Chris Biscoe - Chris Biscoe Profiles Quartet

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Profiles of Mingus
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Music Is - Chris Biscoe Plays Mike Westbrook
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Chris Biscoe Profiles Quartet

CHRIS BISCOE – alto sax and alto clarinet
ALCYONA MICK – piano
LARRY BARTLEY – bass
WINSTON CLIFFORD – drums

Jazz has always been a music about people and places, the connections, the routes (and roots) between, the meetings and the getting away.
When I recorded some of the repertoire from my band Mingus Moves I realised how many of Charles Mingus’ compositions are dedications to musicians, friends and family, lovers and political enemies, not forgetting one toilet-trained cat. The CD was Profiles of Mingus, and this became the working name for the band.
The Profiles Quartet draws on this tradition, expanding it to include compositions by other jazz greats.

Tunes for the quartet include Thelonious Monk’s Jackie-ing (written for his niece Jackie Smith) and Monk’s Dream, Eric Dolphy’s Miss Ann and his portrait of Monk, Hat and Beard. It’s impossible to leave out Charles Mingus, who is represented by Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (for Lester Young), Pussy Cat Dues (that bemused looking cat perched on a Manhattan apartment toilet seat), and Fables of Faubus, the great satirical composition ‘dedicated’ to Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas.

CHRIS BISCOE – alto sax and alto clarinet
came to prominence in the late 1970’s, with Mike Westbrook’s Brass Band. The first concert was Mama Chicago, including Mike’s Goin to Chicago. Chris has played with many Westbrook bands since, including The Cortege, The Westbrook Trio, Bar Utopia, London Bridge is Falling Down and Band of Bands.

Chris toured and recorded extensively with American jazz legend George Russell, and also played with Andrew Hill, David Murray, Dewey Redman, Bobby Previte and Dave Bargeron. He toured with Hermeto Pascoal. In the UK he played extensively with The Dedication Orchestra, The Brotherhood of Breath, The Grand Union Orchestra, Tony Kofi, Harry Beckett, Liam Noble, Pete Hurt, Kate Williams, Peter Jacobsen, Allison Neale, Brian Godding, Stan Sulzmann Tony Marsh, Henry Lowther and Kenny Wheeler.
In France he played and recorded with Didier Levallet, Dominique Pifarely, and The Orchestre National de Jazz.

Records under his name include The Chris Biscoe Sextet (with Peter Jacobsen), Gone in the Air – The Music of Eric Dolphy, and Live at Campus West, both with Tony Kofi, Profiles of Mingus, Then and Now by Two of a Mind with Allison Neale, and Music Is – Chris Biscoe plays Mike Westbrook with Mike Outram and Kate Williams. Collaborative bands and records include Full Monte – Spark in the Dark, Cartoon and The Swipe Trio.
Chris is a founder member of Way Out West, the west London jazz collective which has presented over 800 concerts since 2004.

Chris Biscoe crosses musical boundaries in his playing, from ‘cool’ on baritone sax with Allison Neale, post bop with Tony Kofi, contemporary jazz with Liam Noble, through to free and improv jazz with Roger Turner, Kazu Uchihasi, Marcio Mattos and Tony Marsh.

ALCYONA MICK – piano
Alcyona is a pianist working at the forefront of the London Jazz scene. Recently nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Instrumentalist Award, she is a member of the London Jazz Orchestra, Tori Freestone/Alcyona Mick Duo, Brigitte Beraha Lucid Dreamers, Casimir Connection, Perfect Stranger, Josephine Davies Enso Ensemble, Randolph Matthews band, Paul Clarvis/Stuart Hall trio and has worked with Anglo/Egyptian artist Natacha Atlas for many years, performing worldwide.

As a composer she has a Master's in Composing music for film from the National Film and Television school. She has written and produced music for many independent short films, documentaries, animation and silent cinema. She won an award for Best Soundtrack at the Anima Mundi International Festival, Brazil.

