Geoff: 0:01

Hello, podcats. Geoff Gascoyne here. Today I'm in Watford to see a very old friend of mine, a fellow Blue Flame from the Georgie Fame band, a fantastic vibraphone player, and a great bloke. His name's Anthony Kerr. I've known Anthony for many, many years. Played together in lots of different situations. So we're going to have a little chat all about his love for the vibraphone, how he got started, where he is now, and loads of other things. So I hope you enjoy it. Anthony Kerr. Hello,

Anthony: 1:02

Geoff. Welcome to my little studio in Hertfordshire.

Geoff: 1:05

So you've got a lovely little studio here. I'm surrounded by um vibes and marimbas and keyboards and drum kits and computers and do you even play the drums? I'm not sure I knew that.

Anthony: 1:13

Well I started on drums.

Geoff: 1:14

Did you?

Anthony: 1:15

I went to a grammar school in Belfast, uh, Methodist College Belfast. It's actually a very old college. I found it the other day, it's older than Germany.

Geoff: 1:23

Older than the whole of Germany.

Anthony: 1:24

Well, older than the German nation. It was founded before 1871. But it was a very good school and it had a really good music department. And they did something that it was just amazing. They had instruments and they'd let you borrow one to try it. Which is just amazing. Because I thought I wanted to play trumpet, having played recorder in primary school. Oh, what will I do? And I the trumpet appealed to me in terms of being an idea of an instrument, but I didn't like playing it. I never took to it. It was like putting on clothes. You'd think they look nice, and as soon as you put them on, they just feel wrong. And I just didn't like the feel of the trumpet or my mouth or anything like this. But because the school had lent me a trumpet rather than my, my parents having to buy me a trumpet, it was no big deal for me to say, right now, let's do drums and percussion instead instead of that. So then I did timpani and drum kit. But even then that wasn't a perfect fit for me. It was only when I was at the Belfast School of Music I there was a vibraphone there. And as soon as I picked up the mallets and played it, I thought that was like putting on clothes that instantly do fit you. You just go, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna buy this one. So it's just a great fit for me. I was playing around on piano, I really loved chords, I would explore chords. Uh my dad had one of those uh open-up piano stools with books and music in it. And there was one book that explained chords, you know, it had a sixth chords and dominant sevenths and minor sevens. And I was sort of working these out and working out some of the tunes that we that I was playing with my brother and a friend of school. We had a little play uh band that played for dances and dinner dances and things. And that's where I learned standards. So I was there playing away on the drums, but I was much more intrigued by the harmony than by anything else, and sort of work out these tunes at home.

Geoff: 3:00

So what age were you when you discovered the vibraphone then?

Anthony: 3:03

Oh, not till sixteen. Yeah. You know, if you think about mallet instruments, is that they don't make small ones for children as much as you can.

Geoff: 3:11

I was just about to say I mean a six-year-old would be a big thing.

Anthony: 3:13

Well, it's yeah, because you want the notes to be sort of at waist height. Yeah. And waist height changes through life, does it, doesn't it?

Geoff: 3:20

So And was it jazz from the beginning with you?

Anthony: 3:22

Yeah, that's really where my interest lied most at the beginning. The two things that really captured my imagination. One was jazz standards, having played them at the these dinner dances and so on. I loved the tunes. You know, All of Me, All the Things You Are, Autumn Leaves, all these sort of tunes that I was getting my ears around.

Geoff: 3:40

All of the ones that are in Quartet Volume 1.

Anthony: 3:41

All the ones that are in Quartet Volume 1, and they are the ones that are and absolutely appropriately used in jazz education, because they've got lots of two, five, ones, and they've got all and they are the ones that people love to hear as well. Yeah, those so yeah, jazz standards and Bach. I always love Bach.

Geoff: 3:56

Yeah.

Anthony: 3:57

I think particularly if you're playing improvised music, there is a temptation and a slight danger that you always play within yourself. There's a huge gain to be had from notes on a page that say you must play these notes or you're not playing the piece. Because with improvisation it's not like that. You can you can do what you want and you can make a case for everything that you want. And there's a danger that you don't extend yourself or grow. But something like that, like Bach Partitas are uh and so on, it's very demanding. It's very exposed, and one note that isn't quite right, it's gonna uh really, really be heard and noticed. People know them as well. So there's tremendous benefit from from the discipline of of learning, memorizing those and and and working on those. And and still uh uh every single day I want to play something from Bach. I think it really balances uh improvising and jazz playing.

