The Royal Train (and other adventures)

Since there's a wedding tomorrow, I thought I would highlight a small part of the expenditure of the Royal Family.

The Royal Family receive a travel grant of £7.3 million from the Department for Transport, £1 million of which they spend on rail travel.

The journeys detailed below all used the Royal Train for non-essential visits, not the performance of necessary tasks.

Below is the list of Royal Train journeys in 2009/10 that cost over £10,000 (so any £9,000 journeys will not show up):

• On 2 April, Prince Charles took the Royal Train from Euston to Oxenholme in the Lake District at a cost of £14,756. The most expensive ticket you could possibly buy on a normal train is £207.50.
• The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh took the Royal Train from Euston to Wigan on 21 May at a cost of £17,559 the most expensive normal ticket? £199.50.
• On 5 June, Prince Charles was back in the train, this time traveling from Aberdeen to Portsmouth. A long way, but was it really worth the £23,792 it cost?
• Charles was back in the train on 8 June, this time spending £23,830 traveling from Aberdeen to Gillingham.
• Prince Philip and the Queen took the Royal Train to Euston to Weymouth on 10 June, at a cost of £16,367.
• The Queen was back on the rails on 25 June, this time traveling to Edinburgh from Euston at a mere cost of £19,541.
• Charles borrowed the train on 6 September for trip to Kemble at a cost of £19,492 and again on 10 September to head to Exeter, at a cost of £19,747.
• October 8, Charles and Camilla used the train to commute from Scotland to London costing £22,447.
• Charles was back in the train again on 22 October, costing £21,665.
• The Queen used the train on 5 November to travel from London to Newcastle for the bargain price of £18,348.
• An essential Royal Train trip on 7 December to the Royal Variety Performance for the Queen cost £21,002.
• On February 3, Charles spent £36,185 on a trip to Llandovery.
• On February 17, £24,637 on a trip to Stoke.
• The Queen used the train on 10 March to travel to Exeter, costing £17,595.
• Charles and Camilla nipped to Oxenholme again on 30 March costing £16,209.
• The Queen travelled to Derby a day later, costing £13,596.

Given that the Royals are happy to fly from Moscow to London at a cost of a mere £13,070 (16 December), why is it that it costs over twice as much to travel to Wales on their train?

Is this really a good use of money?

Oh ok, I'd better make it jazz-related. About the same amount of money is spent every year on these jolly Royal train excursions as is spent on all of UK jazz.

Enjoy the street parties.

Source: British Monarchy

Southbound on iPlayer this week

If you missed Southbound's broadcast on Jazz Line Up on Sunday night, you can catch it all week on iPlayer here.

There's about 30 mins of our set from the Southport festival in February.

If Boris wants to attract tourists, he should invest in culture, not cable cars

Boris Johnson has announced he will be spending £50m on upfront funding for a new cable car to go across the thames.

This is not a serious transport solution, it's a gimmicky tourist attraction. Surely the experience of the Dome (one of the venues linked by the new cable car) should have taught us that pointless gimmicky tourist attractions don't work.

If the Mayor of London really wants to attract more tourists to the city, how about a bit more investment in culture?

This cable car will cost the same as 43 years of UK jazz at current funding levels (which are dropping all the time). Does that really make sense?

Tourists aren't attracted by novelty ways of crossing a river, they're attracted by the culture this city has to offer.

Gender is the real issue with jazz audiences, not age

There was a great deal of debate on this London Jazz Blog article about the age of jazz audiences, but in my opinion, the problem jazz has regarding audience demographics is to do with gender, not age.

Take a look at these figures for the audience for Jazz @ the North London Tavern (based on Facebook page membership) :

81% of members are under the age of 35, while only 32% of members are female.

This is obviously distorted in terms of the age demographic - there are far more 20 and 30 somethings using Facebook than 50 and 60 year olds, but actually it is a fairly good representation of our regular audience.

Our mailing list has an even greater gender imbalance: 75% male and just 25% female.

