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These are a superb sextet and deserve to be headlining jazz festivals throughout the UK – as this gig proved.
The fabulous REBOP specialises in the innovative and exhilarating modern jazz that flowered in the mid-1940s in the hands of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and other great jazzmen.
REBOP is a jazz repertory aggregation playing in the arcane art of bebop and related music. Formed originally as a quintet to examine the repertoire of the modern jazz explosion circa 1944-1949, Rebop is now a six-piece and also features a faithful homa to the Miles Davis Sextet of 1958-59.
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REBOP are:
CHRIS INGHAM – Piano
Trained as a drama teacher at Warwick University before succumbing to the music,
he played guitar in misunderstood art ‘n’ b combo The Locomotives and was pianist/vocalist in the Flanagan Ingham Quartet who released two albums (Zanzibar and Textile Lunch) and were described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s most original bands’. He is jazz piano and jazz voice tutor at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge and can be heard with the bebop repertory quintet Rebop.
As an erstwhile music journalist he has contributed to Mojo magazine since 1996 and has published three books; Billie Holiday, Rough Guide to the Beatles, and Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra.
He lives in Suffolk with his family and a Yamaha G5 grand piano
KEVIN FLANAGAN – Alto
comes from Lowell, Mass., USA. He initially studied music and philosophy at the
University of New Hampshire, and was part of Antares, a free improvisatory group that toured the New England through the mid-70s to early 80s. During this period he was also involved in jazz, blues, and popular music, both recording and performing. He settled in the UK in the mid-80s, and worked on the London jazz and pop scene, playing and recording with members of Pink Floyd, Ben E. King, the Sex Pistols, Jools Holland, Led Zeppelin, B.B. King, Portishead, and many others. By the late 1980s he was primarily involved with jazz, playing with his own group or with musicians such as Dick Morrissey, Alan Barnes, Dave Newton, Gerard Precenser, Don Weller, Dave Cliff, Mark Edwards, Adrian Utley, and the Tommy Chase quartet around the festivals of the UK and Europe, such as Brecon, Edinburgh, Soho, and Bath in this country; and festivals in Milan, Paris, the North Sea festival, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and others. He has put out two successful CDs with Chris Ingham as the Flanagan-Ingham Quartet, and is presently collaborating with Dave Gordon in a series of poetry settings of the Pulitzer-prize winning Beat poet Gary Snyder.
PAUL HIGGS – Trumpet
has an extensive music career in many fields including performing, composing for film and TV, musical directing for companies such as the Royal National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, and arranging music for film and TV. He is particularly sought after as a brass arranger within all mediums and genres of music.
He is most renowned as one of the UK’s leading trumpet players and works both as a performer and session musician. He has performed for luminaries including Sir Peter Maxwell Davis, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Lulu, Tony Hatch, John Williams, Vic Damone, Nancy Wilson, Brook Benton, Jackie Trent, Al Martino, The Foundations, Danny Williams, Rolf Harris, Johnny Dankworth and Shorty Rodgers. His session credits include Viva Cabaret, Daytime Live, Pebble Mill at One, Live At City Hall, Wood and Walters, The Tube, Scene Today, In Suspicious 
Circumstances, The Trial of Lord Lucan and Eleven Men Against Eleven
COLIN WATLING – Tenor
Colin Watling specialises in tenor sax and offers the full gamut of musical styles in his performances from soft and mellow, through to boppy and brassy….. and always in great humour. Colin is rated by many as one of the most exciting tenor saxophonists on the circuit with his melodic, swinging sound.
ROGER ODELL – Drums
As one of the founder members and drummer with the jazz-funk group Shakatak, 
Roger has toured internationally and recorded numerous CDs, which he continues to do on a regular basis to this day.
Musically, his first love was always straight-ahead contemporary jazz, and in the past he has played with many of the great names on the UK scene including Don Rendell, Barbara Thompson, Dick Morrissey, Terry Smith, Joe Harriott and countless others. He produced his own CD "The Blue Window" by Beatifik, which featured top UK saxophonist Mornington Locket, and was released to great critical acclaim. Roger is the author of three technical articles which appeared in the international magazine Modern Drummer, and is an Endorsee Artist for Sabian Cymbals, Remo Drums, Vic Firth Sticks and Hardcases.
THE RVERAND ANDREW JAMES BROWN – Double Bass
Andrew James Brown is a minister of religion working in Cambridge UK inspired by the thinking of Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bloch, Wittgenstein and 
Heidegger and is a University Chaplain to Cambridge University, Anglia Ruskin University and a Police Chaplain for the Cambridgeshire Constabulary as well as being a highly respected professional jazz double-bass player.