Geoff: 4:50

It it really does. I was about to say that. So getting back to the when you started, you when did you come to London? Then when did you uh

Anthony: 4:57

I came to London in 1988. I'd bet I'd spent uh almost two years in New York before that. I went to the New School, but only for a very I didn't graduate, I only went and I didn't intend to graduate, really, because from my thinking, New York was the school. And the the way I was going to get better was by playing with people who were better than me and by uh listening to the great players uh in the flesh.

Geoff: 5:22

So who did you get to play with in New York then?

Anthony: 5:24

Oh Larry Goldings, he was at the New School at the time, Leon Parker. He was very minimalist. I don't know what he's doing these days.

Geoff: 5:30

He's the guy without the hi-hat, right?

Anthony: 5:31

Yeah, he'll get a gig on a symbol. I remember I had this gig on a place called Augie's on Uptown on Broadway. It was quite near Columbia University, and it was a Friday night gig where we got paid fifteen dollars each.

Geoff: 5:42

And you had your own vibraphone then?

Anthony: 5:44

Yeah, yeah. Plus they they passed the basket round. So you'd get a very small fee you'd get, of course, inflation adjusted, I don't know quite what it would be today.

Geoff: 5:52

Yeah.

Anthony: 5:52

But um that was in the 80s, and then and uh and Leon came and did this gig. And when he turned up, he turned up with the tiniest little drum kit. It was a small bass drum, a snare drum, a hi-hat and a cymbal. And I must confess that I had a negative feeling. When I saw the tiny little kit, my first feeling was like, oh, doesn't he care enough to bring the a proper kit?

Geoff: 6:14

He's lazy or something.

Anthony: 6:16

Yeah, well, yeah, that was the that was my incorrect assumption. But that lasted about four bars because I heard the number of sounds he could get out. His thing was all about bring fewer drums and then really explore, get the maximum sounds you can out of them.

Geoff: 6:30

I think the analogy for that is is in software, have one piece of software and really know it really well.

Anthony: 6:36

Oh, yeah.

Geoff: 6:37

People are always looking for different plugins, actually look at what you've got and just

Anthony: 6:41

Well, depth rather than breadth in that way. And that I worked on on that in my studying there with Kenny Werner at the time. This is before he wrote his famous book, Effortless Mastery, which has become so helpful to so many creative people. He was all about zooming in, zooming in, zooming in. So you take one bar or one phrase, you transcribe one thing you really liked, and you play it over and over and over again. And e, and each time between you play it a couple of times, then you sort of do a reset. And by that I mean you sort of let go of any tension you might have accumulated in your shoulders and all that sort of thing. Just to make sure you you bring each time you're playing, you're bringing as clean as possible a perception to that.

Geoff: 7:19

Like learning licks in some ways, isn't it? You you learn you take something out of a solo and you try it in different ways. Is it Yeah?

Anthony: 7:25

You trying different keys and then and then you'd then you'd maybe so if it if it started on the the second beat of the bar, you would like start shove all the notes along the quaver. Like start on the and of two instead of on two itself, which like totally changes what the phrase is.

Geoff: 7:42

Yeah. Did you ever do much transcribing?

Anthony: 7:44

I did. I, I sort of felt I should write things down and I and I would do it occasionally, but it was never the natural thing for me. The process would be to learn it so that I could sing it along with the track. And then okay, the next question is can I sing that without the track? And you think you can more than you actually can. You know, oh yeah, I know that line. And then you just think, can I get every single note of it? Oh, actually, yeah, there's a note in there, I don't really know what that note is. I can't quite then I go and find them on the vibes. And then the job is to learn them on the vibes, learn all the shapes and so on, and then try and get the phrasing as close as possible to the original as I as I could. Yeah. Now, if I'm going to try and make my vibraphone sound like Chet Baker's trumpet, obviously there's a limit to how close I can get. But there's huge benefit to be gained from pursuing that, from trying to get it as close as possible.

