What they're already saying...


"This is writing and improvisation on an extremely high level, played with love and affection - Performed, mixed and produced to perfection."

- Randy Brecker - Recording artist, 6-time Grammy Award-winner, Jazz and studio trumpet legend



"A beautifully meditative, ruminative chamber music experience. The Man with The Umbrella definitely has that magical 'rainy day' quality! The orchestral colours, the beautiful ensemble and production... Just great. I love the creativity!"

- Eddie Daniels - Jazz and classical recording artist, 6-time Grammy nominee. Clarinet, saxophone and woodwinds icon



"This is a truly impressive and memorable album."

- Jack Cortner - NYC composer, arranger and producer




From the Producer...

The interplay between a poet’s internal commitment to the emotion they wish to express and their external commitment to form “are not to be thought of as encountering in rivalry, but in creation.” So declaimed Robert Frost. A naive distrust of form was to be avoided. Nor should form be an empty vessel into which the poet simply forces content. The poetic form should instead be “something for me to hold and to put a strain upon.” “Deeds that count are liberties taken with conventions.”

Back on the comparative terra firma of a more familiar idiom, I get to pondering how elegantly Frost’s assertions align and resonate with the concept - the genre, if you will - of jazz and ‘scored’ music collaborations. Notation meets improvisation. Surely a gauntlet to be run, yes? An inherent incompatibility? An unstable formula? The clear and present danger of a confection? Well, thankfully, no, and those who both listen widely and care deeply have long recognised the ‘occlusion’ engendered by these peculiarly resilient strains of conventional wisdom. The collective genius of Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, Stan Getz’ Focus, Allyn Ferguson’s Framed in Jazz and Bill Evans’ Symbiosis, to name but a few, provides compelling evidence that to do other than grasp this supposed ‘nettle,’ and so invoke Frost’s progressive creed, would be to stare down a quite beautiful gift horse. An unbridled (to thoroughly wring that metaphor) and golden opportunity. Looking for unabashed artistic cross-pollination? Well, this is where it’s at! There’s no doctrinal ‘face-off,’ no unwelcome ‘heat’ or friction to be had here. Just the delicious frisson of an expectant tension and a feisty potential energy. The craft of the ensemble not imposing its discipline on the artistry of the improvisor, but actually inviting, even inciting that thing they do. Not a ‘rivalry,’ in Frost’s terms, but a creative foil. A framework that encourages dialogue by issuing challenges that, in turn, demand responses - movement and adaptation. It’s a delightful pursuit or chassé. The ensemble goading and driving, then yielding and supporting - its collective phraseology seeming to morph the strictures of the score, in the moment, to breathe gently on the solo flame. The fire of an idea.

Should one have occasion to travel this creative ‘two-lane blacktop,’ then who better to help navigate its tantalising to-and-fro than NYC trumpet great, Marvin Stamm. A linchpin of Quincy Jones’ epic Smackwater Jack (a life-changing needle-drop for yours truly, way back when), Marvin is the ‘multilingual’ musician. A bona fide jazz original, make no mistake, but a defining master of the collaborative recording realm, too, sought out by the great and the good for more than 50 years as expressive conduit for their ideas and ideals. Marvin brings a special erudition to the table. Stare with your ears into his tone and poetic meter. Dig, also, that indelible mark of the many composing, arranging and orchestration icons whose work he has graced - Stan Kenton, Thad Jones, Oliver Nelson, Claus Ogerman, Manny Albam, Patrick Williams, Maria Schneider, Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Marion Evans, Torrie Zito, Don Sebesky, Johnny Carisi - Marvin’s strongly individual creative voice, filtered through the ‘strata’ of that stellar studio experience, across the genre and down the decades. The World, at once, through his and others’ eyes. Now, that’s a trick!

And what of that creative foil? Well, it’s only an opinion, but right now, The Forgotten Fairground’s 360 virtuosic compass and 100 proof heart & soul are, quite simply, making the scene. Amid the prevailing haste and precipitancy of the age, their sublimely reflective countenance a true stand-out. Constancy. Focus. As an artist, repeatedly returning to the canvas - adding, subtracting, layering, nuancing, refining - they’ve again made the recording studio their spiritual home for the long haul. “That special space,” as Bonnie Herman would say - a world of limitless possibility and can-do. Without doubt, a creative crucible most fully exploited by those seeking a unique, lasting fulfilment. A process, too, as Ken Nordine observed, “akin to raising a difficult orchid” - cradling and nurturing a delicate bloom of spontaneous music-making, then ‘fixing’ it for posterity with consummate skill and patience. Not preserved, as in amber, but rather suspended, as a sphere, to shine in perpetuity. That’s the magic of the studio. That’s The Forgotten Fairground - timeless radiance and authenticity. An original spirit, moreover, possessed of an uncanny worldliness and a self-effacement beyond its years, doffing its cap to ‘the tradition’ in jazz and much besides. Subversive yet reverential, scholarly yet cool. Proof positive, I fancy, of a truly deep understanding of the creative equation and the many wonders it can yield. Deeds that count? Yes, indeed.

Andy Bush
Producer, The Forgotten Fairground