DAVID WAKEFIELD Jazz music contains many essential elements, one of which is humour, both in the execution and the incidental. It is a handy balance to the navel-gazing element, and an ideal way to communicate with an audience.

DAVID WAKEFIELD

Jazz music contains many essential elements, one of which is humour, both in the execution and the incidental. It is a handy balance to the navel-gazing element, and an ideal way to communicate with an audience. Thus my enjoyment of this session, presented by the Dereham Jazz Society, which had not only humour a'plenty but nostalgia as well.

Gerry Salisbury, who has played jazz for well over 50 years, co-founded this flourishing club before going to live in Spain. Although he began as a bass player, and a good one, too, it is as a trumpeter that he excels.

He doesn't read music but has the most fertile musical brain, which manifests itself in the construction and content of his solos. They are chock-full of “quotes” – lines from other tunes which are deftly worked into the chord framework. Done badly they jar; but Gerry Salisbury doesn't do “bad”, and it is all an extension of his delightfully dry humour.

His partnership with multi-reed player Pete Oxborough is a legendary one; they melded yet again in a programme of jazz standards, backed by Tommy Bridges (piano), Tony Bailey (bass guitar) and Len Wright (drums), and joined during the evening by guests Simon Nelson (flugelhorn) and Mike Capocci (piano).

Should anyone happen to be on holiday in the port area of Fuengirola, on the Costa Del Sol, look out for Gerry's name – and go and see him.