Geoff: 8:34

I, I presume that process takes a lot longer though, doesn't it?

Anthony: 8:38

It's a bit like high-intensity exercise in that a very small investment in terms of time, provided that you really concentrate, yields a very great result. You do that for five minutes, ten minutes. It's quite hard work.

Geoff: 8:51

Yeah.

Anthony: 8:53

It is a bit like lifting weights in that way. It's limited how long it can be done at maximum effort.

Geoff: 9:00

Whenever I transcribed, I I always wrote stuff down. Right. Like every time. And I've got reams of solos that I've done. I think it was the act of writing not only the notes but where the rhythms are as well.

Anthony: 9:11

I think there's a huge benefit in that, and it's probably aided you as a writer, as an arranger later on.

Geoff: 9:16

Possibly, yeah. I I mean it's just interesting how everyone does it different ways, isn't it?

Anthony: 9:20

Yeah. Relating things to the written form of music, for me it's always felt like the brakes are on. When I either have to read the dots or write the dots. The vehicle is moving forward, but someone's got their foot on the brake. Yeah, and and that just means I even now I haven't yet worked enough to eliminate that barrier because that's just really, you know, extracted.

Geoff: 9:40

Being totally relaxed when you're when you're actually reading something. Yeah.

Anthony: 9:44

Also, there's a there's a physical aspect to this too, because the vibraphone, marimba, glock, xylophone, this family of tuned percussion instruments, we don't actually touch the instrument. Can that be said of anything else? You know, or there's some some instrument. Wind, anything that goes in the person's mouth, there's a tremendously connected and intimate relationship to that. Uh a saxophone, a trumpet. And and your eyes are much more involved in I mean if your body didn't move at all, then the relative position of the notes to what basically the shoulder. It's very, very easy to play a wrong note. So your eyes have got to be involved, and then you're asking to read as well.

Geoff: 10:26

Then you have to you have to have your music in front of you, and then you're looking down, then you're looking back up, and then you might lose the place in the music and all that stuff.

Anthony: 10:33

Yeah, I think mallet players just have to put more work into the reading side of things. The students I have at the Royal College of Music, almost all of them, because it's not a jazz course, but almost everyone there is a superior reader to me, because they read all the time. I mean I sometimes I walk in that place here, what they're practicing and playing, and I think, mmm, better up my game here. Which is good, because we all of us as musicians we need to be kept on our toes. The last thing we need is a gig that has got no challenge whatsoever. And that's uh this is sort of what happens to people who who do shows is they end up feeling that they couldn't do another gig. So a combination of the good money that they get from the show that makes other gigs less attractive. And why would I drive up the motorway for half the money, kind of feeling? And and also then not getting challenged, it requires more or more will and determination from a person just to tread water.

Geoff: 11:27

Sure.

Anthony: 11:28

One of the beauties about a freelance life is that when it's nicely balanced, you're getting just fit, challenged to the right.

Geoff: 11:35

I think that's what we all aim for, isn't it? A healthy balance of our work. Yeah.

Anthony: 11:38

T You're in two or three different bands and you get a little bit of other sort of one-off projects and things like this, and then you've got time to pursue your own, whether you just want to transcribe solos or whether we do write pieces or or as you've done, uh develop fluency uh on another instrument, which you've done on guitar.

Geoff: 11:56

I'm trying to. So when you came back from New York and you moved to London, did you? Yeah.

Anthony: 12:01

Yeah, summer of 1988. First thing I did was go down to the 606 or Six Club. I called Christine Tobin, who was being from Dublin, I'd known before, and said, Where do you go? Where does a person go or to sit in and hang out or anything? So I brought my vibes in my estate car and drove down to the 606 Club, and Simon Purcell was playing there that night with Steve Watts. Looking back, it was kind of I had a nerve to ask if I could play a tune, you know. But when you turn up with the vibes asking you to play, you're showing a lot of willing, aren't you?

Geoff: 12:29

A lot of commitment right there, isn't it?

Anthony: 12:31

And the magic word is New York, you see.

Geoff: 12:34

So hold on a second, you brought your vibes to the club.

