Stan Tracey Quintet, Queen Elizabeth Hall

One of a relatively small number of British jazz musicians to have a permanent impact on the international jazz scene, Stan Tracey has been performing professionally for 70 years. Now 85, he first toured the country entertaining the wartime workforce in 1943. He was involved in British jazz more or less from the start, as London’s post-war music scene picked up the be-bop from New York, and he played from then on with many of its most important musicians, both British, such as Ronnie Scott, and touring Americans including Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster and Zoot Sims.  

Tracey’s original influences were Thelonius Monk and Duke Ellington, and throughout his career there has remained something of Monk’s percussive left hand, and Ellington’s spacious understanding of the harmony of a whole piece, but he has long since had an distinctive sound all of his own, a spare, and rhythmic dynamism that is unmistakable both in standards and his own compositions. He has performed and recorded in groups varying from just himself to the big band, though his solo and small group music carries the most powerful sense of individuality.  

The first part of the festival gig will launch Tracey’s new album for quintet, The Flying Pig. Inspired by a visit (with his son Clark, the band’s drummer) on drums to the WW1 battlefields of Loos, where his father fought in 1915, it attempts to capture the consolation of humour for the regular soldier amid horrific violence and suffering. 

The second festival set will feature his duet with the saxophonist John Surman, revisiting the duets they played together some 35 years ago for the recording of their 1978 album Sonatinas, containing the pair’s extraordinary, searching improvisations. Surman is also a player of considerable importance on the post-war scene, his sound, somewhat like Tracey’s, a combination of spiky thrusts and fragments of searching melody. 

Though not officially part of the London Jazz Festival, there is also a tribute gig to Tracey’s career in jazz, featuring many of his long-standing and distinguished collaborators, including Dame Cleo Laine and members of his various bands, at the 100 Cub, one of the capital’s most historically important clubs, on the 18 November at 5.45pm. 

Ticket price: £10-15

Address and Map:   Belvedere Road,  SE1 8XX

Nearest Tube: Waterloo, Embankment