As I, trumpeter, growled and prowled my beloved Bristol jam sessions twelve years back my ears noticed the boys from Europe, my semi-Swiss roots attuned to foreign twangs: the off-beat swing of double bassist Pasquale Votino, Paolo Adamo’s restless drumming, and the smoothly does it alto-ease of Julien Alenda; BEJE was born in my head, a Bristol European Jazz Ensemble. A niche concept on a jostling stage. ‘Collective’ whispered Pasquale in my ear at a pizzeria gig. It was years later that it became thus.

Now BEJE brims with international collaborations. Faris Ishaq the ney wunderkind from Palestine, Enrico Merlin wizard guitarist of Trento, Yunmi Kang Seoul soul singer and many more. It’s been an edgy progression from being the Bristol EJE to the British EJE. How did it start?

Jon Taylor at the Bristol Fringe booked us first in 2013 and marvelled at the jazz-rock chops of drummer Marco Anderson. Suave Swede Anders Olinder held it together for a while as the rhythm section fit wasn’t quite right, and Marco left to be replaced by Paolo. That was the European BEJE line-up for quite a while, ironically playing ‘all-American jazz, all of the way’ as Bath jazz voice Charley Dunlap once put it. Italian bassist Pasquale was often replaced by Italian bassist Federico Leonori, such is the draw of the city’s benevolent musical mafiosi. In those days BEJE played my compositions, influenced by my travels in the Balkans and the Middle East, but also by Keith Tippett who’s ‘Seedbed Jazz Workshop Orchestra’ I’d played in alongside Kevin Figes, Pete Judge and many others, and inevitable hero Miles Davis. Monk was a formative voice too, via a chain-smoking Chemistry teacher jazz enthusiast at school.

At the time of BEJE’s formation Bristol was bidding to be Europe’s Capital Of Culture and I fondly imagined we’d be its icon-actually it was the firebrand James Morton who’d wowed us all as an 18 year old at the East Bristol Jazz Club (I’d started in 1999 and still front). Another attempt at a marketing hit was presenting an anti-Brexit spoken word suite at one of Bristol’s Jazz and Blues Festivals at the time of the vote. Good gig but media flop, and astonishingly it failed to sway the result. Still, our marketing failures didn’t stop us getting great gigs over several years in the region. Jazz Lines Birmingham, Cardiff, Taunton CIC, Bocabar Glastonbury, Prema Arts Centre, Black Mountain Jazz Club and many others.

In this period there were two albums, ‘Live At The Fringe’ and ‘BEJE bites’. I’ve sold multiple dozens of cds at gigs but have felt very 20th century in my ambivalence to the fast changing world of technology. So these albums are not yet on bandcamp. I did sign up to a dubious crypto currency- earning website where allegedly I have 15,000 listeners who all seem to be pretty American teenagers. Being on there is more like being parked in a dodgy Musk space station than the wild reaches of the blue ether.

Another attempt in that phase of the band’s life to ‘break through’ with a would be ‘hit single’ – another naive strategy that floppped-was an investment in a video recording of my tune ‘Redfield Carnival’, deliberately more popular in style than other compositions of mine. I was pleased with the results. https://youtu.be/bIDmuRfYL1w

In my next blog I’ll tell the story of how BEJE started collaborating with international artists outside of the Bristol vortex, and what the 60 shades of ‘collaboration’ look like…