Anthony: 12:37

I can't remember if I asked first or brought them downstairs first.

Geoff: 12:40

Oh my god.

Anthony: 12:41

But you know, it wasn't a jam session or anything, but they let me play the last set. Right. So I don't know, it was good, it was nice.

Geoff: 12:49

So it brings me round to Quartet, the apps that we're we're talking about. When did you discover the Quartet app?

Anthony: 12:54

Well, I've got to mention the SessionB and app.

Geoff: 12:56

That's for people who don't know, those are the loop-based apps that came before Quartet. Yeah.

Anthony: 13:00

Yeah.

Geoff: 13:01

Of which there are, how many?

Anthony: 13:03

Oh, there's a bunch. There are four jazz ones, aren't there? And then there's jazz two jazz funk ones. And there's there's rock, there's ukulele, there is EDM, there's deep house, there's blues, there's country.

Geoff: 13:15

Wow. So you use those, you use those previously, do you still use those?

Anthony: 13:18

I still use those on a daily basis. The thing is about Session Band, you can build your own tune. But the accompaniments, they're not tailored to the specific tune. Whereas in the Quartet apps, Graeme Harvey is an amazing pianist and wonderful accompanist, and he knows all those tunes. So he will play the piano hearing the melody in his head of that specific tune. So it's not just like Lego blocks of chords that build up. Well, what's wonderful about the Quartet apps as opposed to Session Band apps, is that the the like the rhythm section is playing the tune that you are learning. So it's just totally specific. Yeah. So if you want if anyone wants to learn a tune, you're play you're playing with people who know that tune. When he's accompanying, he's always got the melody in his head.

Geoff: 14:03

Yeah, I and I'll tell you another interesting thing about this because we always play an intro. So usually it might be the last eight or something. We play a little game of can you guess what the tune is from the from what Graham plays as an intro. Yeah. And it's quite easy quite a lot of the time because he's hinting at the melody. He's um, as Alan Barnes phrase, paraphrasing.

Anthony: 14:23

Yeah.

Geoff: 14:23

Which I love that term, paraphrasing.

Anthony: 14:25

I mean he's he's done so many gigs of accompanying people. I mean, he's here, he knows the tunes easy to do.

Geoff: 14:31

So he's setting it up for the soloists, isn't he?

Anthony: 14:33

Yeah, yeah. I recommend it to all the students, they all love it as well as much as possible.

Geoff: 14:37

So I asked you to pick a standard from the 500.

Anthony: 14:39

Uh yeah.

Geoff: 14:40

And y what did you pick?

Anthony: 14:41

Well, I must admit, I picked one beginning with the letter B because I, I, I didn't get down the full list. I thought I thought the first one that grabs my attention, and I picked Bolivia by Cedar Walton.

Geoff: 14:52

What is it about that tune that you like particularly?

Anthony: 14:54

Well, you know, it's it's a 50-50 tune. It's a tune of two halves. It's got a modal half. The first half, which is over a G7, is very like playing Impressions or the A section of Impressions. But it's not like playing Impressions because it's got the second half, which is lots of two five chords, lots of key changes, the harmony, just weave. And and I love both things. I love that when you're playing modally, but the fact that the chord isn't changing means that you can go further and further out from it. Uh and then when it gets into the part that the chords are weaving through harmony in that couple of bars in each key type of way, then you're into the sort of slalom of carving a really nice path through those chords.

Geoff: 15:39

So which do you prefer?

Anthony: 15:41

No, it's it's a balance of the things. It's like asking, do you prefer breathing in or breathing out? You know.

Geoff: 15:46

But do you find it easier to play on one chord or do you find it easier to play on changes?

Anthony: 15:51

They're both easy if the practice has been sufficient to create that ease of of familiarity, right? So there's really no such thing as a difficult key on the vibraphone. If there is, it's the key of C, because that's the most difficult major scale by far. You ask any mallet player.

Geoff: 16:10

Is it? Well,

Anthony: 16:11

About 100%. Because with the other ones, you could your your mallets are you could do the fact you've got to reach further away for the black notes. For the black notes, let's call them, the sharps and flats. Yeah. The um you're drawing circles as you move up. You've got these nice circular shapes.

