Jed Williams Tribute Concerts
THE JED WILLIAMS MEMORIAL CONCERT - 2006
St. David's Hall, Cardiff was the venue for the third annual tribute to Jed Williams. We were again pleased to welcome Carolyn Williams, members of her family and friends and the many jazz enthusiasts in Wales who have not forgotten Jed's devoted contribution to the development of this vibrant art form.
The concert kicked of with a set from the Kirk Lightsey Trio with Dave Whitford-bass and Dave Wickins-drums. Kirk, as ever, was in sparkling form.His humour and enthusiasm were infectious. His version of the Junior Mance composition " Goodbye Mr Evans" - a tribute to pianist Bill Evans, was masterful. Dave Wickins recalled the earlier days of the Glamorgan Summer School Jazz Course and how Jed was instrumental in reinvigorating this annual event that has become one of the most popular and succesful features of the jazz education calendar. One hour goes quickly when you are listening to such a well intergrated trio.
The second set featured the Osian Roberts-Steve Fishwick Quintet. Osian attended the Glamorgan Summer School Jazz Course and proved to be an exceptional student. It was not long before he was getting encouragement from Jed Williams who introduced him to Sonny Rollins at the Brecon Jazz Festival. After graduation from the Royal Academy of Music, Osian has travelled widely on performing and teaching engagements. The bands repertoire recalls the heady 60's and the music of Hank Mobley, Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons all skillfully performed and personally arranged. They show that you don't have to play "originals" all night to keep an audience engaged.
Our thanks to all the musicians for their fine performances and to the audience for
their patronage.
THE JED WILLIAMS MEMORIAL CONCERT - 2005
The Welsh Jazz Society has announced the programme for the second Jed Williams Memorial Concert to be held at St. David's Hall, Cardiff on Tuesday November 29th 2005. commencing at 8.0pm.
An all star trio will be opening the evening - THE GWILYM SIMCOCK TRIO featuring the remarkable young musician from North Wales at the piano, with PHIL DONKIN - bass and MARTIN FRANCE - drums. Gwilym is the winner this year of the "BBC Jazz - Rising Star" award.
Then the STEVE WATERMAN JAZZ ORCHESTRA will fill the stage. This ensemble, first formed in November 2001 comprises some of the very best musicians from Wales together with guests appearances from musicians such as saxophonist, Russell van den Berg. Jed certainly loved the band - he immediately engaged them for a performance at the Brecon Jazz Festival.
The Orchestra recorded a CD in December 2004 titled "October Arrival", Steve dedicated the music - all his own compositions - to his Father, Mitchell Waterman and to Jed Williams.
Here is a further opportunity for jazz fans throughout Wales to hear an evening of great music performed principally by Welsh musicians and, at the same time, pay respects to a Welshman whose dedication to the development of jazz music is sadly missed.
IF YOU MISSED IT ( OR EVEN IF YOU MADE IT) HAVE A LOOK AT THE EXCELLENT PICTURES TAKEN BY PHOTOGRAPHER MARTIN RUSSELL AT:
www.pbase.com/huckaback_photo/welshjazz
THE JED WILLIAMS MEMORIAL CONCERT - 2004
A NIGHT OF REMEMBERANCE - There was a full house for the first Jed Williams tribute concert held at St David's Hall Cardiff on November 16th. 2004.
Jed's wife, Carolyn, his mother, Rachel, family members and many friends joined the audience to pay respects to a highly revered jazz ambassador.
We were treated to some stimulating and original music performed by the eighteen strong WELSH JAZZ COMPOSERS Orchestra - surely an ensemble destined for wider recognition. The second set was captured by three more exceptional Welsh musicians - THE GARETH WILLIAMS TRIO with Laurence Cottle -bass and Ian Thomas- drums. The Welsh Jazz Society intends to make this tribute evening an annual event and aims to raise funds to provide a "Jed Williams - Jazz Education Award" to assist a deserving young Welsh musician with their studies.
