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♫ Steve Fishwick Quintet with special guest from New York, Grant Stewart

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Steve Fishwick

  • Steve Fishwick trumpet
  • John Pearce piano
  • Jeremy Brown bass
  • Matt Fishwick drums
  • Grant Stewart tenor saxophone

UK trumpet star Steve Fishwick will be joining forces with special guest from New York, Grant Stewart to present an evening of swinging, straight-ahead, polished and powerfully expressive jazz, which bears the influence of their great heroes, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon. John Pearce, Jeremy Brown and Steve’s twin-brother Matt will round off this impeccable quintet.

Steve Fishwick is considered to be one of the best jazz trumpet players ever to come from the UK, and is rapidly gaining a global reputation thanks to his flawless technique and beautifully flowing, harmonically rich improvisations. He lists the late great Kenny Dorham as the key influence on his playing and Art Farmer, Miles Davis and Woody Shaw amongst his favourite players, but his style is very much his own.

‘Steve has his own style,’ remarked no less a giant of the trumpet than Wynton Marsalis. ‘He plays from the bottom to the top of the horn whilst maintaining the integrity of the chords. I can’t think of another trumpet player that can do what he does.”

‘Where has Fishwick been hiding?’ asked legendary Jazz critic Ira Gitler. ‘… when Steve lights his wick he becomes a flying fish, soaring above the waves, totally in control!’

Voted a ‘rising star on the tenor’ in the Downbeat critics’ poll between 2008 and 2015, Grant Stewart has toured internationally and released sixteen albums as a leader. Drum legend Jimmy Cobb described him as ‘One of my favourite tenor players in the world.’

Born in Toronto, Canada on 4 June 1971, Grant moved to New York at the City at the age of nineteen studying with masters such as Donald Byrd and Barry Harris. He has performed internationally with Jimmy Cobb, Harold Mabern, Louis Hayes, Curtis Fuller, Renee Fleming, Clark Terry, Bob Mover, Etta Jones, Bill Charlap, Lewis Nash, Peter Washington, Brad Mehldau, Russell Malone, Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, Harry Connick, Mickey Roker, Jimmy Lovelace, Cecil Payne, Dick Hymen, Herb Geller and was a member of the last Al Grey Sextet.

A winner of the prestigious Downbeat Award for the ‘rising star on the tenor’, Grant has toured internationally, recorded 16 albums as a leader, and appeared on many other recordings as a sideman.

‘Powerful in a form that combines tension and relaxation like that of Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon, Grant is one of the most powerful stylists and one of the most under-estimated on the scene. His sincerity, demonstrated in his straightforward, honed music, affirms completely his power of expression.’ – Jazz Hot Magazine, France.

John Pearce, piano, celebrates fifty years as a professional musician, having begun his career as a member of ‘Geraldo’s Navy’ aboard a Cunard ocean liner in 1968. He has since become one of the UK’s most versatile and respected musicians, whose CV reads like a Who’s Who of jazz greats. He has also worked with singers Anita O’Day, Peggy Lee, Mark Murphy, Annie Ross and Elaine Delmar, and has been a member of Scott Hamilton’s Quartet since 2000.

Jeremy Brown, bass, is one of the UK’s foremost bass players. He was a founding member of the John Wilson Orchestra and is a member of the BBC Big Band, the Syd Lawrence Orchestra and Skelton-Skinner All Stars. He has recorded extensively with Anita Wardell, Kate Williams, Claire Martin, Chris Garrick and Chris Biscoe amongst many others. He has performed in the UK and Europe with many visiting artists including Brad Melhdau, Charles McPherson, Art Farmer, Jon Hendricks, Benny Golson, Red Holloway and Johnny Griffin.

Jeremy is Professor of Jazz Double Bass at the Royal Academy of Music, he teaches on residential summer courses for the Global Music Foundation and Loire Music and acts as an external examiner for Trinity-Laban.