Geoff: 16:26

Ah, okay.

Anthony: 16:27

Whereas when you're playing a scale of C, it's all the it's all, you know, all the white notes of the piano, the notes that are really close to you. Right. And the mallets are sort of getting in each other's way. And it's none of these nice circles. Yeah, because you've got to move your body up and down the vibraphone as well. This is this is one of the

Geoff: 16:43

It's the physicalities of actually playing the instrument, isn't it?

Anthony: 16:46

Yeah, again, if a person's balance isn't very good for whatever reason, probably because their feet are too close together, that's gonna create a balance challenge once you get up the top end. Right. And uh you know, they probably won't fall over in a spectacular manner, but it they probably will play a wrong note. Well, I mean any instrument has got all sorts of challenges to it.

Geoff: 17:07

Yeah.

Anthony: 17:07

It's just they're just they're different. There's so much you can do with a tune like that. I mean, there's a that's already going on, so you can join in and do that, do exactly that with it, or you can kind of hint at it a little bit, you know. And then there's of course just there's like a that sort of thing as well. But the piano's there, you know, it's uh I generally when I practice these on my own, I'd go without the piano. Right. After saying all those lovely things about Graham, because it is beautiful. And I if I'm learning a tune, I will use the Quartet app with the piano.

Geoff: 19:20

Yeah.

Anthony: 19:20

Absolutely. Yeah. Because I'm there at that point I'm wiring the melody in the whole thing.

Geoff: 19:24

Do you want to try do you want to try it without the piano?

Anthony: 19:26

I'd love to, yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, because I'm going to put more chords in. The vibraphone, sometimes you're playing in a very linear way. All right. Like the Milt Jackson idea. Two mallets will do. I you know, two mallets is is absolutely fine for that. I I'm just used, my hands are used to holding four. So even if I'm playing melodies, I'll still hold four mallets. But I might go be doing things like that just as if I were a horn and never playing two notes at once. But other times it's you know, you're using it like a small piano and they're sort of more in the Gary Burton way.

Geoff: 20:01

Is that difficult to play play with four mallets? Because I'm watching you holding it. Well, you're kind of splayed out in sort of little V's, aren't you?

Anthony: 20:07

Yeah, well it's difficult at first because your hands aren't used to it, you're asking it to do, but you have to practice all sorts of things. I'll always do

Geoff: 20:15

the right hand. Yeah, you can see. You're tweeting your hand sort of. Yeah, you rotate, you rotate.

Anthony: 20:21

So uh well, but this would be much better done visually because I could point the mallet right at the camera, and if I pointed the mallet right at the camera, you'd see a straight line from the mallet head up the shaft of the mallet, right up my forearm, right up to my shoulder. And then the other one rotates around that as a as if it were like a like an axle on a car. So there's a lot of kind of when you first pick up four mallets, the hardest thing is to control the ones that aren't playing the notes because they're just flopping around hitting things all over the place. But as with any skill, you just give it the time it requires.

Geoff: 20:51

So you always hold four, you never just play with two, do you?

Anthony: 20:54

Pretty much. I always hold four. Pretty much.

Geoff: 20:57

Right. I'm gonna get the uh version up without the piano.

Anthony: 21:00

Okay. Here we go.

Geoff: 22:34

I love the way you built that solo then. Um with the chords and the it was it just had a lot of um shape to it. How did you feel?

Anthony: 22:41

I I love playing without piano in for that reason. I mean, I mean when I always miss the piano at certain moments in the solo when I go into lines, especially at the top of the instrument. I'm always I so often I think, oh I'd love a nice chord just about now. But what it does give you it gives you that real space. I mean the vibraphone's quite a small instrument. It's it's only three octaves long.

Geoff: 23:00

It's kind of like guitar in some ways, isn't it?

Anthony: 23:02

It's only got 37 notes.

Geoff: 23:04

But in terms of sound, it's it's similar to the guitar, isn't it? It's uh you know, not like a piano that has a piano is enormous.

