ABOUT THE BAND
A trio made up of brothers Michael (bass) and Richard Lewis (sax) with the melodious Jeremy Platt on piano, Plum Jazz recall the lush and tuneful sounds and songs from a golden era of swing, bebop and beyond.
They have been playing together and with a wide array of the Uk’s jazz, pop and studio musicians for decades, including Jamie Cullum, Jim Mullen, Dennis Rollins amongst many others.
Jez Platt
has been playing everything for ages with everyone. With the same melodic approach whether on keys or guitar, he switches effortlessly between very jazzy, very funky, and always with immaculate taste.
Trained at Leeds College of music, as working professionally for nearly 4 decades as performer, composer, arranger, and teacher, there’s very little jez doesn’t know about jazz, but he will be embarrassed I said that.
Jez is active on the UK jazz scene and has played keyboard for Jim Mullen, Dennis Rollins and Adrian Ingram among many others.
Michael Lewis
disappeared into his bedroom aged 15 and came out a year later able to play the bass to a surprisingly high standard. After a stint on double bass in the British Youth orchestra, he studied at Leeds college of music alongside many of the UK’s best known session and jazz musicians, including John Thirkell,( a trumpeter heard on 25 No 1 singles), and Keith Airey, (guitarist for Paul McCartney, and Nick Kershaw among others). Michael left college to join a band with Jim Patterson who would soon be heard playing those classic trombone riffs for Dexy’s midnight runners.
As bass player and band leader, he then spent 2 decades floating round the world playing jazz on ships of all sizes. He says he knows the location of every laundrette in every major port on the world.
We are glad to have his solid sense of time, and tasteful selection of notes in our trio.
Richard Lewis
was forced to play the clarinet from age 6, but swapped to the saxophone as soon as he could. Since then he’s gone on to study classical music at Durham, and Guitar at MIT in Hollywood. A 40 year career has found him writing jingles for Domestos and Duracell,
in studios with Lisa Stansfield and Suggs, producing sessions with Peter Cook and Vic Reeves, filming Pixie Lott and Jonathan Ross, and playing jazz with Jamie Cullum and John Etheridge amongst others. Clearly he will do anything to make a buck. He’s delighted to be back to his first love: playing jazz standards around the North West with these fabulous musicians.
PlumJazz can often be found rehearsing in Brigsteer near Kendal in our own studio with a suspect carpet from many years of coffee stains, but great acoustics.
One of our favourite activities is to find great melodies and share them with each other - the other day we tried this one from Neil Hefti, which we all loved, but is Michael’s especially favourite
Here’s another version we like – and we’re making our own arrangement now
