https://www.londonjazznews.com/2018/02/review-matthew-read-trio-anecdotes.html?m=1

https://www.jazzviews.net/matthew-read-trio—anecdotes-vol-2.html

Decent size audiences too! Try and get to see them if you can…

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/anecdotes-ii-matthew-read-self-produced-review-by-roger-farbey.php?width=1440

So proud! So happy for them! What a great start.

Arthur Newell, Matthew Read, Benedict Wood

The Matthew Read Trio kick off their tour tonight with 2 nights doing the early set at Ronnie Scott’s.
Then they are zooming around the country playing music from their second album “Anecdotes Vol. 2”

Click here for tickets to the album launch party at Kansas Smitty’s on February 15th!

Touring schedule.

• January 25th – MRT – Ronnie Scott’s Early Set

• January 26th – MRT – Ronnie Scott’s Early Set

• January 28th – MRT – The Phoenix, York

• January 29th – MRT – Jazz at the Peer Hat, Manchester

• January 30th – MRT – Parr Jazz, Liverpool

• February 2nd – MRT – Jazz Café, Newcastle

• February 3rd – MRT – Zeffirellis, Ambleside

• February 5th – MRT – Kenilworth Jazz Club

• February 6th – MRT – Slouch, Glasgow

• February 7th – MRT – The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh

• February 8th – MRT – Tchai Ovna, Glasgow

• February 9th – MRT – Café Lento, Leeds

• February 10th – MRT – Pizza Express, Maidstone

• February 11th – MRT – Southampton Modern Jazz Club

• February 13th – MRT – The Spotted Dog, Birmingham

• February 15th – MRT – Kansas Smitty’s, London – ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY

• February 18th – MRT – Hot Numbers, Cambridge

• February 22nd – MRT – Café Jazz, Cardiff

• February 23rd – MRT – Mr Wolfs, Bristol

• March 8th – MRT – The Forge, Basingstoke

• March 13th – MRT – Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead

• April 11th – MRT – Speakeasy, Torquay

My lovely, proud and expanding family at Art’s graduation –

Enough of them  – now all about me –

note my special graduation day hairpiece. Styled by ‘Draggedthroughabushbackwards Hair’ of Knightsbridge.

I know we all focus on ourselves in photos but on this occasion the subtle peek of vest, the dead starling on my forehead

and the Trumpian push/lurch forward into the lens really does add class to the whole composition. Mercifully on this occasion my lower set of wonky, ‘hint of cappuccino’ teeth are hidden.

Goodness I am a dish.

I can feel a seasonal blog post brewing like trapped wind.

see ya

It is important that the entire world support my children in their initiatives – thus I unapologetically demand that all my loyal readers donate substantially to the fundraising efforts for The Matthew Read Trio – new album launch – European (I think) Tour. Only joking! ish…

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/matthew-read-trio-anecdotes-vol-2/

Remarkably they appear to have secured 20 dates already which is pretty good going for Contemporary Jazz – I believe some venues are the Jazz equivalent of an evening with the Matalan all Stars – but who cares. They have seven gigs in seven nights at one point. My dear friend Paul and I spent many years begging for money to do our art so why should our children fare any better. Beg, borrow, steal but for gauds sake never ever consider applying for a lottery grant unless you enjoy tackling forms with sentences that would confound even the most illustrious scholar of Proust for complexity. For 3 years we employed a wonderful woman called Sue, an Oxbridge scholar whose sole job was to fill in forms to help us fund our ego led projects. I suspect she is still dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s for that ill fated application. Those were not the days.

The river of life is flowing just nicely still – The Norwichians have had some great news on the employment front that I will allow them to share if they wish while the Londoners are carving up a nice slice of the late-night entertainment slots in prestigious hotels market. There is also a new album on its way from La Marini which we cannot wait for.

I ended up at the hospital with splinter in my eye. Straight from optician to hospital in an hour or so – amazing service. I was seen by a consultant, which struck me as over the top. He was one of those ones who goes for the Saville Row meets Hackney look. Vaguely cravatty and bracey . Nice bloke, bit like me he had re-educated himself in later life having started as an optician then went to UCL, medical school, surgery and finally back to eyes. Unbelievably attentive to what I considered to be a minor annoyance. The best bit was when I heard and felt the click of his tweezers as they teased out a tiny shard of plastic. Completely painless and very satisfying.

