The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast

A drummer who has spent years supporting the band decides to step out front with a chromatic harmonica, and everything changes: the pressure, the focus, and the way you think about melody. Geoff sits down with drummer and harmonica player Pat Levett in West London to trace his path from cathedral choir discipline and self-taught drums to becoming a new voice on an instrument that rewards nuance and exposes every wobble in confidence.We get practical and specific about learning: why Pat uses transcription as a fast track, what he picked up by writing out Stevie Wonder harmonica solos, and how phrasing, tone, and register shape the story of a solo. Pat also breaks down the chromatic harmonica itself, from hole layout to the semitone slider, including the "landmines" that can throw you off when you cannot see what you are playing. Then we talk influences, with Stevie's soulfulness on one side and Toots Thielemans' bebop harmony and precision on the other.Music fans and players alike will enjoy a live moment as we play the 1960s Mancini/Mercer standard ‘Days of Wine And Roses’, followed by a deep dive into bending, vibrato, intonation, and the very real problem of broken reeds.The conversation rounds out with quick-fire favourites, motorbikes, a Vespa hack for drummers carrying gear across London, and Fabio the dog who cannot resist singing along to harmonica! Subscribe, share it with a musician friend, and leave a review with the one skill you would love to learn next.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production. 

A message lands on Ray Gelato's Instagram: the producers of ‘The Voice’ want him on the show. He assumes it is a scam, ignores it, then suddenly finds himself in rehearsals, stood on tape marks at ITV, and facing the most frightening performance set-up of his life.Geoff sits down with Ray at his home in West London to get the full story, from the moment Kelly Rowland turns her chair to what you never see in the edit, and why an artist with decades in the British jazz scene still feels genuinely exposed on prime-time TV.From there we go deep on what actually builds a sound. Ray talks about starting as a rock and roll player, falling in love with saxophone voices on classic records, then finding his way into swing, jump blues, and jazz standards through obsessive listening. We dig into transcription, long notes, and learning harmony, plus his honest take on reading music and why using your ears can sometimes make you a stronger, more musical player. There's also a live moment as we blow on the Johnston/Burke 1930s standard ‘Pennies from Heaven’ (accompanied by the Quartet app of course) and chat about keys, comfort, and getting fluent over changes.We also get the working musician reality check: Ronnie Scott's, Umbria Jazz, playing across Italy and Spain, the stress of travel, and the modern demand to be your own promoter on social media. Ray shares what ‘The Voice’ did (and didn't) change, and previews new recordings that lean into a more New Orleans and bluesy direction, with plenty of original writing.If you care about saxophone tone, the UK jazz circuit, and the real-life decisions behind a long career, hit play.Please subscribe if you want to hear more of the podcasts as they land. Download the Quartet jazz play along app from the Apple App Store. Quartet - volume 2 (full version) currently absolutely free!Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

You can tell a lot about a musician by the jobs they keep getting called for, and renowned bassist and musical author Phil Mulford has built a career that spans session bass, West End theatre pits, TV work, pop touring, jazz fusion, and film recording.Geoff meets Phil in his South London studio and starts right at the beginning: picking up bass at school because it was the only instrument left, then levelling up through youth big bands, serious listening, and the kind of early opportunities that reward players who show up prepared.From an engineering apprenticeship to playing on the QE2, Phil shares how going professional often happens faster than you expect, and why sight reading, time feel, and calm nerves are not "nice to have" skills. We talk Gloria Gaynor gigs, stepping deeper into jazz and fusion, and the realities of West End ‘depping’ where you need to know the book well enough to survive conductor changes and high-pressure calls. Phil also reflects on session highlights, including TV pre-records connected to big live moments, and why preparation is the real cure for stage anxiety.Then we get practical: Phil explains how he uses the Quartet jazz standards play-along app to practise chord changes, build walking bass lines, and expand vocabulary through jazz harmony. We play through Wes Montgomery's 1960s classic ‘Road Song’ and dig into what makes it such a rich standard for bass players, from ii-V-I movement to minor harmony and altered dominants. If you care about becoming a more adaptable bassist, improving your sight-reading, or getting more confident on standards, this chat is full of real-world guidance.Subscribe, share the episode with a bassist friend, and leave a review so more players can find the show.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production. 