Anthony: 23:10

Yeah. Piano's just got an enormous range. And the piano, wonderful though it is, and it's the integral part of the jazz quartet and jazz small groups as well as big bands and of course and so on. So many ways it's the ultimate instrument. But the vibraphone having chordal potential, harmonic potential in that way when you play it with four mallets. Once you make that space, it's just all sorts of ideas come and all sorts of things can flow into that space.

Geoff: 23:42

Alright, so um I've got a few questions for you just to finish off. The first one is do you have a favourite album?

Anthony: 23:51

No.

Geoff: 23:53

Have there been albums that have influenced you in your of course.

Anthony: 23:58

But uh if you asked the question in a different way, if you said if you could only take one track with you, what would it be? I have a clear answer to that one.

Geoff: 24:09

Okay, go ahead.

Anthony: 24:10

And it would be John Coltrane playing Transition. But if you said I could take maybe you know, half a dozen tracks to uh there'd definitely be piano trio in there, Brad Mehldau, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson's stuff with Ed Thigpen and Ray Brown would be in there among the top nine tracks as well, as would a bit of Shirley Horn and um some Bobby McFerrin.

Geoff: 24:40

Is there anything particular, particular um a vibraphone thing that an album that you may have influenced you? or The stuff with Bobby Hutchison playing in those large small groups on Blue Note, those ones like uh with Joe Henderson and and those sorts of bands I would put at the top of the list. But some Milt as well. It was Milt Jackson was the reason I got into the instrument in the first place. His sound, the of the Deagan vibraphone, is just uh unbelievable and it's so swinging. Is there a favourite musician alive or dead that you would like to play with, would have liked to have played with?

Anthony: 25:17

I suppose if I had to choose one, it would be Coltrane. And it would be some situation where that I had the opportunity to really use that intimate, quiet, vibraphone uh sound uh that we more explored in the take without piano.

Geoff: 25:36

Like you're you're thinking of Coltrane ballads, are you? Well you know the ballads album, you're not thinking of Transition, are you?

Anthony: 25:44

It would be Coltrane's music. Yeah. It would be following his direction. It would be a scenario where he said, I want that vibraphone sound, and he had an idea, and then what he wanted to do with it.

Geoff: 25:58

Right.

Anthony: 25:59

That would be the the uh ultimate scenario.

Geoff: 26:03

Do you have um any memorable gig moments, any highlights, career highlights, or anything that you can't?

Anthony: 26:08

Count , countless ones. A lot of them you were on the stage with me.

Geoff: 26:11

Is that right? Okay. Tell us about that.

Anthony: 26:13

Well, I don't know how many years it was, Geoff, but many, many years.

Geoff: 26:18

We were together with the Georgie Fame.

Anthony: 26:24

Yeah, it was a long time. Every, and it was uh quite a lot of gigs per year as well. It was three weeks on the late shift at the old Ronnie Scott's. Yeah. Where on Saturday night before you started work, you could buy the Sunday papers. And you know, we we came off stage or qu, half past two on on Saturday.

Geoff: 26:45

In those days it was a support band, main band, support band, main band.

Anthony: 26:49

Yeah. So I mean the thing about that band was so we did so many gigs over so many years that it just became, talk about learning through repetition. We could miss, we the flight could be delayed, and the day could just go horribly wrong to the extent that we just managed to scrape it to the gig five minutes before the concert starts. And the band would just nail it through the through that sort of collective mind. I actually think that that's sort of connected to where the birds can all fly and change direction at once without bumping into each other, all that sort of stuff. You just become a group mind. You see this in great sports teams as well.

Geoff: 27:25

Yeah.

Anthony: 27:25

And I think that's part of the reason it's so thrilling for people to watch.

Geoff: 27:29

Yeah.

Anthony: 27:29

And then they're interviewed later and they say, Oh, well, we just sort of knew where each other were. And it just comes from work, work, work, work, work together over huge periods of time.

Geoff: 27:37

Yeah.

Anthony: 27:37

You know, I never thought, how many years? Twelve years. So just the strength of that and the knowledge that that's there for you as soon as you go you're on stage together.

Geoff: 27:46

Yeah.

Anthony: 27:47

That just helps you smooth over all the other bumps in the experience of travel and ups and downs.

Geoff: 27:52

Yeah, it's a powerful thing, isn't it?

