you out.
You what you can do with thisis it's a great one for
(20:19):
analysing your way through theforest.
We're in C.
We're on one, we're on five, Bflat seven of E flat.
Geoff (20:28):
Alright, so immediately you've gone up from you've gone
up a minor third.
Chris (20:31):
Immediately you've gone from C and here's the five, and
we're in E flat.
No, we're not.
We're in D flat via A flatseven.
And no, we're back to C.
And this B flat seven could bethe flat seven of C.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Is it setting something up?
No, it ain't because we got abrick wall change to D major,
(20:54):
and that's the one that'll catchyou up.
It comes out of the blue,doesn't it?
Absolutely nowhere.
Absolutely no setup.
I think it's the only moment inthe piece that isn't a perfect
cadence.
I'm sure there's a cadence togo from the flat six to the one.
I'm sure there's a fancy namefor it.
I don't know what it is.
So yeah, you can analyse yourway through.
We're in C.
Now we're in E flat, now we'rein D flat, now we're back to C.
(21:16):
Here's the brick wall, we're inD.
There's the five minor, or isit?
There's the three, there's thesix, oh, there's the two.
We were in D all along, but nowwe're in D flat.
Yeah, so it's stuck.
It ain't straightforward, andit's the gift that keeps on
giving if you want to giveyourself a hard time.
Geoff (21:32):
Um and was it easy to play along with the with the
app?
Was it did it feel good?
Chris (21:36):
Very sweet.
Geoff and Seb are one of thegreatest rhythm sections in the
world.
And they just are, you know, intheir price range.
It's it's very sweet to playon, and uh yeah, it's hours and
hours of uh fun and agony.
Geoff (21:51):
Alright, so can we finish off with a few questions?
Starting off with what's yourfavourite album?
Chris (21:56):
The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume One.
I don't think I'm exaggeratingto say it changed my life.
And you know, I bought itabsolutely blind.
I was in Garon Records inCambridge, which uh vintage East
Anglian's will remember withfondness.
And uh there it was.
It was it was green, and it wasthe Dave Frishberg Songbook,
and of course it it attracted mebecause I like songbooks.
(22:19):
And I went, I don't even knowwho Dave Frishberg is.
Of all his own songs, though,not anyone else's songs, yeah,
because he's a great writer.
Fantastic.
Geoff (22:26):
Did you ever see him live?
Chris (22:28):
I didn't, but I did write to him.
It's one of the few fan lettersI ever sent was to Dave
Frischburg when I knew he wascoming to the Pizza on the Park.
I said, if you need anywhere tostay, Dave, we're nice living
in Suffolk, and I really likewhat you do.
Geoff (22:43):
I came this close to meeting Dave Frishberg.
Did you?
I played in Portland, Oregonwith Jamie Cullum.
Oh yeah.
And he came to the gig.
What?
And he sat at the front row.
I saw him, him and his wifesitting in the front row, and he
left before the end.
But he left he left Jamie asongbook, a signed songbook.
Oh, did he a music book, yeah.
Oh wow, because Jamie hadrecorded a couple of Frishberg.
(23:05):
Yeah, because I I introducedJamie to Frishberg and Bob
Dorough, of course, who I know,who I know very well.
Chris (23:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Geoff (23:12):
I think we recorded Devil May Care, which is a Bob
Dorough.
Yeah, but Frishberg as well wasa huge, huge influence.
Chris (23:19):
Well, I tell you, I'll tell you something.
Uh I may or may not have toldyou this before, but uh um the
band I co-ran with KevinFlanagan, the tenor player, the
Flanagan-Ingham Quartet in the90s.
We did uh our first album wascalled Zanzibar in 1995, which
is a Frishberg tune, and on thesecond album we recorded You
(23:41):
Would Rather Have the Blues,which is a Frishberg tune.
And also, on the first album werecorded Walk Between
Raindrops, and on the secondalbum we recorded Maxine, two
Donald Fagan tunes.
To me, it's all the same, it'sall the same lineage, you know,
jazz, wit, literacy, all thatbusiness.
Now, here's something is what Iwant to tell you.
(24:02):
We were after this hip New Yorksmall group kind of vibe, you
know, people who knew loads ofsongs and had a sort of slightly
hip take on them.
And we got sort of the nicekind of reviews, and then I
heard Pointless Nostalgia, theJamie Cullum album arranged by
you, yeah.
And I just turned to Kev and Isaid, I think we're done, mate.
Geoff (24:26):
Really, why?
Chris (24:27):
I just thought it was everything that I wanted uh that
band to be.
