Saturday Night jazz Suite
It was on a Saturday evening that my friend the composer Paul Carr heard "Jazzette", then a single piece, and suggested that I add another two movements to make a suite; three days later the first draft was finished. The suite celebrates two of my musical heroes and a musical heroine. "Jazzette" is dedicated to harpist Elizabeth Jane Baldry and reflects her infectious lightness of spirit. "Blues for Harpo" is a song for the soul of the divine Harpo Marx, the most endearing of the Marx Brothers, whom I consider to have been one of the great harpists of the twentieth century, and "Blue Fiver" is an affectionate homage to jazz maestro Dave Brubeck whose perennial hit "Take Five" so uplifted my spirits as a teenager and still does so fortysomething years on. Paul Lewis