Lunchtime Jazz: Alan Barnes Salutes Wally Fawkes

Friday 21st June | 1:00 pm

A Leeds College of Music graduate, Alan Barnes is one of the busiest musicians on the British jazz scene. In a career spanning more than three decades, early career highlights include working with jazz luminaries Kenny Baker, John Dankworth, Humphrey Lyttelton and Stan Tracey. Touring widely with the Midnite Follies Orchestra and the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, Alan first came to prominence with drummer Tommy Chase’s hard bop outfit. Thirty plus studio recordings as a leader or co-leader, session work with Bjork, Brian Ferry, Michel Legrand and others, innumerable performances with a who’s who of the jazz world (including Bruce Adams, Dave Newton, Martin Taylor, Clark Tracey, the BBC Big Band and top flight American musicians Ruby Braff, Scott Hamilton, Freddie Hubbard and Warren Vache), touring America with Bryan Ferry, engagements at the Blue Note (New York City and Tokyo), twenty five plus awards (including Best Instrumentalist, BBC Jazz Awards on two occasions), Alan Barnes has done it all.

This Lit & Phil concert celebrates clarinetist Wally Fawkes. Born one hundred years ago today on June 21st 1924 in Vancouver, British Columbia, in early childhood Wally and the Fawkes family emigrated to Britain. In the late 1940s/early ‘50s stints working with George Webb’s Dixielanders and Humphrey Lyttelton established Wally on the British jazz scene. In the ensuing years Wally periodically reunited with Lyttelton and would later work with John Chilton’s Feetwarmers. Wally’s ‘day job’ as a cartoonist afforded him a measure of celebrity. For more than three decades, under the pen name ‘Trog’, Wally penned the newspaper comic strip ‘Flook’ (The Daily Mail). Wally’s work also appeared in the Observer, the Spectator and Private Eye. Wally Fawkes died on March 1st 2023 at the age of 98. This Jazz at the Lit & Phil concert, featuring Alan Barnes, salutes Walter Ernest Fawkes, cartoonist and jazz musician.

A LIVE Lit & Phil Event | £8

(If you would prefer to book directly over the phone, please call the Library Desk team on 0191 232 0192 and they will be happy to help)

Host or Publisher The Lit and Phil