Bracknell Jazz Festival
However, over the years Bracknell featured a wide range of performers from old-fashioned rhythm and blues musicians such as Alexis Korner or Jack Bruce, fusion stars such as Allan Holdsworth or Barbara Thompson, British modern jazz performers of all shapes and ages and a strong line-up of visiting stars such as Ornette Coleman, Stanley Clarke, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, George Coleman and many more.
Journalist Steve Lake wrote in 1976, "Up against the madness of American and Continental jazz festivals Bracknell had seemed, initially, a tranquil, even sedate affair.
Musicians and their families picknicked outside the main marquee, cocking lazy ears to the sound of Ralph Towner's delicate twelve-string arpeggios.
Mainstays of the Bracknell festival included the perennial compere and soprano saxophonist Lol Coxhill; free improvisers such as drummer John Stevens, trombonist Paul Rutherford, drummer Tony Oxley and saxophonist Evan Parker; many musicians in and around the Mike Westbrook orchestra, such as John Surman; South Africans such as Dudu Pukwana and Johnny Dyani; drummer Roger Turner, sax player Elton Dean, and other members of the so-called Canterbury scene; pianist Django Bates and other bastions of the British modern jazz scene.
The festival often featured a work especially commissioned for the event by the Arts Council of Great Britain, these included: Stan Tracey's Bracknell Connection in 1976, Mike Westbrook's The Cortege in 1979, and Graham Collier's Hoarded Dreams in 1983.
Other acts included guitarist Ralph Towner and a duet between Stan Tracey and Mike Osborne, which was released as the Tandem to good reviews.
Elton Dean's Ninesense, a nonet featuring Dean, Alan Skidmore, Harry Beckett, Marc Charig, Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti, Keith Tippett, Harry Miller and Louis Moholo, performing the Arts Council commission, a suite later recorded in a studio and released as Happy Daze on Ogun Records.
Other acts included the trio of British free improvisers John Stevens, Trevor Watts and Barry Guy, who returned the following year with pianist Howard Riley.
John Stevens' album Freebop was recorded at the festival the band including Evan Parker, and received a five-star review from Down Beat magazine.
The Arts Council commission was Hoarded Dreams, a big band led by bass player Graham Collier and including musicians such as Kenny Wheeler, Tomasz Stanko, John Surman, Ted Curson, Henry Lowther, Manfred Schoof, and Malcolm Griffiths.
An extended documentary and profile of Collier, based around the Bracknell Jazz Hoarded Dreams concert in 1983, was broadcast by Channel 4 on March 6 1985 [6] Another live recording made that year was the highly praised Gheim by the Paul Rutherford Trio.
