Muswell Hill’s Jazz in the Attic

After a blisteringly popular beginning to Jazz in the Attic last week, this Wednesday’s session had something of an empty house.

Yet there was no way you could feel sorry for the four musicians as they were just so good.

The venue, the upstairs of The Victoria Stakes pub, is a big room with three red walls and the fourth lined exclusively by windows looking out onto the beginnings of Alexandra Palace. Square wooden tables lay higgledy piggledy in the space which also boasted some intriguing pieces of art, large candelabras and antlers of varying sizes. Somehow this unusual combination succeeded at creating the warmest, sexiest environment you can find on the right side of pornography…and that’s before you throw in the jazz.

Keyboard, drums, bass, saxophone – nothing more, nothing less was needed to create that ‘we’re a cosy group of sophisticates in a mad bad world’ feel.

The foursome’s stage presence could be described as showing understated joy as they buzzed with the pleasure of musicians playing the work of their heroes. Their performance level was instinctive rather than contrived with the slight head nod of Johnny the bassist and the extra jiggle of Eric the drummer, showing  men in love with their art.

Their set kicked off with John Coltrane’s jaunty Mr PC before settling into the slightly more chilled but equally ritzy Fee Fi Fo Fum by Wayne Shorter,  Herbie Hancock’s Canteloupe Island came next followed by another Shorter number, ESP. Then it was time to get still smoother with Henry Mancini’s The Days of Wine and Roses. Richard Rodgers’ My Romance and Sonny Rollins’ Sonnymoon for Two completed the first half.

The second half was equally peppered with the work of artists that even non-jazzers know are significant. Tracks were taken from the popular output of the Sixties as well as the classical jazz age with the chosen songs being just unusual enough to make you feel that your horizons were being broadened as you sat, supping wine and feeling cooler than normal.

On that note, jazz musicians seem to have tapped into the eternal question of how to be cool. Genuine cool, despite what posers tragically believe, comes from having something real inside you and expressing it at a perfect pitch. You can’t fake that shit and you can’t fake what Gerald Kennally (saxophone), Al Scott (keyboard), Johnny Copeland (bass) and Eric Ford (drums) do in Muswell Hill on Wednesdays. Strongly recommended.

Jazz in the Attic is on every Wednesday at 8pm in July at:

The Victoria Stakes
1 Muswell Hill
Hornsey
N10 3TH

Tel: 020 8815 1793