The Equinox Jazz Quartet

THERE was a time when jazz in London, back when it lacked the cachet it now enjoys, survived and thrived in pubs. Across the captial, public houses with underused back or upstairs rooms would let them out to small combos or even big bands. Places like the Bull’s Head in Barnes – still going – The White Horse in Stoke Newington and The Gatehouse in Highgate, where the Crouch End Big Band once held court. There were dozens of them at one time, with sessions usually run on Sunday lunchtime and evenings or Monday nights. Not only did it give pros somewhere to blow, it was also where ambitious amateurs sat in and learned the harmonic ropes.

Such venues are rare these days. I am aware that jazz and pubs are still drinking buddies at places like The Woodman in Highgate, The Elephant Inn, Finchley, or, until recently, The Parakeet in Kentish Town, but these tend to be run with all-professional line-ups.

Few cater to the amateur/improving player who wants a chance to risk the kind of embarrassment that, famously, befell a young Charlie Parker on the bandstand. (The King’s Head in Crouch End is a notable local exception – welcoming “guest singers and instrumentalists” at its Sunday afternoon sessions.)

The Equinox Jazz Quartet is a welcome throwback to earlier times when pro-am bands thrived. It exists simply to experience the joy of performing the classic jazz legacy of the 50s and 60s, be it Monk, Shorter, Miles or the extracts from Great American Songbook (and showing the audience a good time into the bargain). The four of them have had a variety of experience in the music over the years, from time at the jazz coalface in Soho (drummer James Lewis), to the folk-jazz scene (pianist Terry Loane), hip West Coast pop (bassist Greg Loops) to decades of deep listening like saxman Danny Silverstone (alto), who has a highly recommended blog, which includes well-curated playlists (https://mylifeinjazz.co.uk/).

Danny has had a horn since he was a young man but didn’t take up playing seriously until he retired from his career at various public bodies (including a spell as CEO of the Commission for Racial Equality). For the past few years, the band have been playing intermittently upstairs at MAP Studio Café in Grafton Road Kentish Town (OK, not a pub, but close enough for jazz) and now have a regular first-Sunday-in the-month afternoon slot. They also have a new CD, called Footprints.

I asked Danny what the thinking was behind the recording at this relatively late stage in their careers.

“I think we had got to the point where we wanted to know what we sounded like in a professional studio. Also, people would ask us as the gigs if we had anything recorded that they could hear, so it made sense to do it.”

Plus, he adds with his usual deprecation: “And it sounds pretty good.”

It sounds better than that, brimming with a love of the classic music they are performing. As at the gigs, the repertoire is familiar standards from the Golden Age of jazz.

“The thing is, people enjoy hearing Autumn Leaves or Straight, No Chaser,” says Danny. “Young bands just don’t play those tunes now.”

There are no originals on the record, but that might be the next step, with perhaps Terry and Danny crafting some themes. But for the time being, the band are just enjoying playing to an appreciative audience at MAP and at having successfully produced an aural snapshot of where they are at this precise moment.

The next gig by the Equinox Jazz Quartet is at MAP Studio Café (https://mapstudiocafe.com/ ) on March 2 at 2pm. There will be copies of the Footprints CD for sale. It will also be available on Bandcamp.

• Being still in her early 20s, Emily Masser is at the other end of her jazz journey to Danny & Co. We mentioned the singer last year when she was featured by drummer Clark Tracey on the Introducing Emily Masser album. Introductions over, and plenty of gigs under her belt, she has a new album called Songs with my Father – a nod to Horace Silver and her dad Dean, who plays sax with her. And a very good, often surprising, record it is too. As the venerable jazz critic Alyn Shipton said: “This album [displays] the range of her very individual talent from the heart-rendingly beautiful I’ll Be Seeing You to the mischievous evocation of childhood in Dat Dere, not to mention the sheer fun of Old Devil Moon.”

Mr Shipton is not one to dole out idle praise and the album would be impressive from a performer of any age (that scatting!) but given her tender years, it’s pretty astonishing. She and her top-notch band will be playing a lunchtime gig at The Spice of Life in Soho – a pub with a long history of supporting jazz – on March 10. Details: https://www.spiceoflifesoho.com/events/

• Talking of jazz in pubs, I was sorry to hear that Jazz at the Parakeet is no more. I have had enjoyed some excellent nights there, usually with players who have gone on to bigger things, like Emma Rawicz and Xhosa Cole. The upstairs room is apparently being colonised by the pub’s phenomenally successful restaurant. However, the gig’s organisers have announced that the jazz on Monday nights will continue at The Bull and Gate, just a short walk from the Parakeet at 389 Kentish Town Road. The first gig is next Monday, March 3, with guitarist Billy Marrows.

• Back at the big halls, Maria Schneider is at the Barbican this Sunday (March 2) with the Oslo Jazz Ensemble presenting her Grammy award-winning album Data Lords. Schneider was mentored by the great Gil Evans, famed for his groundbreaking work with Miles Davis (Sketches of Spain etc). You can hear echoes and inflections of his work in her music, as you can in almost any big band, but she long ago developed her own unique style and voice, which was what attracted David Bowie to collaborate with her. Data Lords came out a few years ago but its warning about Big Tech and its amoral moguls has never seemed more relevant. It might have a message and thrillingly unsettling passages but it also packs an exhilarating collective punch, and contains some of her finest, most expressive writing. And Schneider never forgets to swing. Unmissable for those who like their jazz write large. See: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/maria-schneider-and-oslo-jazz-ensemble