And you nailed it with theJamie album, and I just thought,
yeah, that's a bit ofmisstiming there.
We just missed the boat.
I think I'm gonna take a littletime off and regroup.
Geoff (24:40):
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, that's ,exactly hopefullyit was inspiring though, right?
Chris (24:44):
Of course it was.
It was it was a great record,right?
And you know, all power to allof you, you know, it was it was
fantastic, but it was just a bittoo close to what I was after.
Oh, wow.
So there you go.
Geoff (24:55):
But anyway, I came close this close to meeting Frishberg.
I saw him sitting in the frontrow, and if we hadn't played for
over two hours long in our set,I'm sure we would have met him,
but we didn't get to meet him.
The second question is, isthere a favourite musician alive
or dead that you would like toplay with?
Chris (25:11):
Chris is now has his head in his hands on the piano.
Charlie Hayden.
The album he made with PatMatheny, Beyond the Missouri
Sky.
I revel in his discretion andhis aptness.
Geoff (25:24):
That album is is a is one of my favourite albums too,
actually.
Um is there a highlight of yourcareer?
Chris (25:31):
You know what?
We are talking on on the 19thof September 2025, and on the
18th of September 2025, you andI played uh the Steely Jazz Show
to over 200 people in the DissCorn Hall.
And the night before we playedto a full house uh uh the Pizza
(25:53):
Express Jazz Club Soho, uh theSteely Jazz Show.
Um and if you'd asked me onThursday what the highlight of
my career was, I would havesaid, oh, last night at the
Pizza Express.
Really?
Yeah.
And because you're asking me onthe Friday, I'll say it was
last night at Diss Corn Hall.
Because, as we discussed, theSteely Jazz Walter Donald
(26:18):
project has been a massivemountain to climb for me.
I've been working on it sinceJanuary last year.
An enormous learn.
Uh the gigs up to now, we'vedone about six or seven gigs,
have been a little bit whiteknuckle-y.
The last two gigs, I just feellike we've hit a peak of comfort
(26:39):
and and still having anintrepid attitude to the
material as well, though.
And it feels like flying, it'sabsolutely extraordinary.
And when you have uh anaudience as tuned in to what we
were up to as we had last nightat Diss Corn Hall, there's
nothing better.
So it really is.
I would say last night was ahighlight.
Geoff (27:01):
Well, that's that's a great answer.
Okay, what was the last concertyou attended?
Chris (27:05):
Oh, it was the Britten Sinfonia at uh Bury St.
Edmunds Cathedral, and they dida whole load of Arvo Pärt and a
bit of Taverner, and it wasabsolutely mesmerizing.
I'm a little bit sceptical whenit comes to minimalist
composers until they catch me inthe right mood, in the right
(27:26):
setting, and with the rightorchestra.
I was so moved, uh transportedin a way that music, I didn't
think music could ever do thatfor me.
Amazing ever again.
This was so far away from whatI do that I just forgot myself.
I never looked at the orchestraonce.
I had my eyes closed the wholetime and I was transported.
(27:46):
Did you cry?
Not quite, but I got close.
I got uh there were lumps in mythroat throat, that's for sure.
Geoff (27:54):
Do you ever cry at music?
Chris (27:56):
Yeah, I remember very clearly stacking the logs with
my headphones on, and I waslistening to a documentary about
Stephen Sondheim, and theyplayed the recording of With So
Little to Be Sure of from AnyoneCan Whistle, which my daughter
sang uh when she was at thesixth form.
(28:17):
She played um the the lead, thefemale lead in Anyone Could
Whistle, and she sang it in theshow, and you know, ten years
later I was listening to it, andI just crumpled.
It is the most romantic,full-hearted song about intimacy
(28:40):
and being involved withsomeone, a significant other,
with so little to be sure of.
I was in floods, and it's stillto this day, I'm thinking about
it now and I'm welling up.
I can see, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's extraordinary.
Geoff (28:55):
Amazing.
Chris (28:55):
And you know, if if it came to it and I was on a desert
island and I could only listento one sort of music, I would
take Sondheim with me.
I would take everything he did,and I've been caught out
blobbing at the end of Company,you know, being alive.
That's philosophy and wisdomset to a fantastic tune.
You know, anyone who's stilldry-eyed at that, uh at the end
(29:16):
of that needs to check theirpulse.
Geoff (29:18):
The the power of music, I love it so much.
Um, next question.
What would you say your musicalweakness was?
Chris (29:25):
That's reading, isn't it?
Of course it's reading.
