The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast

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 Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The 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 Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The 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 Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The 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 Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The 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 Gascoyne
Series Producer: Paul Sissons
Production Manager: Martin Sissons
The Quartet Jazz Standards Podcast is a UK Music Apps production.