Talking of satisfying. I continue to be very satisfied with work. I have some very challenging students who remind me so strongly of me at Swanley Comprehensive. Basically, the school system has treated them like idiots and they have forgotten how to think. I like to think I help them erase the grim memory of school and its pointlessness and turn the energy they currently direct to imagining how to burn all schools down into making lovely sounds and videos that soundlike Enya. No to be honest that’s all fantasy, if ONLY they did want to burn ithem all down. I’m a liar. Its me that wants to burn them all down.

art will be  b mussed tomorrow – hurrrrahhh to art!!!!!!

here – Great Hall Guildhall London – strangely my dad worked here and i cried at a party when i was seven

Family are just dandy, Maria and I also – feral cat is now a tame, soppy cat, work is great, health not bad. I have a new American pay telephone just like the ones in the movies – nickels, dimes and quarters all make different noises when you post them – brilliant. The fresh married Norwich team are doing great things as are the London team who have a new (less crowded) and extraordinarily posh looking flat. What happened to Bohemianism I say? The Norwichers are still bathed in the undimmable light of that amazing summer wedding and I have the task of compiling all the photos into one castle cake  of memories. Something I hope to have done by the new year.

I am sat with the little ginger feral monster leaning on my arm and occasionally patting me as I type. This summer he evolved and is now completely domesticated – we never imagined this would happen and have awarded ourselves the family title of ‘cat whisperers’……..

Boy aren’t I boring when I am content. I honestly have nothing to be cross about, nothing to rant about, no drugs to blame – oh yes guess what I am off every drug except statins, blood pressure pills and stomach de acidfiers – no uppers, downers or sidewayers no poisons or anti poisons, do you know it’s a bit like not having cancer!

For the first time for a very long time I really like the teaching side of my job.  I have always liked the students but not the act of sharing knowledge with them. But now to be honest I find it pretty easy. When you are not having to do a load of other things to climb the greasy academic pole, committing yourself to being attentive to them,  a bit interesting and sometimes amusing is a piece of piss. Sadly I don’t suppose the students have noticed much of a difference but I certainly have. I look forward! As a colleague of mine said ‘moments in class are zen moments.’ Part of the secret is doing those really mundane things that I have always resented – like preparing the lesson, remembering to give them and you a break, having an extension lead, stapling your bits of paper together thus avoiding lose-leaf-lap-slippage, realising that students are not just young versions of yourself , having a bag on wheels to hold that extension lead, cleaning the whiteboard, -an unimaginable pleasure-,  tidying your desk, sticking stuff on the walls (now naked, after I turfed out every single book) they were their purely to show off that I read, but I don’t so I dumped the lot. Instead I have seven screens in my office. Four of which are permanently off but form a beautiful cold black still silence against my ghastly (must change it)  beige paintwork. I have one Belgium telephone to make me think of Brussels, no family pictures – another ghastly status symbol perpetrated by some academics – look I am smart and a family man or woman – I have a home and a mortgage and live in the expensive village near Hull where every second family live in an untidy house full of books and dusty objects from trips to exotic places where conferences with intercontinental bullshit pseuds titles are convened and their children go to the local primary schools with the outstanding from offsted. They walk, as a family, at weekends and encourage outdoor activities, just so important for healthy brain development. Upstanding (blah) and dull and boring probably just like their beautifully mannered brown lab or cockapoo (got cockatoo from the spellchecker, much more subversive) and the rotting wendyhouse in the garden that grandpa made before he lost the plot (he is now rotting too) hopefully speeding their inheritance – smug gits. Oh sometimes I really don’t like what I have become. Actually yes I do. I suppose that’s worse.

So the big news is that Gravityisahat (the band not the brand) is back and performing on Boxing Day in the village hall. This will be my 6061 birthday party thus we will perform a number of classics that hitherto (at many memorable school galas) have never gone at all well – being that they have more than three chords and may even have tempo changes – so given my seniority it is time to show ambition. Carlos Santana will never have sounded so much like Charles Ives meets John Cage meets a status quo tribute band who forgot to tune up – I can’t wait.

These are absolutely great – They were shot and edited by Rhea and show both the mehndi night and Avani and George’s wedding itself.