London Jazz Award nomination Neil Yates: '.. there are jig-like dances, and long-note tone poems in which the brass sound slowly curls and wreathes like a voice.' [on album Five Countries]

The Guardian: “Some themes are dreamy laments, like the whispering Freedoms Lost, the coquettish Isabella's Dream has flamenco undercurrents, there are jig-like dances, and long-note tone poems in which the brass sound slowly curls and wreathes like a voice.”

More than any other genre, Jazz evokes strong feels of identity, not necessarily of an individual but of a group, a place, a time. There's a powerful historical weight to it that favours the illusion that you are being transported into another world. Neil Yates spent a year living in a caravan, traveling round the folk music festivals, learning traditional Celtic music. This unexpected influence synthesises with Yate's Jazz, a smashing together of cultures perhaps, but it creates something that feels wholly natural.