"I don't play in a way that has to be metered down to the numbers. I probably wouldn't be able to keep that up. My mind would start wandering and I'd be in another meter somewhere else. I never got into the rudiments. If I did I probably would sound like everybody else - maybe."

"Sometimes I take chances. I'll go overboard. We can play the same song all night, make something different happen within it, and take it to the moon. You won't know where we are. When you get that kind of understanding on the bandstand, it's the greatest feeling."

Photo (I) uncredited / Photo (II) by Ted Williams

"Color don't mean a thing to me. A man's a man to me. If he swings, he swings." - Sam Jones

Buck Clayton (left), Ben Webster and Benny Morton (right) outside The Famous Door, New York City, 1938. Photo from the Buck Clayton Collection

Photo by Collection Christophel

A concert of live composition, improvisation and bespoke musical instrumentation; presenting three solo sets, each with its own distinct sound world and original spatial approach

"It's hard for people to let go of what we've been socialised to believe is 'proper' music, but in letting go of preconceptions we discover the joy of music as a liberating and healing force." - Maggie Nicols

"The Gathering is a space, place and time where we can build up confidence in our creativity; where we can sit in silence, sing, play an instrument, draw, be poetic; prophetic; we could talk in tongues, talk to each other, to ourselves, talk to voices."

Yeah, it looks good, aye.