Matt Fishwick, drums, has been active in jazz since his early teens and is one of the first-call drummers in London.  He met like-minded musicians Tom Cawley, Gareth Lockrane and Osian Roberts whilst a student at the Royal Academy of Music and has played with such giants of UK jazz as Mike Carr, Dave Cliff and Jim Mullen, as well as visiting stars including Scott Hamilton, Kenny Davern, Howard Alden and Ken Peplowski. Since returning in 2009 from a four-year sojourn in New York, where he worked with Frank Wess and Anita O’Day amongst many jazz greats, Matt has led his own quartet and co-led a quintet with brother Steve.

 

Jazz at Progress is presented in association with Jazz in Reading.

The Oresteia

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Adapted from AeshylusThe Oresteia banner - screaming woman

5-8 December 2018

Performances at 7.45pm

Progress Youth Theatre brings an ambitious interpretation of this classic Greek tragedy to the stage.

Following ten years of bloodshed at Troy, Agamemnon returns home to find his kingdom filled with suspicion, fear and paranoia. His wife, Clytemnestra, is acting suspiciously, his children are missing, his people are scared. Murder, betrayal and revenge pursue this family like the terrifying Furies, and only the gods can cleanse them of their crimes. 

This ambitious adaptation breathes new life into the 2500 year-old classic, forcing us to question: have we changed in all that time?

 

 

 

Blood and Ice

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by Liz Lochhead

Blood and Ice

7-12 January 2019
Performances at 7.45pm, doors open 7.15pm

Widowed, Mary Shelley, tortured by her past and the creature she created, hears the voices of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and her step-sister Claire Clairmont, which drag her back to the now legendary period of her youth.

During a summer of endless rain a challenge is set and at just eighteen, Mary Shelley gives birth both to a creature and a new genre of fiction in her novel, Frankenstein.

Her success and infamy haunt her. She flees across Europe but cannot escape the death that surrounds her and the voice of Frankenstein's monster.

Blood and Ice is a play by Liz Lochhead, a Scottish playwright and poet. It has been performed and amended several times since its original production in  1982. This version is based on the 2003 production.

By arrangement with Nick Hern Books.

Jerusalem

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by Jez ButterworthJerusalem image

7-16 February 2019, performances at 7.30pm

On St George’s Day, the morning of the Flintock Fair, Johnny “Rooster” Byron, local hell-raiser, teller of tall tales and modern day Pied Piper, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice on his caravan, his kid wants his dad to take them to the fair, Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of mates wants his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.

Jez Butterworth’s infamous and award-winning play is a comic, contemporary masterpiece of life in our green and pleasant land.

"Unarguably one of the best dramas of the twenty-first century"
Guardian

By arrangement with Nick Hern Books.

Past events

Past shows at Progress Theatre - Past Seasons

2018

2017

2016

  • Wolves - December
  • 11th Annual WriteFest - November
  • Dracula - October  
  • The Long and the  Short and the Tall - September
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream - July - Caversham Court Gardens
  • Daisy Pulls it Off - July - Progress Youth Theatre
  • Humble Boy - June
  • Suddenly Last Summer - May
  • Stones In His Pockets -  April
  • Marat/Sade - March
  • Steel Magnolias - February
  • The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - January

    2015

    • The Hidden Truth - December - Progress Youth Theatre
    • Brontë - November
    • The 10th Annual Writefest - October
    • Two-Way Mirror - September
    • The Merry Wives of Windsor - July - at Caversham Court Gardens 
    • Gormenghast - July - Progress Youth Theatre
    • The Weir - June
    • Talking Heads - April
    • Animal Farm - March
    • Gaslight - February
    • The Three Musketeers - January

    2014

    • Mojo - December - Progress Youth Theatre
    • Noises Off - November
    • The 9th Annual WriteFest - October
    • Darwin and Fitzroy - September
    • Love's Labour's Lost… And Won - July - at Caversham Court Gardens 
    • The Roses of Eyam - July - Progress Youth Theatre
    • God of Carnage - June
    • Not About Heroes - May
    • Lady Windermere's Fan - April
    • Trainspotting - March
    • Bold Girls - February
    • The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - January

     

    Past Seasons...