It always is, isn't it?
I mean, I'm I'm a bit betterthan I was.
I used to freeze, you know, Ididn't even like it.
I remember I did a gig once inthe uh in the early 90s.
And uh I was running the housetrio in a local in a local
restaurant, and uh we had we hadguest blowers, and one of the
guest blowers was Dick Walter,the great BBC arranger, you
(29:48):
know, big band arranger andcomposer.
And he plunked In Your OwnSweet Way on in front of me, and
first called was a circle witha line through it.
I didn't know what it was.
I said, What's what's thischord, Dick.
I'm sure he was really lookingforward to the rest of the gig,
you know, when I said sorry,what is a A circle of the line
through it?
(30:08):
A half diminished?
I went, What's that?
A minor seven flat five?
Oh, that.
Is that what it is?
Because I didn't have any ofthe kind of American theory
symbol stuff.
I've got it all now, you know,so I'm better than I used to be.
Play in Paul Higgs's Pavaneband, which is all scored out,
you know.
Uh not not everything, notevery note is scored out, but
(30:30):
there are quite a lot of veryparticular uh things he wants me
to play.
Okay.
And I've kind of met that, metthat challenge.
I've faced the fear and I gotthrough it.
Geoff (30:38):
Um, do you ever get nervous on stage?
Chris (30:40):
Uh not if I am entirely prepared.
If I get nerves, all they areare anticipatory nerves of
looking forward to to doing thisthing, which is intense, it's
super intense.
But when it turns intobutterflies because you're not
sure that you're going toremember the 28th chord in the
(31:00):
middle of Your Gold Teeth II,then that's no fun.
Yeah.
Geoff (31:04):
And uh what about when you play with you know musicians
that you might revere or sortof people like that?
In big venues or something likethat?
Chris (31:12):
No, not big venues, uh certainly sometimes uh
musicians.
I was a bit nervous by playingwith Tim Garland because he's
you know he's a bit of aheavyweight, but we got through
it.
It was it was alright.
I I think maybe 20 years agowhen I was playing with Tina May
for the first time, I was a bitstarstruck, you know.
So that that's a very strangefeeling to have when you're
(31:34):
playing with people that you'vebeen listening to for a long
time, and now all of a suddenyou're making music together,
you know.
That can it didn't make menervous, but it certainly um it
put me on high alert, uh, whichis probably a good thing, you
know.
Geoff (31:49):
A few other questions now.
What's your favourite sandwich?
Chris (31:52):
When I was at university, I invented a sandwich which was
wholemeal bread, marmite,cheese, and marmalade.
And before you all judge, I'mnot judging, I'm gonna try it.
I would try it.
It's quite an intense sandwich,and I I must say I didn't eat
it a lot and I didn't eat itevery day, but sometimes it
(32:16):
really hit a very uh unusualspot that you didn't even know
you needed hitting.
Geoff (32:20):
Yeah.
Good luck with that, listeners.
I heard um an interview withPaul McCartney.
Don't remember when it was, but
Chris (32:26):
Oh, that was the Adam Buxton one.
The Adam Buxton, yeah.
Yeah, where is his his uhsandwich is his hummus bagel?
Geoff (32:32):
Hummus hummus and marmite in a bagel.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one.
So I I went through and triedthat, yeah, of course.
You like Paul McCartney?
And is it does it delicious,isn't it?
Toasted bagel, marmite, andthen and then the hummus on the
top.
Chris (32:47):
All right, thank you, Paul, and thank you for
everything else.
Yes.
Geoff (32:51):
Right, um, what's your favourite movie?
Chris (32:53):
You won't believe this, Geoff.
I think it might be TheTalented Mr.
Ripley.
What?
You're just saying that.
I'm not just saying it, mate.
I didn't even know you were init.
Geoff (33:02):
I was in it.
Chris (33:03):
I think uh it's either it's a toss-up between that or
Vertigo.
We don't need to talk about whyVertigo is is brilliant, but
The Talented Mr.
Ripley is is um it's absolutelyabsorbing, I think.
The uh the three leads arecompletely credible and
completely uh compelling as youwatch them play out their their
(33:26):
peculiar game and their peculiarworld.
And then in the middle of themovie, Philip Seymour Hoffman
comes in and explodes the thingonto a totally different level,
and it's the most electrifyingentrance in any movie I've ever
seen.
Yeah where he drives onto thepiazza.
You just can't take your eyesoff him.
(33:46):
And because he's so beady-eyedand he's got his eyes on Tom
Ripley, it's terrifying, it'sthe most incredible performance.