Perfect pitch, bebop, and the hard reality of a badly formatted big band chart all collide in this week’s episode. Geoff chats with the brilliant Alex Clarke, a young UK alto saxophonist (and multi-instrumentalist) who already sounds like she has lived inside the music for decades.Geoff welcomes Alex into his South London home and gets straight into the choices that shaped her career from Cheshire school bands to Ronnie Scott's Jazz Orchestra and beyond.Alex talks openly about dropping out of Birmingham Conservatoire after one year, not because she stopped loving jazz, but because the environment made practice feel like a chore. From there we follow the practical path: gigging early, learning the mechanics of form and harmony on bandstands, and taking a live-in job at Warwick School during the pandemic that let her keep playing while the world stalled. We also dig into her experience of the ‘Young Musician of the Year’ competition (‘BBC Young Musician’) and how a single line on an email can give promoters confidence at exactly the right moment.The heart of the conversation is craft. Alex explains how she built jazz vocabulary through listening and transcription, pulling language from Art Pepper, Phil Woods, Cannonball Adderley and Scott Hamilton, and how perfect pitch helps with keys while sometimes masking deeper harmonic gaps. We talk jazz standards and the American Songbook, then play the 1930s Schwartz/Dietz standard ‘Alone Together’ (accompanied by Quartet - what else?) and break down her improvising approach, including diminished-based thinking, chord tones versus passing notes, and what makes the alto saxophone so flexible in sound and feel.If you care about straight-ahead jazz, bebop language, learning standards by ear, and building a sustainable life as a working musician in the UK jazz scene, you will want this one in your playlist. Subscribe, share it with a fellow player, and leave us a review with your favourite standard to practise and why.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

Geoff is in Croydon, South London to meet the accomplished British bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and musical director of the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra, Pete Long.One record can reroute a whole life, and for Pete it was Glenn Miller’s version of the Joe Garland hit ‘In the Mood’ (1939). Pete follows the sound from swing into the deeper waters of Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, where big band jazz becomes a lifelong obsession with colour, craft, and joy. Pete talks candidly about choosing saxophone with the firm intention of going pro, adding clarinet through Benny Goodman, and why certain classic charts still spark that boyish excitement when the page turns.We also get into the working reality behind the glamour: leaving a banking job for music college, learning arranging the unromantic way on an Atari, and eventually writing for major bandstands including Jools Holland. If you lead a band or dream of it, you’ll recognise the stress points: depping, last-minute panics, fees, and the quiet truth that good musicians want the gig to succeed as much as you do. Pete shares what actually makes big bands manageable today, from infrastructure to communication.Geoff brings it back to the basics: jazz standards. Pete names his favourites, explains why it helps to call both the start and finish key, and treats us to an impromptu improvisation of the Klenner/Lewis 1930’s standard ‘Just Friends’ on his clarinet - accompanied by the rhythm section of the Quartet app.His best advice for learners is a mindset shift: stop calling it “improvising” if that word makes you freeze, because you’re really editing a vocabulary of licks, chord tones, and shapes you’ve absorbed by listening and transcribing.If you enjoyed this, subscribe, share it with a mate who loves standards, and leave a review so more UK jazz musicians can find the show. Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

Geoff is backstage at Hadleigh Jazz Club in Suffolk, England with the celebrated jazz singer, guitarist and bandleader Denny Ilett.Denny begins the conversation talking about growing up on a council estate with his trumpet-playing dad, a house full of Louis Armstrong and big band records, and the moment guitar finally cuts through via T-Bone Walker and then Jimi Hendrix. If you care about jazz guitar, swing feel, and where real musical taste comes from, this chat lands right in the gut.We dig into what it means to learn jazz by ear: getting thrown into gigs as a teenager, recognising the small harmonic moves that power countless jazz standards, and trusting “tension and release” more than any rulebook. Denny shares why he prefers singing ideas and letting them come out naturally rather than copying solos note-for-note, and how that approach builds confidence on stage because you stop fearing wrong notes and start listening harder. Denny treats us to an impromptu performance of the 1940’s Mercer/Schertzinger standard ‘Tangerine’ - accompanied by the Quartet app of course. The touring years are just as gripping. A broken down car in Oxford turns into a weekly residency, then one meeting with New Orleans vocalist Lillian Boutté becomes 150 gigs in the diary and two decades of work across Europe and beyond. We also get into his love of no-PA pub gigs, his favourite chord shapes, and the Electric Lady Big Band - a 16-piece Hendrix project where he writes the charts, sings, and plays guitar.If you enjoyed this, subscribe, share it with a musician friend, and leave a review. Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

Geoff is in Camden, North London to meet with the legendary jazz pianist, singer/songwriter, producer, author and renowned interviewer Ben Sidran.A $3 school-dance gig. A teenage obsession with Horace Silver. A lifetime of paging through the fake book and letting songs teach you who you are. The conversation quickly turns into what jazz does best: stories, swing, and the kind of hard-won clarity you only get after decades on the bandstand.We talk about how Ben first fell in love with jazz in a place with almost no jazz culture, how Sussex University and the UK scene shaped his ears, and how the music business pulled him from academic plans into sessions and records. From there we get practical and specific about jazz standards, the Great American Songbook, and why the blues still feels like home. Ben even plays four choruses of ‘Blues in F' and explains what “loose” really means when you are trying to make music feel honest.Geoff quizzes Ben about his book ‘Talking Jazz: An Oral History' and his National Public Radio years (the landmark series ‘Jazz Alive’), where he interviewed major jazz artists while much of the industry was looking elsewhere. Ben shares why he avoids over-preparing, how interviewing parallels improvisation, and what it was like to find Miles Davis unusually open and intimate. We also touch on favourite albums, dream collaborators, the realities of technique for self-taught players, touring in Europe, and his new biography ‘Cool Cat Blues: The Life and Times of Georgie Fame’, a portrait of Soho, Swinging London, and an artist navigating a changing industry.If you care about jazz piano, jazz standards, improvisation, jazz history, or the human side of making a life in music, you’ll find something to take back to your instrument. Subscribe, share the episode with a mate, and leave us a review.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production. 

