Nik Payton

Day 12 - Recife
I suppose it’s fitting that the last day off the tour should be the biggest balls up. We were all told to be ready for an 11 a.m. pick-up for the airport. Our flight was at 1.15 and we had a TV broadcast to do before the gig (actually they booked it […]

Day 10 - Belo Horizonte (again)
I didn’t think there was enough traveling going on during this tour, so I decided to go home in between gigs! Actually, it was my wedding anniversary, so I popped home on the day off. It’s actually between Rio and Aracaju, so it kind of made sense. I needed an […]

I was almost lulled into a false sense of tranquility with a few days in Sao Paulo. NOW the tour has started! The past few days have been, as was expected, somewhat chaotic. My promise of writing a post everyday after the gig was foolishly hopeful. Of course, when we’re really on the road, then […]

First of all, let me apologise for the lack of posts and newsletters. After my trip to New York I came down with pneumonia which knocked me out a bit - in fact I’m still getting over it almost 3 months later. Anyway, that’s no excuse. In fact, you might ask, if I wasn’t doing […]

I’ve lived in Brazil now for 5 years. When I came here I spoke virtually no Portuguese whatsoever. Hello, please and thank you was about it. Obviously to make my self understood I had to learn, very quickly. After a year or so I could hold a conversation quite well and although my vocabulary wasn’t […]

I’m taking a break from catching up on emails and I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a bit about the band and the musicians therein because there are some names that you may not be familiar with. … That the band is going to be good, and put on a superb show goes with out saying - it is made up of THE best swing musicians in the world and led by the worlds leading stride pianist, Judy Carmichael .

I’ve had a few emails from musicians who didn’t really know much about the tools and ideas I talked about in my last newsletter. I thought I was well behind in this new movement but it seems there are many musicians, especially in the jazz world, who aren’t sure what is going on. I’m going […]

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Jimmy Giuffre. He died on April 24th, 2 days before his 87th birthday.
Jimmy was one of the great individualists of the clarinet, always inventing and thinking outside the norm. His later, free playing unfortunately took him out of the mainstream jazz world but he […]

I’ve just read an interesting article in the New York Times today on Juan Diego Flórez’ performance at the Metropolitan Opera House on Monday. He performed a solo encore after a standing ovation - something not heard there since 1994. In fact, solo encores were common in the 19th century but as the opera grew […]