Anthony: 27:53

Yeah, it's an amazing thing. And yeah, I consider it a huge privilege to have to have witnessed that, to have been part of that. Because it doesn't happen much the this this time in music. Bands used to do, like the bands we grew up idolizing, used to do how many gigs a year would they do? Two hundred and something. More days working than off. And that's you know, part of the reason that they just became so incredible. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's not easy these days.

Geoff: 28:21

Um what was the last concert you saw?

Anthony: 28:25

Last concert I saw. Um, I might have been Nikki Iles at Cadogan Hall with uh a German big band. Can't remember it. NDR?

Geoff: 28:35

NDR.

Anthony: 28:35

NDR, yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic gig. Were you were you at that?

Geoff: 28:40

No.

Anthony: 28:41

It was amazing. And Cadogan Hall, shouldn't say this. The secret will get out. You get the best sound if you get the seats that are definitely not the most expensive. They're among the cheap. I think they're maybe in the cheapest. It's upstairs, right up, right on the balcony, right on top of the band. You're closest to the full

Geoff: 29:00

Is that where you were sitting for that?

Anthony: 29:01

Yeah, yeah.

Geoff: 29:02

Amazing.

Anthony: 29:03

Right at the front. It was fantastic, you know.

Geoff: 29:06

Um, my next question is um do you think you have a musical weakness?

Anthony: 29:09

Yeah, anything I haven't practiced.

Geoff: 29:12

So we talked about this earlier, didn't we? Reading and stuff.

Anthony: 29:15

Yeah, the the things I've practiced least would be the biggest weaknesses. So top of those is instruments I've never touched.

Geoff: 29:22

Yeah.

Anthony: 29:23

Like the tuba, that's that's definitely very weak.

Geoff: 29:27

So do you go do you ever get nervous on stage?

Anthony: 29:30

Yeah.

Geoff: 29:30

Often or sometimes?

Anthony: 29:32

If if I've if I feel underprepared, so I try and avoid that.

Geoff: 29:36

Okay, I've got a couple of silly questions now. Do you have a favourite sandwich?

Anthony: 29:41

I've gone low carb, so I've gone no bread. It would be something good in the middle without the outside.

Geoff: 29:47

So effectively not a sandwich.

Anthony: 29:49

Yes. You have to kind of redraw the definition. Yeah, no, I I changed I changed my diet out of fear of COVID and I got some health benefits. And uh some sort of gone a bit obsessively health habit, you know.

Geoff: 30:05

That's a good answer. That's a great answer. Um what about a favorite movie?

Anthony: 30:09

Favorite movie? This is like I've given the choice to over to only ever choose one movie again. Well, it'd have to be something with good music in. Depends how many tunes I was allowed on the aforementioned Desert Island. I don't know. Keep either the Godfather or The Sting.

Geoff: 30:23

What about a favorite country city?

Anthony: 30:26

I suppose New York. I haven't been there in, in far too long.

Geoff: 30:30

And finally, a favorite chord?

Anthony: 30:32

A favorite chord? One chord forevermore and no other.

Geoff: 30:38

Not necessarily, but just one. One that you see that you you know.

Anthony: 30:43

Because chords don't exist on their own in a way, you know. They they they're they're like they're more like pr flowing processes than things.

Geoff: 30:51

So I mean if you're composing, I mean we haven't talked about composing, but when maybe we will, but a good s a good starting place would be a good seven.

Anthony: 31:00

Minor 7, yeah.

Geoff: 31:00

Cool. Well, there we go. I think uh that's been fun. I hope you enjoyed it. Um

Anthony: 31:05

It's been amazing, and uh definitely enjoy these apps. Thank you.

Geoff: 31:09

Thanks so much for your time today.

Anthony: 31:11

My pleasure.

Geoff: 31:12

And uh great playing. See you for another play very soon.

Anthony: 31:15

I hope so. Look forward to it, Geoff.

Geoff: 31:18

All right.

Announcement: 31:18

Thank you for making it to the end of another podcast. Please subscribe if you want to hear more of them as they land. The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK music apps production. Quartet for iOS, taking your jazz play along to another level. Search for Quartet on the App Store or find out more at QuartetApp.com.