Terry Seabrook and Peter Fraize (photo: Jazz Hastings).

Fraize and Seabrook on tour at Jazz Hastings

Saxophonist Peter Fraize and keyboard player Terry Seabrook, already well-known to Sussex jazz fans, are appearing at Jazz Hastings’ July gig as one of the first dates on their new UK tour. Julian Norridge reports.

American saxophonist and composer Peter Fraize and UK keyboardist Terry Seabrook, who will be playing at Jazz Hastings’s July gig session on Tuesday 3 July, first teamed up in the summer of 2016.

They brought their high-energy and soulful update of the classic Hammond organ group sound to venues in the Sussex area, culminating in a tremendous performance at the Love Supreme Festival. This session will be one of the first dates on their new and extended UK tour.

Peter Fraize is known for his impassioned high-energy playing, intricate and melodic writing and his ‘no-boundaries’ approach. His music has traces of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane but, as one critic put it, “taken to a slightly freer zone”.

Peter Fraize (photo: Jazz Hastings).

Brought up in a musical family in northern Virginia, Peter took up the saxophone at the age of nine and formed his first jazz group at 16. He studied both jazz and classical music at the New England Conservatory of Music before transferring to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he appeared with a range of European jazz groups.

Since his return to America in 1989, he’s been involved with numerous and varied jazz and rock projects. He has toured widely, especially in Peru, Japan and Europe.

Based in Washington, DC, he has been director of Jazz Studies at George Washington University since 1994, where he teaches saxophone and jazz harmony while also producing the GW Jazz Festival.

Terry Seabrook is well-known as the leader and pianist of the top UK Latin jazz band Cubana Bop and was also the leader of the Miles Davis homage band Milestones. He studied music at Sussex University before winning a year’s scholarship to study jazz at the Eastman School of Music in New York.

His performing career started in 1985, when he toured Europe and the Middle East with the US jazz singer Joe Lee Wilson. He has composed for the various bands he has led and also for television shows and the Associated Board’s jazz exams.

Completing the line-up will be Jack Kendon on trumpet and Milo Fell on drums.

Peter Fraize and Terry Seabrook Jazz Hastings, Tuesday 3 July, East Hastings Sea Angling Association (on the Stade behind the lifeboat station). Doors open 7.45pm for an 8.30 start, tickets £10 on the door.

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