RETRO CHET QUARTET - 'The Life & Music of Chet Baker'

Presented by: Paul Pace

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0	LONDON : Spice of Life
P	Wednesday 8th August, 2018
N	7:00pm

Event information

The quartet was formed in the summer of 2017 to mark the 30th anniversary of Chet Baker’s Last Night in Tokyo Concert. Tonight's show will engage you with the facinating life story of this icon trumpeter and his beautiful music albeit often produced in tragic circumstances. There will be narration between the music + a back projection of images and movie footage to bring Chet's amazing story to life.
THE LIFE
Chet Baker started playing professionally in the early 1950’s working with the baritone saxophone player and arranger/composer Gerry Mulligan and then with pianist Russ Freeman.Baker was voted America’s top trumpeter by Downbeat Magazine in 1955 ahead of Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis and Clifford Brown and helped to establish a West Coast style dominated by white musicians. The pressure of living up to this elevated status helped fuel Chet Baker’s appetite for a potent mix of hash, heroin and cocaine. His drug taking influenced his professional playing career, destroyed three marriages and ultimately led to his early death in Amsterdam on May 13 1988.

Always short of money, Chet Baker is one of the most recorded, some would say over recorded Jazz artists in history and his discography includes albums with Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Paul Desmond. Chet Baker is also one of the most photographed Jazz artists due to the work of William Claxton and the subject of Bruce Weber’s posthumous biopic, Let’s Get Lost.

THE MUSIC
Thirty years ago, just two weeks before his untimely death, Chet Baker played a final concert in Hanover. In this anniversary celebration year of his life and music, we revisit four decades of Chet Baker playing with some of the finest musicians to be found either side of the Atlantic including on bass, Carson Smith and Ron Carter, on piano Russ Freeman, Hal Galper and Harold Danko and on drums, Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker and Steve Gadd.

We reference music from the Fifties (Deep in a Dream, The Trumpet Artistry of Chet Baker for Dick Bock, Pacific Records and Chet in Paris 1955 for the Barclay Label, the Sixties (Chet is Back, The Italian Sessions and The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964/65 including Tadd’s Delight by Tadd Cameron), the Seventies (1974 Carnegie Hall Concert with Gerry Mulligan and She was Too Good for Me with arrangements by Don Sebesky) and the Eighties (Last Night in Tokyo and the Stuttgart and Hannover concerts).
THE BAND
Clive Brown – Double Bass

Clive was a member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra before moving on to the Bournemouth Symphony orchestra as co- principal bass. He then moved to London to become a freelance player.

As a bass teacher Clive teaches privately and taught for many years at the Royal Marines School of Music in Portsmouth and in Oman for the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. His brief in the Retro Chet Quartet is to recreate the sound of some of the great bass players that worked with Chet Baker from the 1950’s through to 1988 including Carson Smith, Jimmy Bond, Ron Carter, Leroy Vinnegar and Hein Van de Geyn.

Geoff Varrall – Trumpet, flugel horn and cornet

Geoff has played trumpet for over fifty years, covering musical styles from brass band through to Jazz ballads and Be Bop. He set up the Retro Chet Quartet last year as a vehicle for recreating Chet Baker’s Last Concert in Tokyo for two performances at the Bulls Head in Barnes. The project this year is to capture the best of Chet Baker’s playing career which ended tragically early when he died on May 13 1988, thirty years ago. The bands most recent engagement at the Richmond Queen Charlotte Theatre on April 28 this year marked the exact 30th anniversary of Chet Baker’s Final Concert in Hanover. For our next concert in Laurens on the 31st May and 21st June at the Exchange Twickenham, Geoff will be leading the band through four decades of Chet Baker session and concert recordings including the Barclay recordings in Paris in 1955.

Peter Miles – Drums

Since starting playing aged 10 in a Brisbane school marching band, Peter has worked with an amazing number of bands and artists including, in Australia, Matt Taylor and Mick Rogers (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band), Terry Hannagan, Mick Hadley and Max Merritt; in the UK, Dave Kelly’s RockSalt, Bob Hall, the Jo Ann Kelly Band, the Bob Bruning Band, Alexis Korner, Errol Dixon, Johnny Mars Band, Rocket 88 with Dick Morrissey, Jack Bruce, Don Weller, Paul Cox, Danny Adler Band, Paddy Milner, Gary Fletcher, Top Topham, Shakey Vick, Diz Watson, Daniel Smith Band, John Idan Band and Radical Sheikhs. Peter has also backed touring American Blues artists Big John Wrencher, Homesick James, Lightning Slim, JB Hutto, Dr Ross, Cousin Joe Pleasants and Eddie Guitar Burns. Peter cites Steve Gadd, one of Chet Baker’s key sidemen as one of his key influences alongside, Buddy Rich, Roy Haynes and Joe Morello.

Caroline Cooper – piano and keyboards

Caroline started playing at an early age, not that long ago, and has played with Vasili Xenopoulos, Nigel Price, Matt Wates, Mark Nightingale, Henry Lowther, Abram Wilson, Chris Biscoe and Tony Woods. Apart from her brilliant piano playing, she helps to reduce the average age of the band by several decades. For the Retro Chet Quartet, Caroline brings back to life some of the great piano players who supported Chet Baker over four decades including Russ Freeman, Gerard Gustin, Hal Galper, Amadeo Tommasi, Romano Mussolini (the son of the infamous father), Bob James and Harold Danko. Caroline also teaches dance and Pilates. https://retrochet.com/
Photo Credit: William Claxton