A trio of photos backstage at the Chris Ingham Quartet's Bury Festival Gig celebrating the jazz of Dudley Moore

Last night I had the pleasure to play with Chris Ingham's splendid quartet at the Headhunters Jazz Club for the Bury St Edmunds Festival in a show celebrating "The Jazz of Dudley Moore". Although I was the bass player on the CD (and wrote the liner notes) for most of the Dudley gigs the bass chair has been held down by the very fine bass-player Geoff Gascoyne. Thank you Geoff. However, the Bury Festival is a kind of "home match" for me as I'm still the house bass-player at the Headhunter's Jazz Club and so I was more than happy to be tempted out of my "retirement" to play the gig. A lovely time was had by all, thanks chaps.

Naturally as a young jazz musician, in addition to spending days upon days listening to records to learn the aural language of jazz, I devoured many books about the history of jazz and poured over the countless number of photos they contained—as well as, of course, over the classic photos which often graced jazz LP covers. The photographers whose work particularly captured my imagination were Lee Friedlander, Herman Leonard and David Redfern. Now, I'm no Friedlander, Leonard or Redfern but their work continues to inspire me to try to take the best photographs I can just as much as my bass heroes still inspire me to play the best bass I can. However, because the only jazz gigs I go to are the ones I'm playing on, I rarely get the opportunity to take out my camera and shoot. But backstage, just for a couple of minutes at yesterday's gig, for some reason I decided to take half a dozen shots of the drummer George Double and the trumpeter Paul Higgs sharing an anecdote, just three of which I share here. Enjoy.

All taken with a Fuji X100F

Just click on a photo to enlarge it

George Double (drums)

Paul Higgs (trumpet)

George and Paul share an anecdote.