Hep Cats

Last night I was invited by my friend Chris to join him in seeing the Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith. He was appearing, along with pianist Brian Kellock, at the Cinnamon Club in Hale. This is a strange little place. As we were grooving to some mellow modern jazz, we could hear the thump of the bass from the dancing class below.

I've never been in daylight (my only other experience of the venue was a pair of photographers who specialised in jazz musicians, which was also at night). It's a large building which looks like it might have started life as a dance hall, or village hall of some sort (quite a substantial one). There is a sizeable space downstairs with a dancefloor and stage, and upstairs (where we were last night) is the more intimate 'lounge'.

A small bar area, next to a dancefloor cum performance space which last night had a number of round 'bistro' tables and chairs, with a grand piano, and stool for Tommy Smith to the side, rather than at the end of the rectangular space.

I had contacted the venue on a couple of occasions to ask if it was ok for me to take photos (you don't think I'd miss out of the chance to take pictures, do you?). I only actually spoke to someone once and she didn't really know, and suggested I ask the performers. Which I did. I took along a couple of cameras and Tommy Smith was very happy that I did as long as I didn't get in anyone's way. Fair enough.

It being a small intimate venue, the lighting was pish so really had to open up the aperture and push the ISO. I used two cameras, my Leica Monochrom (with a 50mm f2 and a 35mm f2) and my Fuji X-T1 (with 56mm f1.2). The Leica is wonderful, and the 50mm lens is too, but I found getting the focus spot on wide open at f2 was a challenge. The autofocus on the Fuji was much better for conditions, even at F1.2. In both cases I took some test shots to work out what the best settings would be, and then worked in manual mode. With little light, and some of the compositions I knew I wanted to try it was much the best way. I was pretty certain the lighting conditions would change would be fairly constant. I only blew highlights on a couple of occasions.

If you don't like modern jazz, then look away now. The music was sublime. What surprised me was how much spit is involved in playing the sax. I really quite liked the bit where Tommy leaned over the piano and played 'onto' the strings making the whole piano vibrate.

Here are a few of the pics I took last night.

As you can see from this final shot, the walls of the lounge are adorned with pictures of jazz musicians. I tried to avoid getting them in most of my shots as they are a bit distracting, but I quite like the context they give this picture. Perhaps I could offer one of my images to join the others on the wall....

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Yesterday I made tiffin, but I omitted to take pictures. But I can report that it is scrummy.

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Twin Sized Mattress

A couple of Sundays ago, Pheebs went into Manchester with her friend Rachael to "do a bit of filming". I must admit I wasn't entirely sure what this meant, but now I do. Rachael is doing Media at college and had to produce a music video for an existing piece of music. She chose Twin Sized Mattress by New Jersey band The Front Bottoms. Pheebs is the star of the video, filmed mostly around the Northern Quarter in Manchester. If you click on the title of this section of the blog you can view the video.

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Fair warning: On Sunday I am being whisked away for a sophisticated night at a luxury hotel, and I think it is fair to say that I will not have my mind on producing a blog. So Sunday, and potentially Monday too, may be blog free. I'm not obsessive you know...  :0)