Women's Day Debut (& Family Jazz All Stars is Back!)

Photo by Steven Cropper

International Women's Day was the ideal opportunity for me to showcase a new group made up of three female musicians!  It was such fun to work with the creative talents of Tori Freestone (sax) and Alcyona Mick (piano) and our debut performance at The Vortex on 8 March was very much a success.  We chose songs written about women, for women or by women and the overarching theme was love.  The set included originals by the individual members of the band plus a varied mix of other material that included tunes from Thelonius Monk and Joni Mitchell.  Hopefully there'll be more from us in the future.  Watch this space...

And Family Jazz All Stars is back!  We're performing at the beautiful Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden.   Can't wait!

Sunday 03 April - Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, Essex (Tickets)

Fudge, Fauld and Family-Friendly Jazz

As you may be able to tell from the title, November was a varied and interesting month.

Family-Friendly Jazz

The first Family Friendly performance of "Family Jazz Allstars Featuring Juliet Kelly" for the EFG London Jazz Festival was a huge success.  We had a sold out Purcell Room audience who were very much up for joining in and singing along.  A crowd of children (and some parents!) rushed to the front of the stage for our encore and entertained us with their dance moves.  Hopefully this will be the first of many and that 2015 sees us performing this show around the UK - and even abroad.

Fauld

Then it was back on the rural road with Celebrating the Divas of Jazz.The first of two shows took place in the tiny hamlet of Milton.  

I am so grateful to Live & Local and Arts Council England for supporting these performances.  It's such a pleasure to perform at these village halls and community spaces at some of the most beautiful spots in the country.  Unfortunately due to the time of year we didn't see as much of the scenery as I would have liked but this was more than made up for by the warm responses of the audiences.

During the show I mentioned the fifties and how much I love the fashion of the era. After the first show a lovely lady called Ann came up to me and said that she had a vintage cigarette holder that she would love to give to me as it was something she inherited from her aunt and had no use for.  She kindly dropped it off at the hotel the next morning and what a beautiful thing it is!

Anne told me about her glamorous aunt Patricia Makin who even up until the day she died a few months ago, was the height of glamour, always immaculately turned out and wouldn't leave the house without her make-up!  It was a interesting co-incidence that the day of the performance coincided with the 70th anniversary of the RAF Fauld explosion. According to Wikipaedia (yes I know - but it's usually mostly right!) it was one of the in history and the largest to occur on UK soil.  Aunt Pat was one of the people working at the underground munitions storage depot at the time but fortunately was unhurt.  At least 70 people and 200 cattle were not so lucky.

Aunt Pat, tall, slim and elegant lived well into her nineties.  She was never married and one of the things inherited by her niece was this glamorous cigarette holder; unused because she could barely afford it and certainly couldn't afford to smoke but longed to own something that projected the glamour of her idols, Princess Margaret and Sophia Loren.

NB:  I don't intend to take up smoking although I love the idea of cigarette holders.  Am trying to think of an inventive way to use it... perhaps in a promo photograph - ideas welcomed!

Fudge

I seem to have become a fudge connoisseur!  This is the third bag of fudge I've bought during my travels this year.  But this time I have a foolproof excuse.  It's the perfect flavour - so much so that it would have been rude not to!

This beauty was bought in a fabulous Olde Sweet Shoppe in Eccleshall (I was practically squealing with delight when I saw the cornucopia of sweet delicacies on display!) where we spent the day before our performance at the lovely Broughton Parish Room in Wetwood.  This was one of the smallest places we've played - just 40 people live in the hamlet (mostly farmers) - but we had a full house of nearly 100 due to people coming along from the neighbouring villages.  A fabulous night!

Limited Edition EP

Just a reminder to get your limited edition Spellbound Stories EP soon as it will be removed on 31 December 2014.  Thanks to those of you who have kindly supported me so far.  It's really appreciated.  Every sale means I'm closer to releasing the full album next year.  Buy it here.

New Spellbound Stories EP is here... and another new project coming up for the EFG London Jazz Festival!

Yes, it's here!  In advance of the full album release I've decided to make three of the new tracks available for download.

There are 3 tracks on the EP:

1.  Little Things (inspired by The God of Small Things)
2.  Surrender (based on a theme from Middlemarch)
3.  Forbidden Fruit (with ideas from The Color Purple)
plus a radio edit (shorter version) of Track 1

I'm joined by a fabulous band who have played with the likes of Cinematic Orchestra, Pharoah Sanders and Mark Ronson.

If you'd like a copy of the music and to help me in my goal to finally release my next album after a long five years, then just click the link below and it will take you straight to the page where you can listen to the songs and buy the EP.

(EP is no longer available but you can now buy the full album below.)

https://julietkelly.bandcamp.com/album/spellbound-stories



And in other news, I'm pleased to announce that the producers of the EFG London Jazz Festival have asked me to create a new family jazz show for the upcoming festival in November!  I'll be performing some classic jazz favourites with an allstar band featuring Tony Kofi (sax), Kate Williams (piano), Ben Hazleton (bass) and Cosimo Keita (drums) at the Southbank Centre on Sunday 23 November.  Tickets available here!