'world class ingenuity' the Guardian
'Alcyona Mick is an unusual powerhouse of a talent' – MOJO

She has played on TRT music series in Istanbul with many Turkish artists, and performed with a wide array of other musicians including Yazz Ahmed, Henry Lowther’s Still Waters, Kate Shortt, Ingrid and Christine Jensen/Whirlwind big band, Nikki Iles big band, Eddie Parker, Alec Dankworth/Cleo Laine band, Mircan Kaya, Bachar Zarkan, Jerry Dammers Spatial aka Orchestra, Ibrahim Maalouf, Macadi Nahhas, Zoe Rahman and many more.

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LARRY BARTLEY - bass
Larry Bartley is a bassist and composer who has been a staple of the London and international jazz scene as a side man and as a leader.
His album Beauty in the Hideous featuring Tony Kofi, Ed Jones and Rod Youngs, was released in 2014. His 2003 debut album, Along This Way was nominated for Best New Work in the BBC Jazz Awards. Larry has played and recorded with Stanley Turrentine, Abdullah Ibrahim, Bennie Maupin, Steve Grossman, Jean Toussaint, Cleveland Watkiss, Courtney Pine, Denys Baptiste, Ingrid Laubrock, Johnathan Gee, Steve Williamson, Donald Brown (of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messangers), David Murray, Orrin Evans and Gary Bartz, among many others.

WINSTON CLIFFORD – drums
a powerhouse behind the kit for a wide variety of great bands, led by the likes of Gwilym Simcock, Monty Alexander, Stanley Turrentine, Benny Golson and Courtney Pine.
A master of a huge array of drum techniques, Clifford is constantly inventive, immersed in a stream of consciousness yet with ears wide open to hints, suggestions and prompts from his playing partners. He regularly plays around the kit with his bare hands for softer timbres, another card to play in the constant search for dynamic expression and imaginative phrasing.

Photo by Tatiana Gorilovsky

PROGRAMME DRAWN FROM

Thelonious Monk
Jackie-ing
Monk’s Dream

Eric Dolphy
Miss Ann
Hat and Beard
Les

Charles Mingus
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (for Lester Young)
Pussy Cat Dues
Fables of Faubus, the great satirical composition ‘dedicated’ to Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas.

Elvin Jones
Dear John C

Mike Westbrook
Blues for Terenzi

Pete Hurt
Magic Meg

Chris Biscoe
Well He Would
Sweet Pea (for Billy Strayhorn)

REVIEWS

Jazz at Progress
Friday 10 October 2025

Chris Biscoe’s Profiles Quartet:
Chris Biscoe, alto saxophone & alto clarinet; Alcyona Mick, piano; Larry Bartley, bass; Winston Clifford, drums.

A truly inspired performance by the latest edition of Chris Biscoe’s Profiles Quartet, on its first public outing, launched a new season of Jazz at Progress on Friday 10 October. With the leader’s creativity and freedom of expression and Larry Bartley’s majestic bass maintaining the continuity of earlier Profiles’ projects, newcomers Alcyona Mick and Winston Clifford, added a new and hugely exciting dimension to the mix. One might describe the band as ‘custom made’ to explore the wiles and whims, rage and defiance, love and friendship, plus all manner of idiosyncrasies, immortalised in the legion of jazz compositions dedicated to people and even a ‘toilet trained cat’.

Winston Clfford’s crisp drum roll opened the curtain on the very personal world inhabited by Thelonious Monk and his seemingly off-kilter portrait of his niece Jackie Smith. ‘Jackie-ing’, catches you unaware. How can so much be going on with what seems to be such a simple little tune? Logic tells you that nothing should fit together. But it does and before long Monk’s wry humour and the warmth of his swinging heartbeat, expressed so brilliantly by the four members of the band, has completely won you over.

In complete contrast to the cliff-hanging suspense of ‘Jackie-iing’, ‘Magic Meg’, from the pen of Biscoe’s good friend and associate Pete Hurt, swung like the clappers in a joyous romp reminiscent of Sonny Rollins’ ‘St Thomas’.