In my opinion, gender imbalance is the real issue the jazz community has to deal with, not audience age.

Thoughts?

Some perspective

Completely non-music related, but I think this is amazing.

In the 1996 the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed to a tiny, apparently empty piece of sky, and the resulting image contains at least 1,500 galaxies. Not stars, galaxies!

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1996/01

Flea Circus: Guy's & St Thomas' recitals

Flea Circus have been invited to give two recitals at Guy's & St Thomas' at lunchtime on 16 May and 29 June.

If you want to catch Flea Circus live, here is the updated gig list:

16 May - Guys & St Thomas' Recital Series, London 1.30pm
20 May - Jazz @ the Gallery Cafe, Bethnal Green 7.30pm
6 June - Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston Kingsland 7.30pm
21 June - Oliver's, Greenwich 7.30pm
29 June - Guys & St Thomas' Recital Series, London 1.30pm

Jazz @ the NLT in May

Another month has passed, and we've got another five fantastic gigs for you in May.

The first gig will be from pianist Barry Green, with an incredible band including Henry Lowther on trumpet. The first set will come from pianist Sam Leak and tenor player Alex Merritt's new project.

The second gig of the month will feature two trios; one led by saxophonist Josh Arcoleo (Kit Downes), and the other led by bassist Olie Brice.

For the third gig of the month, we welcome two extremely heavyweight bands. The fantastic Troyka will make their debut at the NLT, with the other set coming from Head of Jazz at the Royal Academy Nick Smart's new jazz / latin band.

The next gig will see award winning guitarist Alex Munk with his quartet including Josh Arcoleo, Dave Hamblett and Calum Gourlay, with the other set coming from saxophonist Chris Morgan.

The last gig of the month will feature two quintets: one led by guitarist Vitor Pereira, a great band including James Allsopp on tenor, and the other being a new venture from inventive pianist Tom Taylor.

May:

1 - Barry Green Quartet + Sam Leak / Alex Merritt Quartet

8 - Olie Brice Trio+ Arcoleo Trio

15 - Nick Smart + Troyka

22 - Alex Munk Quartet + Chris Morgan Quartet

29 - Vitor Pereira Quintet + Tom Taylor Quintet

As usual, doors 7.30pm, £5 entry.

Next Sunday

Next Sunday you'll be able to hear Southbound's set from the Southport Jazz Festival (featuring Tom West on bass) on Radio 3's Jazz Line Up at half 11.

However, if you want to hear Tom play live, he's also playing that evening with my quintet at the North London Tavern, along with pianist Sam Leak, tenor player Nadim Teimoori and drummer Dave Hamblett. Dave's also written a new suite for septet which he'll be premiering after our set.

Hopefully both options are more appealing than staying in to watch reruns of Top Gear on Dave..

Some things I've been doing

I've been busy with a few things recently: getting an application together for the Deutsche Bank Award, and gathering together some more music for Flea Circus.

I've nicked a bit of Mahler (Uri Caine does it so it must be ok) thanks to the amazing IMSLP library and I've been transcribing some Poulenc, which sounds really pretentious, but has actually been a lot of fun (and because it wasn't on IMSLP).

I've been working with pianist Tom Taylor on some improvisation exercises / pieces for his dissertation on free jazz / improv, which are sounding really nice. Hopefully we'll get a gig or two in the diary. Tom promises to publish it all in the form of a blog or website before too long, which should be interesting.

Flea Circus - recordings and more gigs

Flea Circus did its first gigs in March, and you can hear some live recordings on my website (scroll to the bottom of the page).

We've got a few more dates coming up, including the lovely Gallery Café in Bethnal Green in May (a new night curated by Simon Roth), and the Vortex (for my RAM final recital) and Oliver's in June. There are a couple of recital type gigs which will be happening soon, with dates TBC.

20 May - Jazz @ the Gallery Café, Bethnal Green

6 June - Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston Kingsland

21 June - Oliver's, Greenwich