Don't shed tears at Forgan's departure

The leftist arts world is collectively weeping at the departure of Liz Forgan from the Arts Council, but it should be noted she headed up a funding body which showed little regard for the importance of jazz music.

There is a great deal speculation that her departure is a political one. Charlotte Higgins states:

"One senior figure in the arts world, who preferred not to be named, said: "This move is totally political. It is nothing more or less than political." "

Jeremy Hunt is obsessed with philanthropy being the solution to arts funding problems (an ideological and painfully ignorant stance), and the commonly shared prediction that he will appoint a new chief who will usher in deeper cuts to the arts and pursue a token "digital" agenda is a worrying one.

However for jazz, and not wanting to provoke a Lear-like tragedy, things can't get much worse than they already are.

Forgan handed down a 30.3% cut to an already meagre Jazz Services budget, and left the total funding for jazz at a pathetic £1.17m per year. At the same time, the Royal Opera House alone is still receiving £25m per year and English National Opera has had its yearly £17m grant protected.

True, Forgan was given the task of handling a crippling 30% budget cut from Jeremy Hunt's DCMS, but she showed her priorities were protecting big traditional, classical flagships.

I for one won't be weeping at her departure.

March at the NLT

March is here and the NLT programme truly kicked off in wonderful style last sunday with Gareth Lockrane's septet and Rick Simpson's luscious 'Wonder Women'.

The rest of the month will also be fantastic. We have bassist Chris Hyson and trumpet player Nick Malcolm bringing their bands to the NLT for the first time. Pablo Held has been referred to as "the German Kit Downes", and he's borrowing Kit's trio for his NLT gig, alongside Jim Hart's starry Cloudmakers Trio (Mike Janisch and Dave Smith). Finally the last gig of the month will be James Maddren's ridiculous quartet (Julian Siegel, Mike Chillingworth and Calum Gourlay) and the Royal Academy of Music Octet, directed by none other than Pete Churchill.

March:

11 - Chris Hyson Quartet + Nick Malcolm Group

18 - Jim Hart's 'Cloudmakers Trio' + Pablo Held Trio

25 - James Maddren Quartet + Royal Academy of Music Octet

As always, 7.30pm and a mere £5 entry. Nearest tubes: Kilburn / Brondesbury

LondonJazz: Recent blogs

I've been a little slack at updating this blog of late, but my last three blogs are up on LondonJazz.

The most recent is about Troyk-estra - Troyka's new big band format, another is about the London Jazz Meetup Group, and the third is about whether a regular jazz novice column might entice more people into venues.