the loneliness of being right

There’s no one quite like Django Bates. Once the enfant terribleof the 1980s jazz scene, the focal point of Loose Tubes, the ramshackle and influential big band that became a launching pad for a host of significant jazz musicians, Django’s solo career as a keyboardist and composer has developed in fits and starts since. He has gained devotion, bafflement and international recognition in equal measure, as his inexorable retreat from the surburbia of his youth towards a global hybrid of jazz, influenced by Frank Zappa, Monty Python, Joe Zawinul and English pastoralism, rockets into its own, slightly elliptical, orbit. Now a professor of music in Copenhagen, Django has put together a bohemian big band called StoRMChaser which releases its debut album this month that blows the dust off any cosy notions of the big band once and for all. Andy Robsonenters the crazy world of Django Bates

Main photo: M artin Munch with thanks to Mark Solberg

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