IN MEMORY OF JED WILLIAMS -Artistic director of the Brecon Jazz festival who combined an all-consuming passion for music with an astute entrepreneuial streak - John Fordham, Monday November 17, 2003 The Guardian
Many of those who devote a life to campaigning for jazz exhibit a consuming passion for the music and an indifference to its economics. The few who understand both are capable of making a big difference to its rightful place in the arts. Jed Williams, the artistic director of the internationally acclaimed Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales, and founding editor of the magazine JazzUK, who has died suddenly aged 51, was one of those. Almost everything he attempted on the jazz scene worked, a rare success rate in an underfunded and sometimes marginalised field.
Williams was a jazz lover, an astute entrepreneur, and a devolutionist aware that good jazz could be found all over the UK and not just in the capital. He was an immensely influential figure for jazz in Wales and beyond, a wittily dignified presence who will be sorely missed for the sagacity and generosity of his counsel, the unsectarian inclusiveness of his programming at Brecon, and the loyalty of his commitment to the music and its friends.
The Brecon festival's Andy Eagle said: "To many, Jed was Brecon Jazz. His intimate knowledge of the music, his relationships with the musicians and his innovative programming skills brought an international reputation and great financial benefits...turning Brecon Jazz into one of Europe's finest jazz festivals, and one of Wales's landmark events."
Professionalism, enthusiasm, knowledge and determination were the qualities in Jed Williams that built up such a showcase for the talents of Sonny Rollins, Abdullah Ibrahim, Michael Brecker and many other stars, and even eventually secured that most elusive of jazz prizes, extensive TV coverage. I was lucky enough to observe those strengths as a colleague on JazzUK - the magazine Williams expanded from a worthy and rather grubby buffs' freesheet into an indispensable and professional information service for jazz in Britain.
He had a pungent sense of humour, but also exhibited qualities of discipline, even a kind of moral rectitude rare on the easy-come-easy-go jazz scene. To williams, whatever was worth doing was worth doing properly. But if his magisterial judgments could be sharp, they were always even-handed and constructive, and never skewed by the gossip or petty rivalries small artistic communities can be vulnerable to.
He was born in Cardiff and educated at the city's Howardian grammer school. There, in the mid-1960s, he met Chris Hodgkins, later to become director of the UK jazz information and promotional agency Jazz Services. Though Williams had left school to work in insurance, he already played drums, and had begun working professionally with trumpeter Hodgkins around Cardiff. Their group became a regular supporting outfit for touring American soloists in Wales, including trumpeter Wild Bill Davison and former basie saxophonist Buddy Tate.
In the early 1980s, Williams ran the jazz section of Cardiff's Sound Advice record shop, became administrator of the Welsh Jazz Society, and memorably, set up the city's popular Four Bars Inn as a dedicated jazz venue for both local musicians and bigger names from beyond the Welsh Jazz Scene.
In 1983, a local arts group in the Powys town of Brecon, enthused by a visit to Holland's Breda jazz festival, approached Jed Williams to programme something similar. But he never had a narrow view of the idea. He drove a grand plan for the project through hesitant funding bodies and council meetings, and was soon drawing some of the biggest names in jazz to Wales. Rarely a delegator, he handled almost everything, from contract negotiation to catering, accommodation and road logistics for sometimes downright ornery international stars.
When the Arts Coucil's mid-1980s network of regional jazz offices later began to unravel with changes in arts policy, Williams embarked on another initiative. He was convinced that the free local jazz newspaper they all produced, covering jazz in Britain from the grass roots up rather than the celebrities down, was a profile-raising service too useful to lose.
In 1991, Jazz Services hired him to pull together the remnants of those magazines into one inegrated publication with regional supplements. By 1995 it was simply JazzUK, a bi-monthly magazine primarily devoted to the British jazz scene and British artists, mainly supported by advertising and distributed to jazz outlets all over Britain. Williams, his wife Carolyn, and a handful of dedicated local helpers ran JazzUK out of a shoebox of an office in Cardiff's Castle Arcade, still the magazine's base today.
Jazz in Britain still depends on a backroom community of volunteers, but some inspirational and single-minded individuals are also crucial to focusing that enthusiasm and guiding it to where it can do the most good. Jed Williams was one of those rare jazz enablers, with a breadth of skills and knowledge irreplaceable by a single individual.
Carolyn survives him.
John Ellis Dowell "Jed" Williams,
Jazz director and journalist; born June 12 1952, died November 10 2003
