{"id":323,"date":"2025-10-15T15:18:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T15:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/?p=323"},"modified":"2025-10-15T15:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T15:20:24","slug":"rat-and-the-jazz-cats-20th-august","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/10\/15\/rat-and-the-jazz-cats-20th-august\/","title":{"rendered":"Rat and the Jazz Cats – 20th August 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was \u2018Jazz at the Junction\u2019s\u2019 first foray into the vibrant, pioneering Modern Jazz and Classic Bebop era of the 1950s and 60s, the music pouring relentlessly out of the American recording studios of iconic record labels Blue Note, Riverside, Atlantic, Prestige, etc. at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And our featured band for the night, the excellent Rat and the Jazz Cats, treated us to a feast of intense and adventurous improvisation, inspired by those years that spawned so many  \u2018giants of jazz.\u2019 Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Charlie Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie, and so many more. They gave us the \u2018flavour\u2019 of that golden era of jazz, a \u2018live\u2019 incarnation in our intimate cafe space, as close a re-creation of New York\u2019s \u2018Birdland\u2019 Club as we can achieve seventy years on. Well, at least that\u2019s what we\u2019re aiming for, minus the mobsters and the molls !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when we host Will Robinson\u2019s \u2018Last Minute Five\u2019 in November, we\u2019ll become Harlem\u2019s \u2018Cotton Club\u2019 in the 1930s !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In two sets of a dozen tunes, we were treated to some \u2018classic\u2019 tracks from that era; \u2018Work Song,\u2019 \u2018Cantaloupe Island,\u2019 \u2018A Night in Tunisia,\u2019 Moanin,\u2019 \u2018Footprints,\u2019 \u2018Mr. P.C.\u2019 and \u2018Pent-Up House\u2019; erstwhile standards \u2018Summertime,\u2019 \u2018Autumn Leaves\u2019 and \u2018You Don\u2019t Know What Love Is;\u2019 Antonio Carlos Jobim\u2019s \u2018Triste,\u2019 and their exuberant contemporary interpretation of Duke Ellington\u2019s 1937 masterpiece, \u2018Caravan.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, they stamped their own musical personality onto the entire evening\u2019s repertoire, and in so doing earned the bonus of a rousing encore from the enthusiastic audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANT GREGORY (aka \u2018Rat\u2019), on both trumpet and flugelhorn, displays both the fiery qualities of a Dizzy Gillespie or a Clifford Brown, and the more serene and measured approach of Miles Davis and Chet Baker, with equal dexterity and adroitness, and the ensemble sound achieved with just the two front line horns is impressive indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KENT ROACH possesses a big fat, muscular tone on tenor sax, his impressive technical virtuosity employed in the enhancement and execution of his fluent improvisational explorations (echoes at times of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins) and disciplined ensemble work in harmony with Ant Gregory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COL HICKS on guitar plays an integral part in both the rhythm section, with some subtle supportive chord structures, and also solos impressively with fast, intricate phrasing, whilst displaying echoes of a firmly rooted blues influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROB OXLEY on bass guitar constitutes, with drummer Ben Griffiths, a solid, supportive rhythm section, firmly underpinning and \u2018driving\u2019 the front line horn section, but also impresses with his inventive and adventurous solo excursions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEN GRIFFITHS on drums provides a propulsive rhythmic foundation for the front line, whilst subtly complementing and accenting both their ensemble and solo contributions. He employs an explosive, constructive and imaginative narrative approach to his solos, utilising his kit to its full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m frequently quite bored with both bass and drum solos, in both jazz and rock bands, but was very impressed with the solo contributions of both Rob and Ben.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a mention for the audience, displaying both enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, the various and contrasting forms of jazz and blues that we\u2019ve featured thus far: the Mainstream strand of Jazz as purveyed by the internationally respected Alan Barnes and David Newton, the fiery Gypsy Jazz of Ben Holder and Stuart Carter-Smith, the Boogie, Blues and Folk of Bob Hall and Hilary Blythe, and the exciting Modern Jazz of Rat and the Jazz Cats.
David McPhie<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the audience enjoying an imaginative feast of intense and adventurous improvisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was \u2018Jazz at the Junction\u2019s\u2019 first foray into the vibrant, pioneering Modern Jazz and Classic Bebop era of the 1950s and 60s, the music pouring relentlessly out of the American recording studios of iconic record labels Blue Note, Riverside, Atlantic, Prestige, etc. at the time. And our featured band for the night, the excellent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Rat-and-Jazz-Cats-pix-from-David-1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buxtonjazz.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}