I was walking in the local park on Sunday 1st November last year when my mobile rang.

It was Laura calling from the 606 Jazz Club.

I had booked tickets for Saturday 7th to see Brandon Allen. I knew booking was a risk, we were expecting to hear that a third lockdown was due to be announced any day.

Sure enough it was announced on Monday, and the Lockdown would start on Wednesday 4th.

 

“I’m ringing round to say we’re trying to juggle the schedule. If we can make the numbers work, Brandon’s available to play on Tuesday….

 

“Would you be interested? We’d like to go out with one last hurrah!”

 

I said yes immediately, we had little else in the diary that week…..

 

The 606 promised to call me the next day to let me know the outcome. In fact they rang again about an hour later – the show was on!

 

The Brandon Allen Quartet

 

 

‘Brandon Allen is arguably the most exciting tenor player in Britain today’  Jazzwise

 

We knew Brandon Allen as the saxophonist with the Kyle Eastwood Band. An expat Australian, he’s a highly regarded jazz musician in his own right, and the 606 was showcasing his own band, the Brandon Allen Quartet.

He’s played with many big names, and has also had an occasional side hustle playing with The Blockheads.

This show would take as its subject another sax player, Stanley Turrentine, featuring his work on the Bluenote and CTI labels, along with Turrentine’s renditions of rock and pop hits of the 60’s and 70’s.

 

 

The 606 Club

 

My first time at the 606 was almost exactly two years before, to see two more members of The Kyle Eastwood Band: Quentin Collins on trumpet and Andrew McCormack on piano.

 

 

Quentin Collins described the 606 as ‘the most authentic jazz room in London’, and he’s not wrong.

Even with social distancing in place we couldn’t have been much more than two metres from the stage. It’s all you would expect a jazz club to be, an intimate space in a basement.

 

 

This time the club staff were very welcoming, and handled all the restrictions and precautions really well and without fuss.

(We enjoyed a chicken curry with a bottle of wine – remember those days?)

Between sets we were able to browse some CDs and were advised by the manager to choose Brandon’s ‘Gene Ammons Project’, the closest to the style of music we were listening to that evening.

The last year has been a tough time for musicians who want nothing more than to play for a live audience, and for the venues that exist to enable them to do just that.

 

In the meantime, the 606 are broadcasting a series of state-of-the-art streamed performances.

To view their upcoming Live Streamed Performances, click here:

 

https://www.606club.co.uk/account/videos/live/

 

606 Online Premium Membership costs £12.95 a year, and allows you to access an archive of past performances, and a discount on 606 Live Streams.

The Brandon Allen Quartet live stream is showing again tomorrow, Saturday 20 February at 8pm, and will cost you the princely sum of £5.95.

You can also access his concert from August 2020 for just £3.50, and all Pay to View fees go directly to the musicians.

 

 

 

 

I’ll be there to enjoy some ‘swing, invention and stunning instrumental technique’ from saxophonist Brandon Allen….