Geoff sits down with the wonderful jazz pianist, composer and arranger Tim Lapthorn to trace how his ear led him from pop songs and a battered copy of the Real Book to a deep, personal approach to jazz harmony and improvisation. We talk about everything from recording at Abbey Road, a session with Ron Carter and returning after a long pause, and the chord choices that make a standard suddenly sound alive.He shares what changed when he arrived in London for the Guildhall postgraduate jazz course, how the London jazz scene shaped his comping and voicings, and what it’s like doing hundreds of gigs at Ronnie Scott’s with top rhythm sections night after night.Tim opens up about a long break in recording, depression, family life, and how that experience reshaped his relationship with risk on stage. Then we get practical: reharmonising the Jerome Kern/Otto Harbach 1930’s standard ‘Yesterdays’ (accompanied by Quartet of course), the logic of chord substitutions, and a final reveal of his favourite chord a bold G7 voicing with clashing-sounding tensions that somehow lands beautifully when you hear the internal relationships.When Geoff asks about “playing outside”, Tim’s answer is simple and demanding: one improvised idea should lead naturally to the next if you truly listen while you play. That mindset connects directly to confidence and mental health, too. Tim explains how surviving very low periods changes your perspective on performance, making it easier to take chances because a wrong note is not a disaster.If you care about jazz harmony, piano voicings, improvisation, and learning standards in a real-world way, hit subscribe, share the episode with a musician friend, and leave us a review so more listeners can find the show.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

A Hammond organ isn’t just an instrument, it’s a moving machine, and you can hear it breathe the moment you sit next to it.Geoff heads to North London to meet the wonderful jazz organist Pete Whittaker in his “organ room” and get properly nerdy about what makes a Hammond C3 feel so alive under the fingers, from the whirr of the tone wheels to the choices that shape a great jazz organ sound.We dig into the details: how jazz organists actually use bass pedals, why a little foot “click” can make left-hand bass punch through, and how you can capture the Leslie rotating speaker magic even when there isn’t a real cabinet in the room. Pete breaks down drawbars in plain English, explains harmonics and “footage”, and shows how a single note can carry the colour of a chord. He treats us to the 1950s Sammy Fain standard ‘Secret Love’ (accompanied by the Quartet app of course), and talks through what changes when there is or isn’t a bass player on the gig.Pete shares the story behind his jazz education: classical training, a great ear, the pull of Jimmy Smith, the modal shock of Larry Young’s album ‘Unity’ (1965), and the very real learning curve of getting thrown into gigs. We end with honest chat about nerves, time feel, favourite venues like Ronnie Scott’s, plus a few quick-fire favourites that make the musician behind the instrument feel close.If you enjoy jazz standards, Hammond organ, organ trio playing, and practical insights you can take to the keyboard, subscribe, share the show with a mate, and leave us a review.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.

John Etheridge has one of those musical lives that only makes sense when you hear it out loud: a British jazz guitar legend and composer who starts with Hank Marvin’s look, gets knocked sideways by Django Reinhardt, then hunts for a sound that can hold both jazz harmony and rock electricity at the same time. Geoff meets John at his place in Hampstead, North London, and they talk through the moments that shaped his playing, from discovering John McLaughlin to learning how to be “the in-between guy” who never quite fits the neat labels but ends up building a voice that bands actually need.We go deep on the practical side of being a working guitarist: tiny amps, the old suspicion around pedals, and how different venues can make your instrument feel either effortless or impossible. From there we jump into jazz standards and the reality of learning tunes before the Real Book era, plus what it’s like to catch up on theory in your thirties while already gigging. If you care about jazz guitar vocabulary, you’ll enjoy John’s take on chord tones versus scales, why bebop is not “just scales”, and how modal thinking changes the way you hear the same notes. John treats us to an impromptu improvisation of the 60’s Benny Golson standard ‘Killer Joe’ - accompanied of course by the Quartet app.There are stories too: playing with Stéphane Grappelli, recording alongside Tony Williams, the love and hate around the Miles Davis album ‘In a Silent Way’ (1969), and the unique challenge of collaborating with classical guitar icon John Williams, where written precision meets improvisation. We finish with quick-fire favourites, a couple of gorgeous chord choices, and John’s philosophy on keeping Soft Machine fresh without turning the music into a museum.If you enjoy jazz standards, British jazz, jazz fusion, guitar tone and real-world improvisation, hit subscribe, share this with a guitarist friend, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.Presenter: Geoff GascoyneSeries Producer: Paul SissonsProduction Manager: Martin SissonsThe Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.