As all members are superb soloists there is no need to comment on their particular artistry in any particular number so we just give below the playlist:
1 Jeannine – the jazz standard written by Duke Pearson (Pearson came to fame after he gained the attention of trumpeter Donald Byrd, who saw Pearson performing with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Sextet (also known as Jazztet). Shortly afterwards, Byrd asked him to join his newly formed band, the Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet. Pearson was also the accompanist for Nancy Wilson on tour in 1961. During that same year,) which we remember so well from the 1960 album by Cannonball Adderley – Them Dirty Blues
2 Crazyology – written by Benny Harris and as featured in the Bird and Miles, the Charlie Parker and Miles Davis album – amongst others of course
3 This Is For Albert – by tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter who wrote this in 1962 for the Art Blakey Caravan album. Wayne played and was musical director with the Jazz Messengers from 1959 to 1964. This tune was Wayne’s memorial for pianist Bud Powell.
4 Donna Lee – by Miles Davis. Although for generations “Donna Lee” has been credited to Charlie Parker, it was actually a Miles Davis composition based on the chord changes to “Indiana.” The authorship of the tune came to light when Gil Evans (who later arranged some of Davis’ most successful albums) sought permission from Parker to arrange the song for Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra. Parker referred him to Davis who gave Evans the go-ahead. Although this was played with a Charlie Parker head.
5 – Ghana – The trumpeter Donald Byrd’s 1960 Afro Cuban flavoured tune as featured on the Donald Byrd Album Byrd In Flight
6 – Blue In Green "Blue in Green" is the third track on Miles Davis’ 1959 album, Kind of Blue. One of two ballads on the LP (the other being "Flamenco Sketches"), "Blue in Green"’s melody is very modal, (It is interesting to note that It has long been speculated that pianist Bill Evans wrote "Blue in Green", even though the LP and most jazz fakebooks credit only Davis with its composition. In his autobiography, Davis maintains that he alone composed the songs on Kind of Blue. The version on Evans’ trio album Portrait in Jazz, recorded in 1959, credits the tune to ‘Davis-Evans’. Earl Zindars, in an interview conducted by Win Hinkle, said that "Blue in Green" was 100-per cent written by Bill Evans. In a 1978 radio interview, Evans said 
that he himself had written the song.
7 – Mamaxcita written by tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson and as featured on the Joe Henderson album Milestone Profiles. Apart from his freelancing career, Henderson co-led a big band with Kenny Dorham. From 1963 to 1968 Joe appeared on nearly thirty albums for Blue Note. The recordings ranged from relatively conservative hard-bop sessions to more Avant-Garde explorations. He played a prominent role in many landmark recordings including Horace Silver’s swinging and soulful Song For My Father.
8 – Bolivia Which is probably the most well known composition from hard bop pianist Cedar Walton. (From 1961 to 1964 he was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard. After a period as accompanist to Abbey Lincoln (1965-66) he recorded frequently with Lee Morgan (1966-68) and worked as house pianist for Prestige (1967-69), then re-joined Blakey for a tour of Japan (1973). From the mid-1960s Walton has performed 
frequently as the leader of a traditional bop quartet with Clifford Jordan, George Coleman, or Ralph Moore, and Sam Jones or David Williams, and Billy Higgins; in 1975 it took the name Eastern Rebellion.
9 – Speak No Evil Speak No Evil is a track on the Speak No Evil album by Wayne Shorter, recorded on 24 December 1964 and released on Blue Note in 1965.Speak No Evil was one of several albums Shorter recorded for Blue Note in 1964. At the same time, he was also active in Miles Davis’s band, and so it is unlikely that Speak No Evil received any special attention at the time of its release. But the passage of time has led to the album being generally regarded as Shorter’s finest, and also a highlight of the Blue Note catalogue. The Penguin Guide to Jazz selected this album as part of its suggested "Core Collection" calling it "by far Shorter’s most satisfying record."Allmusic assigns the album five stars.
10 – Barbados This is a jazz tune composed by Charlie Parker. It is a twelve-bar blues set to a mambo rhythm. Parker first recorded it on 29 August, 1948, with Miles Davis (trumpet), John Lewis (piano), Curly Russell (bass) and Max Roach (drums).
11 – Lazy Bird This is a musical composition by John Coltrane, first appearing on his 1957 album Blue Train. Its name is most likely a play on the title of the Tadd Dameron composition "Lady Bird": Coltrane biographer Lewis Porter has proposed 
a harmonic relationship between "Lady Bird" and the A section of "Lazy Bird". (The bridge of Coltrane’s song is apparently a variation on the standard "Lover Man").
12 – Flamenco Sketches No introduction needed! "Flamenco Sketches" is a jazz composition written by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Bill Evans. It is the fifth track on Davis’ 1959 album Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz record of all time, and an innovative experiment in modal jazz.
13 – Milestones This was of course an album recorded in February and March 1958 by Miles Davis. It is renowned for including Miles’ first forays into the developing modal jazz experiments, as noticed on the piece "Milestones" (not to be confused with "Miles" – recorded, by Davis, in 1948), which would be followed to its logical conclusion on Kind of Blue. This together with Flamenco Sketches were the ideal tool for the Rebop[ sextet to expound
This was a wonderful evening and there are two more chances of seeing Rebop in the near future. The first is Jazznights at High Barn on the 29th of June (see http://www.jazz-nights.com) and the Bures Music Festival (http://www.buresmusicfestival.org/music.shtml)
For more info and future gigs go to http://www.jazz-nights.com
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