So I'd go with that.
Geoff (33:56):
Wow, what a great movie! That was an amazing experience
for me to be in that film.
I mean, we just had a day inRome, just outside Rome filming,
but leading up to it, recordingall the soundtrack and the cues
and stuff, um, working withAnthony Mengela, he was such a
lovely man and really hands-onas well.
He wrote some of the melodies.
Gabriel Yarid was the composer,he was along in all the
(34:17):
sessions as well.
Wow.
And um, we actually did a tourof premiers.
So we went to America and didthe Hollywood premiere, played
at the party, and then we did itin New York and we did it in
Milan, in about 10 differentcities.
Chris (34:31):
Oh man.
Geoff (34:32):
And then we went to Isle of Wight, where um Anthony
Mengela was from.
Yeah, he's he's like anEnglish-Italian family who made
ice cream.
We stayed in his house andplayed at a private party with
Anthony Mengela.
What a lovely man, and what asad loss.
Oh, awful.
And my part is very tiny in it.
Chris (34:49):
Yeah, yeah.
But you're there, it is a greatfilm.
And that that that scene withJude Law singing uh
Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano.
Oh, is that an Italian kind ofstandard is just you know, it's
electrifying, it's fantastic.
Geoff (35:04):
It's a good film.
Okay, uh, is there a favouritevenue you like to play in?
Chris (35:08):
The last two venues I've just played in the Dean Street
uh Pizza when it's full andtheir interview, that takes some
beating.
Uh, but it was beaten, I'mafraid, last night at the
Corn Hall.
Everything about it was wasjust delightful.
Geoff (35:22):
Corn Hall in Diss, which is where we're close to where we
are now.
Um, is there a favouritecountry or city that you like to
visit?
Chris (35:31):
No, I am unafflicted with wonderlust.
My idea of adventure and escapeis to go to my caravan in
Norfolk.
Uh which which just keepsunfolding its mystery and beauty
to me and Tracy, my wife, andmy beautiful dogs.
(35:53):
Every time we go up.
I'd like to say, oh well, ofcourse, it's Nepal.
Yeah.
But I just I'm not bothered.
I'm a bit like you.
Uh I really dislike flying.
I really dislike it.
Geoff (36:05):
Right.
Chris (36:05):
And I think I dislike it so much I'm quite prepared to
never fly again.
Geoff (36:10):
So a final question is what's your favourite chord?
Chris (36:14):
I think it's the sus chord, the 13th sus chord, but
with the third in it as well.
So you're talking about thatone.
Some of the notes?
Uh well, there's various waysof voicing it.
(36:35):
And I I think that the the themost beautiful example of it
that I can remember is it's theopening chord on the Genesis
track called Dusk on their albumTrespass.
(36:58):
And it's done on acousticguitars.
It does sound like a veryguitaristy kind of chord.
That's the one.
Yeah.
It's the SUS with the thirdpresent as well, and it's it's
uh it sounds great on guitar.
And you if you listen to Duskby Genesis uh on their first
(37:19):
proper album, uh Trespass, youget that chord there.
I like its ambiguity, I likethe fact that it is suggestive
without being directional.
There's there's there's nothingthat this suggests it needs to
(37:42):
go to other than just to hoverthere and be.
Geoff (37:46):
Because it doesn't want to resolve anyway, does it?
Chris (37:48):
It's just it's just got a kind of life.
It's got its own little thing.
Mind you, in the in the Steelything, I've come across another
lovely chord that I love.
Uh it's and it's uh it's inYour Gold Teeth II, because
you've got uh after this chord,that one, which is it's C minor
(38:26):
thirteen sus four.
You've got the seventh, thethird, you've got the fourth,
and the thirteenth.
Yeah.
So I make that C minor elevenstroke thirteenth, and that's
unusual.
That's that that that's what Ilike about it.
Geoff (38:42):
Oh, we love chords.
Wow, okay.
Well, I think that'll do it.
Thank you so much, Chris, foryour time.
It's been great.
Chris (38:49):
It's been uh a delight.
I think it's a fascinatingthing that you're doing.
Because to to basically go andtalk to a bunch of musicians,
but essentially ask everybodythe same stuff.
But you're getting, you know,entire different worlds coming
at you from because everybody'sgot a different story.
Geoff (39:06):
Yeah, yeah.
Chris (39:06):
It's absolutely brilliant, really fascinating.
Geoff (39:09):
Well, there you go.
I'll see you soon.
Bye.
Pleasure.
Chris (39:13):
Bye, bye.
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