The alto clarinet is an instrument of graceful beauty with a sound to match. In the hands of Chris Biscoe it has an emotive force that brings tears to the eyes, perfectly fitting to Charles Mingus’ elegy to Lester Young, ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’.

Mandy Rice Davies, a characterful figure in the notorious Profumo Affair of 1963, coined a phrase which has since taken its way into regular usage as well as the Oxford Book of Quotations . When told in court that Lord Astor denied her claim that they had ‘slept together’, she replied, ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he!’ Taking inspiration from her defiance, Chris reshaped Monk’s classic ‘Well You Needn’t’ to ‘Well He Would’, with Alcyona Mick’s sharply defined keyboard figures aimed directly at the ‘Establishment’ of that, and any other day.

In ‘Blues for Terenzi’, Chris Biscoe summoned an extraordinary range of sounds on the alto clarinet to pay a deeply moving tribute to one of his ‘favourite musicians’, the late Daniel Terenzi and the tune’s composer Mike Westbrook. Winston Clifford’s delicate hand-drumming and Larry Bartley’s sublime bass underpinned the feeling of quiet contemplation.

The reflective qualities of ‘Blues for Terenzi’ segued seamlessly into ‘Dear John C’, to close the first set with Elvin Jones’ passionate tribute to his erstwhile leader and inspirational force, John Coltrane. Steve Foster’s fantastic images, to be found via https://www.jazzinreading.com/gallery/ capture the intensity of the moment far better than any words I can express.

The enduring legacy of Eric Dolphy lived on in the choice of the first three tunes in the second set*, each portraying a different facet of his complex musical personality. Dolphy, the composer and leader, was represented by ‘Miss Ann’, a free-flowing joyride featuring the compelling piano of Alcyone Mick and explosive percussion of Winston Clifford. ‘Mendacity’, attributed to drummer/Civil Rights activist, Max Roah and recorded with a vocal on his ’Percussion Bitter Sweet’ album, explored very different, unsettling territory, which I can best liken to Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’. Chris Biscoe’s range of incredible tonal effects, the interplay between piano and bass, and the sensitive support of Winston Clifford, combined to produce a performance of stunning emotional power.

To round off the tribute to Eric Dolphy, the band faithfully replicated the dark, sardonic humour of Charles Mingus’ recording of ‘Fables of Faubus’ from 1960, in which Dolphy played a leading role. One could sense the power of Mingus’ voice as he vented his rage against the iniquities of American society represented by the notorious Orval Faubus, one-time Governor of Arkansas.

The blues/gospel tinged ‘Pussy Cat Dues’ left one in no doubt that Charles Mingus may rent and rage, but the real boss of his household was the ‘well trained’ cat who obliging sat on a lavatory seat to have a publicity shot taken that would adorn the cover of ‘The Charles Mingus CAT-log To Toilet Train Your Cat’

At the conclusion of ‘Sweet Pea’, Chris Biscoe’s evocation of Billy Strayhorn, I noted one word, ‘Superb’.

A full-spirited ‘Monk’s Dream’ brought the concert full circle with a return to Thelonious Monk for the seemingly final number of the evening. But no, with an enthusiastic audience clamouring for more and time in hand, Chris obliged with an encore. Not the usual fare of a rousing blues or familiar standard, but an extended and spellbinding presentation of Charles Mngus’ tribute to Charlie Parker, ’Reincarnation of a Lovebird’. What a privilege to be privy to such a magnificent and totally unexpected performance!

Our thanks to Stuart McCubbin and his team of volunteers who provide such welcoming hospitality at the Progress Theatre and to Rich Saunders and his assistant for the excellent quality of sound and lighting.

Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer should contact info@jazzinreading.com Your help will be greatly appreciated!

And finally a footnote … At the beginning of the second set Chris Biscoe briefly left the stage to recover his glasses from the dressing room. A quick off the mark Winston Clifford filled the vacuum by holding three fingers in the air. ‘There are only three types of drummers,’ he announced. ‘Those that can count and those that can’t!’