Buckley-Batchelor

National treasure Steve Buckley, alto – and pennywhistle – magician with iconoclastic big band Loose Tubes, furthers his telepathic musical relationship with all-embracing Tubes trumpeter Chris Batchelor in this red-hot supergroup.

The frontline Buckley-Batchelor pairing – one of the most extraordinary in jazz – has been a long and fruitful one, dating back to before Tubes, of which they were two of the founder members in late 1983. Their music has always been highly eclectic, reflecting their wide range of musical experiences, drawing on anything from Latin American to East European Folk, or from Congolese Soukous to free jazz. Previous projects include the internationally acclaimed and BBC award winning trans-Atlantic group Big Air (with Oren Marshall, Myra Melford and Jim Black), described by Chris May in All About Jazz as “…funky and unbuttoned as a chimp on acid”.

Zone B is their latest joyous and freewheeling project, presenting vibrant original music with an emphasis on groove and featuring a world-class rhythm section of guitar star Rob Luft (Django Bates, John Surman, Iain Ballamy), bassist Tom Herbert (Sons Of Kemet, Polar Bear, The Smile) and drummer Gene Calderazzo (Pharoah Sanders, Partisans, Randy Brecker).

Steve said: “My relationship with Chris is, without doubt, the most profound of all the musical relationships that I’ve had. We met through Django Bates, all three of us, as teenagers, looking for opportunities to play and to learn how to become jazz musicians, whether in rehearsal bands, evening jazz classes or just get-togethers round at somebody’s house. The first real Buckley/Batchelor frontline appearances were with Django’s house band at Johnny Edgecombe’s small venue in a mostly derelict riverside wharf in Rotherhithe. Later, when Chris went to study at Leeds College of Music and I was doing my last year at the university there, we formed The Chris Batchelor Sextet featuring soon to become Loose Tubes trombonist, John Harborne, Peter Beckmann on guitar and Andy Pepper, a fellow geologist, on drums. Back in London we worked together regularly in bands on the African and Latin American scenes as well as working on our own projects such as Orchestra Rafiki and The Buckley/Batchelor Quartet.