Philip Larkin's Telegraph jazz reviews celebrated in music

Philip Larkin's jazz reviews have inspired music for concert by British stars at the Oxford Jazz Festival.

By Martin Chilton, Digital Culture Editor

Music inspired by Philip Larkin's jazz reviews for the Daily Telegraph will be part of a concert tomorrow at the Oxford Jazz Festival.

For a decade between 1961 and 1971, the poet Larkin was the jazz reviewer of this newspaper and was an exceptionally fine, funny and provocative critic.

Writing about jazz was pure pleasure for Larkin and he was unstinting in his praise of his favourite artists such as Sidney Bechet - in honour of whom he wrote one of his celebrated poems. In a Telegraph review once he wrote: “There are few perfect things in jazz, but Sidney Bechet playing the blues could be one of them.” His Telegraph pieces were later collected together in a Faber book called All What Jazz.

Tomorrow in Oxford, an all-star band led by trumpeter Ian Smith and bassist Alyn Shipton will also explore the connections between Larkin - who graduated from Oxford in 1943 - and jazz. The band will also perform a selection of music inspired by Larkin's writings including his passions for Eddie Condon, Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, as well as what he called the "lean, unhesitant, surprising tenor sax" of Lester Young.

Cast in the role of Young is his biographer, the broadcaster and author Dave Gelly, playing clarinet and tenor sax. Joining Shipton and Smith in the band are Colin Good on piano and Euan Stewart on drums.

Also worth catching at the festival is multi-award winning New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist, Abram Wilson, who plays at 7.30pm tomorrow. On Saturday, Michael Janisch and the New York Standards Quartet play the Oxford Playhouse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/9188330/Philip-Larkins-Telegraph-jazz-reviews-celebrated-in-music.html