When these two get together fireworks happen. Both top players in their own right, when on stage as a frontline horn section they play off each other brilliantly and compete with amazing technique and equally quick one-liners that has audiences loving the music and having a fun night out.

Alan Barnes is a prolific international performer, composer, arranger, bandleader and touring soloist. He is best known for his work on clarinet, alto and baritone sax, where he combines a formidable virtuosity with a musical expression and collaborative spirit that have few peers. His range and brilliance have made him a “first call” for studio and live work since his precocious arrival on the scene more than thirty years ago. His recorded catalogue is immense. He has made over thirty albums as leader and co-leader alone, and the list of his session and side-man work includes Bjork, Bryan Ferry, Michel Legrand, Clare Teale, Westlife, Jools Holland and Jamie Cullum.

He has toured and played residencies with such diverse and demanding figures as Ruby Braff, Freddie Hubbard, Scott Hamilton, Warren Vache, Ken Peplowski, Harry Allen and Conte Candoli. In British jazz, the young Barnes was recognized – and hired – by the established greats of the time: Stan Tracy, John Dankworth, Kenny Baker, Bob Wilber, and Humphrey Lyttelton. But he is equally respected for his longstanding and fruitful collaborations with contemporaries such as David Newton, Bruce Adams, and Martin Taylor.

Alan Barnes’s unique musicianship, indefatigable touring, and warm rapport with audiences have made him uniquely popular in British jazz. He has received over 27 British Jazz Awards, most recently in 2016 for clarinet, and has twice been made BBC Jazz Musician of the Year.

Bruce Adams's regular appearances at the Edinburgh and Glasgow jazz festivals enabled him to share the stage with people like Dick Hyman, Bob Wilbur, Benny Carter, Buddy Tate, Al Cohn, Al Grey, Ray Bryant, Milt Hinton, Gus Johnson, Danny Moss, Jack Parnell and Roy Williams

Bruce's big band career includes Drinking with the Scottish Radio Orchestra, The Tommy Sampson Big Band, The Kenny Baker Dozen, Echoes of Ellington, The Don Lusher Big Band and one of the last concerts of the Ted Heath Band under the direction of Don Lusher. Bruce has also featured as guest soloist with the BBC Big Band, The Fat Chops Big Band and MYJO. Often a regular nominee in the British Jazz Awards, Bruce won the Top Trumpet prize in 2000, 2006 and 2008 and placed in the top 5 again in 2010 before regaining his crown the following year.

David Newton's recording career had begun in 1985 with Buddy De Franco and Martin Taylor and his first solo album was released in '88 in association with producer Elliot Meadow who oversaw the next nine years of recording for Linn Records followed by Candid Records. Once again, in 1997, David Newton and Alan Barnes teamed up and together with Concorde Label agent Barry Hatcher, made four CDs for that label.

In the first five years of the nineties, Newton's reputation as an exquisite accompanist for a singer, spread rather rapidly and by '95 he was regularly working with Carol Kidd, Marion Montgomery, Tina May, Annie Ross, Claire Martin and of course Stacey Kent, with whom he spent the next ten years recording and travelling all over the world. While all this was going on, Newton was composing music which he would record on his own CDs as well as writing specifically for Martin Taylor, Alan Barnes, Tina May or Claire Martin and Newton's music can now be heard on many television productions, especially in the United States where over twenty TV movies benefit from Newton's haunting themes. In 2003, after a twenty year gap, David Newton was reunited with playwright Alan Aykbourn having been involved with eight world premieres in Scarborough and London back in the early eighties, and he was asked to write the music for two new productions, 'Sugar Daddies' and 'Drowning on Dry Land'.

David Newton has been voted best Jazz Pianist in the British Jazz awards for the thirteenth time in 2014 and was made a Fellow of Leeds College of Music in 2003 where he now teaches jazz piano.

Bassist Riaan Vosloo was known as one of the best younger generation players in London in his early playing days, but he has become recognised as a highly creative band leader and composer, nationwide. He came to live in Bristol for a while before moving to Oxford but Bristol has now drawn him back to live in our city once again.

As well as occupying the Bass chair in the Nostalgia 77 Octet, Riaan Vosloo has worked with among others Keith Tippett, Matthew Bourne, Art Theman, Andy Shepherd, Spring Heel Jack, Liam Noble, Pee Wee Ellis and Iain Ballamy. Riaan was a founder member of the The Electric Dr M (with Matthew Bourne) and plays in the Gary Boyle quartet with Mercury nominee Zoe Rahman.

Andy Hague is a prolific composer and arranger - although his own groups feature him on trumpet he also plays drums to an equal extent, and has performed with many big names in this capacity. Having grown up in Croydon, he took up a place at Bristol University to read Psychology and ended up settling in the city.

Over the past 25 years Andy has become well known in Bristol both as a performer and as organiser of weekly jazz venue The Be-Bop Club. He has released several CDs of his music, and appeared on four programmes of BBC Radio’s Jazz Notes during the 1990s. Besides his jazz activities he has played in many other settings, including the albums by Portishead, various theatre productions, TV (Waking the Dead, Cold Lazarus) and the soundtrack of the motion picture A Good Woman starring Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johannson.

His own quintet is an institution (the good kind) in Bristol and his Big Band is one of the finest you will hear, playing his orchestrated original tunes.

alanbarnesjazz.com    bruce-adams.co.uk